When the city planners talk about how they envision the L.A. to come, chances are this is what they don’t want it to look like.
Do-gooders will point to the fast food, the cars, the lack of trees, the oppressive discordance of commercial crap and propose how it might be changed. Everything from obesity to global warming to our lack of health insurance seems to grow out of here.
This is the L.A. we’ve created over the last 60 years, and it is mightly ugly. There are beautiful residential areas in the city, but mostly they back up to big boulevard grossness.
What always amused me about the snobs in this city, are those who proclaim the West Side so much nicer than the Valley. But trashy scenes like the one above are all over Lincoln Blvd., Pico and National.
Billboards have gotten wose: bigger AND smaller, more ubiquitous, more vulgar. There is outdoor advertising for massage parlors, strip clubs, DJ’s who have their hands down their pants, liquor and beer. They are an evil influence, but then again they enrich such companies as Clear Channel with millions. Who cares if kindergarten children see this everyday?
Does LA have a chance to become a world class city when we face an army of ugliness that stretches from the ocean to the desert?

In the 3 photos under the headings of “When You Say Bud,” “The Built Environment…,” and “Still the Most Polluted City…” there is one thing visible in all three.
Guess what that is? (Hint: It isn’t motor vehicles, trees, sidewalks, the sky, traffic signals, people, or billboards).
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