Welcome my friends, to the show that never ends. Yep, it's fire season in Southern California. Red Flag days, steamy nights, and hundreds of stucco and tile dream homes blowing away in a haze of ash and smoke. Simply the dark side to our sunny idyll along the sparkling Pacific, along with smog, earthquakes, traffic, a chronic shortage of affordable housing, growing economic disparity, crime, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But I still love L.A. Like other Angelenos, I cling grimly to the illusion (and sometime reality) of the easy-living, laid back way of life here. I'd rather be here than in some Rust Belt town filled with empty factories and broken beer bottles, or back home in the mosquito ridden, backward looking South. There's a vibrancy here that other parts of America just don't possess. Others obviously feel the same way. People vote with their feet, and the stampede West continues apace.
So let's trim back the undergrowth, hose down the roof, and enjoy our long, hot summer.


  ¶ 10:43 AM