Having lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I share Janan Ganesh’s appreciation for the walkable city (Life & Arts, January 22).
I worked from home, walked most of my daily errands, and enjoyed the whimsical canyons while gazing at Sunset or Santa Monica Boulevards. My walks even included Beverly Hills.
While it’s true that a drier climate encourages hiking, one particularly fond memory of mine was following a walk in West Hollywood during a rainstorm.
The town, where a common architectural feature is the 1930s one-story bungalow-style apartment complex built around a courtyard open to the street, often with a pool, doesn’t tolerate occasional heavy rains well. And when I passed one such complex, the pool had overflowed, flooding patio chairs and silly pool toys down the steps onto the sidewalk and across the front lawn.
Appropriate, it seemed, for a desert town precariously rooted in fantasy.
Niels Eric
San Francisco, California, United States
