"I am a person who believes that in Los Angeles, people's innermost personalities, their philosophies even, are revealed in the driving routes they choose, the trail of bread crumbs they make as they weave their way through the city" (Tsing Loh, 58).
One of the funniest points in the animated movie Madagascar was when the menagerie of animals asks an NYPD horse how to get to point X. The horse starts telling them, with great authority in his voice when another NYPD horse butts in and gives an alternate sense of directions. The two horses begin to argue over whose directions are superior while the other animals grow agitated. Unfortunately, I was one of the few people who actually thought that Madagascar was funny. It was aimed at a NYC-centric audience, or at least an audience who would pick up on jokes such as New Yorkers priding themselves on possessing the best set of directions to anywhere in their city, or surrounding burroughs.
Meanwhile, I am often clueless where I am until 6 months after I have left a city and adhere religiously to set ways to get places until after I have moved away. (NYC is the exception- I'm an excellent navigator there, but you'd have to be a cross-eyed monkey not to know where you are)
I was thinking about getting from point A via various routes as I have been navigating the street network of my parents' latest residential town. This year it is Windsor Heights, Iowa, a suburb, if such a word can be utilized to describe, of Des Moines. Last year it was a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, ie Shoreview, Minnesota. Next year it'll probably be the moon.
As I drive down Hickman, one of the main streets, I keep looking for White Bear Lake Road, which will take me to Target. Yes, if the Target I was looking for was in Shoreview. Or I keep craning my neck for Culver's, which is by my mom's work and the proffer of treats both hot and cold- frozen custard and Butter Burgers. (the hamburger bun is buttered, it's not some French fusion take on the American classic). But my mom does not work at an accounting firm anymore. She works as a payroll specialist at a bowling alley. Which is not near a Culver's. Or at least not to my knowledge.
I have come to realize that I am an excellent navigator. In places that I have been. Not in places that I current am. (the same is also true for my foreign language skills- while in Italian all of my sub-par French came rushing back.)
Meanwhile, in LA, I blissfully take in the city while my friends drive, or while I take public transportation ignoring most major streets and intersections. I have a gift for describing the feel of a place. But the cross-streets, um, why don't you ask him over there?
This is a constant bone of contention between my friend Derek (my go-to driver/ride) and myself. Derek grew up in Orange County, which is a stone's throw away from LA. And if I had been an OC kid I would have been hightailing it up to LA every chance I could get the keys. Incidentally, people from Orange County do NOT call it the "OC," just as true San Franciscans do not call it Frisco. Therefore, I assume that Derek has a sixth sense of the streets of LA. Especially when we are going some place unfamiliar to me. More often than not he doesn't know how to get there either but assumes that I have squirreled away a set of directions or possess a sense of navigation I have yet to procure.
I have come to realize this when our drive starts to take five, ten, fifteen minutes longer than Mapquest (despite its fallible glory) predicted. Usually it boils down to me asking if he knows where the place is, he replying that he thought that I did, I saying no, him asking if I had printed out directions, and my response as being I thought that he would know the general area so, no. People say that we act like brother and sister. A lot. I have yet to dispute their claims successfully.
My friend Eddie, however, who was more reliant on public transportation than I until his car arrived from Rhode Island, is an excellent navigator, despite being an LA transplant himself. Eddie is also more technically-oriented than I am and can write an amazing paper in about two hours, no prior prep while I academically crucify myself for about three weeks straight before the turn-in date.
If I stay in LA I'll pay more attention to the streets' names. Until then, despite the great irony that I am getting my masters in urban planning, I don't know where a lot of the major streets intersect- does Santa Monica run parallel or perpendicular to Vermont? Will Olympic and Normandie ever intersect? Uh, I don't think so, but don't quote me, etc.,
Ask me in ten years, when, maybe, I won't be in LA, the best way to get to the Glendale Galleria from Little Tokyo (ie downtown LA) during rush hour. I'll probably have excellent directions. Have me describe the feel of Weller Court in Little Tokyo- well, you got a pen?
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