Los Angeles and the Californian Coast: An Affair of Light, Landscape, and the Ludicrous

When I was young, I listened to California Dreamin’ the way one might stare at a postcard — curious, longing, and entirely oblivious to the smell of jet fuel or the cost of a green juice. The song played like an incantation, a warm breeze from a place where winter didn’t belong and nobody wore socks unless they were tie-dyed. I imagined Southern California as a sun-drenched, slow-motion utopia filled with gentle surf, open roads, and people too relaxed to finish a sentence. In my mind, the entire region looked like the final third of a Beatles documentary — all soft focus and barefoot idealism.

Of course, reality has a way of adjusting the lens. It wasn’t until I visited Los Angeles in 2024 that the lyrics finally made sense — not because it was exactly as the Mamas and the Papas promised, but because it was so much more ridiculous. Yes, the sun was shining. Yes, the sky was blue. But so was the billboard for a cosmetic dentist hovering above a vegan strip mall. The dream, it turned out, wasn’t dead — it had just been given a minor facelift and a social media strategy.

And still, I was hooked.

If you ever find yourself standing on the edge of the Californian coast at sunset — and if fate, flights, or foolish impulse allow it, I highly suggest you do — you may encounter a curious kind of clarity. Not the spiritual epiphany type, but something more cinematic, as though the sun, in its final descent, has just been told it's up for Best Supporting Actor.

This is not light that simply falls. It enters stage left. In California, even the daylight has an agent.

Now, Los Angeles — or as it's often known in travel guides and therapy sessions, The City of Angels — is less a metropolis and more an open-air fever dream in soft focus. One part aspiration, two parts perspiration. The hills are alive, not with the sound of music, but with the hum of Teslas, the whisper of screenplays being edited in cafés, and the unmistakable echo of yet another motivational podcast.

And yet, under the botoxed brow of the entertainment industry and its billboarded ego, lies something much older and quietly poetic for the city’s origins are far richer than the Hollywood montage would have you believe.

Consider this: the full name of Los Angeles is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, which translates loosely to “Good luck fitting this on your luggage tag.” And yet, beneath the gloss of this glittering illusion machine, there’s a kind of weathered grace. It was founded in 1781 by a group of settlers so diverse (mixed African, Native American, and European descent) that it would put most diversity quotas to shame, L.A. was multicultural before it was fashionable!

The myth of Los Angeles is built on aspiration, yes, but the foundation was always one of diversity and reinvention.

But venture west, dear reader — to the coast. Oh, the coast...

California’s coastline stretches like it’s modelling for a lifestyle catalogue no one can afford. From the brooding cliffs of Big Sur to the hair-tossed charm of Malibu, the land doesn’t just sit there — it poses. Surfers don’t just ride waves; they perform aquatic theatre. The ocean doesn't crash; it delivers a monologue. And if you’re wondering where everyone’s gone, they’re probably within a yoga mat’s distance of a juice bar, reinventing themselves again.

There’s a lot of that here: reinvention. Some might call it delusion; others call it ambition in Ray-Bans. But either way, the state thrives on the belief that transformation is not only possible — it's probably overdue and currently trending.

And yet, amid the Instagram reels and existential retreats, there is substance. Deep substance. East L.A. hums with Mexican soul — murals that speak louder than any influencer, and tortillas that could stop a man mid-crisis. Leimert Park still sways gently to the ghost of jazz, and Koreatown - if you play your cards right, might serve you a meal that makes you believe in the divine power of fermented cabbage.

There is absurdity here, of course. There always is when dreams gather in bulk. Artists, dropouts, ex-bankers turned raw food evangelists — all drawn here like moths to a flame. A dry, hot Santa Ana wind–blown flame that periodically turns the surrounding hills into scenes from an apocalyptic barbecue.

And still, they stay. Still we stay. Because if you squint just right — through the haze of wildfire smoke or the steam rising from your overpriced oat-milk cortado — you might glimpse it. A faint outline of the person you were meant to become. Not necessarily richer or thinner or more Instagrammable, but truer. A version of you unbothered by what came before, and only mildly worried about what comes next.

And for a place built on facades and fantasy, that’s no small thing.