Soothing New Podcast Content!!! Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or on the Substack app.
I live behind an actual slaughterhouse, and around the corner from a gay sex club, which shares a back wall with a pet hospital and a new charter elementary school. There’s a lot going on here. It’s one of the things I love about Los Angeles—diversity.
If you read the first important historical work written on the city, The Fragmented Metropolis (1967), its chapter on zoning weirdly shows, of all the infinite cross-sections of Los Angeles, the two-square miles of the city surrounding my apartment.
Contrary to the popular impression of a city devoted to chaotic, unplanned, and unstoppable sprawl, LA actually pioneered the nation’s first citywide zoning codes in 1908. The blocks around Beverly, Virgil, Vermont, Western and Westmoreland were a test lab for an enlightened future of harmonious mixed use for the benefit of all humanity.
“Right from the start, we must understand that we are not the conservative branch of the City Government,” the Los Angeles City Planning Commission declared in 1920 at the height of their progressive zeal. “We are the ones who should ‘Dream dreams and see Visions’—visions of a better City to be.”
Well, living on Westmoreland Avenue, in Château Westmoreland, I certainly had my share of visions—most of them painfully real. In a previous post, I tried to hint at the nearly supernatural malevolence of these streets, and now, for the first time ever, you don’t have to read about it. Sit back in traffic, turn up the volume, and let my soothing voice whisk you away to a magical land where zoning laws went horribly wrong.
This episode ties it all together in a truly ambitious and hilarious dumpster fire.
“Los Angeles, where it all comes together!”
—Former Official City Motto
Before I begin to wade into the high weirdness I hinted at in my last post—an excursion into some seriously strange territory that will take a series of posts to unpack—I thought it might be fun to toss off a standalone podcast episode. So here it is. It’s intense.
Believe me, you’re going to need more than a $25 Erewhon smoothie to feel anything like healthy or well after this.
𝐸𝓃𝒿𝑜𝓎!
Listen to “Stress Ruins Flesh” on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or on the Substack app.
This content originally appeared last spring in slightly different written form under the title, “It Will Get Brighter—Optimism.” If you recall that post, then you know you must combat taste freeze. Purchase the music mentioned in this podcast:
Baltra, Ambition
Fearing, Shadow
Demilich, Nespithe
Chat Pile, God’s Country
Note: Birds sounds are real, sampled from my window overlooking the dumpsters, as are Abdul’s bellows.
Stress Ruins Flesh