I had my car serviced this morning. I didn�t want to drive straight home, so I decided to drive up to Mulholland and take it back to my house. I drove up and just at the start of Mulholland I turned onto the Hollywood Bowl overlook. I figured it was a nice spot to just look over my city. I didn�t expect that the place was packed with tourist vans filled with sightseers. I ended up having a great time just watching them.

Hollywood Bowl overlook. I was there just a few weeks ago looking up at this spot.

The City that Dreams Built

Some of the tourists

A lonely pay telescope

People looking over the sign that describes the overlook and the road that would be named after him was the idea of Mulholland to, �Make the mountains accessible to the people of Los Angeles.�

Another group of tourists jumping off the tour vans to see the sight of this city.

Young man looking up.

Everyone stops at this sign and reads it. A man walked up and mentioned how that movie �Chinatown� was about Mulholland. Yes and no my good man. The real history of his city is obscured under many layers, but it�s not contained in a movie.

This is typical up in the overlook. Everyone wants a picture of the downtown Los Angeles skyline. Funny though, I doubt many of the same tourist ever visit downtown. Why would they, right? There�s a saying that Los Angeles is the most beautiful city in the world, when seen from afar. I think that�s why people come up to the overlook, and the Griffith Observatory. These places offer us all a look at the city without having to really see the details. I heard a woman tell her friend, �That�s Hollywood, and over there is Santa Monica, and beyond that is Malibu.� It�s all so easy to take in when you�re looking from above. It�s like looking at a huge model. It doesn�t looked lived in. It�s out there, not in your face. A woman looked over the city and said, �To think, we�re seeing the population of New Zealand right there.� We who live in this city often forget how huge it is. We reside in our little corner of the city and often don�t venture very far. I�ve decided that I need to be a tourist in my own town. To see it all. From Chatsworth to San Pedro. It�s a great city. The city for the next five hundred years, I once wrote in my notes for a novel that, "That isn�t actually a good thing. �Unless you count this notion that Los Angeles is the most human of cities. �Which again, isn�t always a good thing.�