So here’s the thing about LA. After a long, and especially miserable winter in New York, you fly out to LA and you really really really want to love it. You’ve been imagining yourself giving up this life in the cold, hard city for palm trees and sunshine and hills and beaches.

But then you land in LA.

And then you pick up your rental car in LA.

And then you drive the 10 miles to your hotel in LA.

AND IT TAKES YOU TWO HOURS. TWO HOURS OF BUMPER TO BUMPER TRAFFIC. You told your good-for-nothing-GPS to avoid all highways because this is not your first time at this rodeo, and it keeps redirecting you to the god-damn-405. You know the 405 is your own personal hell, but your GPS insists. You’ve made it 6 of those 10 miles avoiding that highway but your GPS tricks you into hopping on for the last 4 miles.

You think, “how bad can it be, it’s only 4 miles!” And you’d be wrong. So very very wrong. Ninety minutes later you emerge from that soul crushing apocalypse only to find that the Starbucks that you were so desperately seeking is there…on the wrong side of the highway…and there’s no parking lot. Or parking anywhere that seems even remotely logical.

You wax-poetic (to yourself) about the advantages of traveling by foot in your beloved Manhattan (completely blocking out the traumatic winter you’ve just come through).  You rage to a room full of imaginary people in your head about the misery of trying to get anywhere in any kind of hurry (or non-hurry) in this city-of-broken-dreams. And that is how you think of this city that draws all these hopeful dreamers only to crush their souls while they sit in endless hours of traffic going absolutely no where.

But the weather is really great. And they have In-n-Out Burger. So, I mean, you kind of have to go. At least once.  Because food.