Los Angeles a mystical land I'd heard of mostly in song film poetry then that one day we were there gazing through the rain at the vast expanse of city far below stretching away for miles what is LA but a surreal place fashioned of dreams? As the streetwalker in Pretty Woman proclaims "Everyone who comes to Hollywood has a dream What's your dream?" Indeed Dream to walk the red carpet or the red light district So much about LA I could not see as I looked down from atop the hill surrounded by a theater of mountains yet as I took in the sand, desert, neighborhoods and mountains so unfamiliar to me stories of LA floated through my head similar to the Florida I know yet beyond comparison in so many ways Laurel Canyon a community of 1960s hippie love the juxtaposition between crudity, violence and death the drive-by shootings of Compton and South Central to the renaissances of art blooming in Venice Beach and the bastions of style throughout the city the opulence of Rodeo...