Most people want to be greeted each day with the sound of the ocean or a gentle breeze blowing through the woods. I, on the other hand, wake up to the sound of blaring sirens and garbage dump trucks. Sometimes I am woken by the sound of glass beer bottles being thrown out by the bar downstairs or someone yelling obscenities like, "You Fat Old Hag!" There is something interestingly organic about living in a metropolitan city that can only be understood by its inhabitants. And for those living in downtown Los Angeles, it's unlike any other place in the world. For better, or for worse.

I was talking to a friend of mine just the other day who was trying to convince me to move to San Francisco. Believe me when I say that I wouldn't mind doing so at all. I would gladly pick up my things and park it somewhere among the hippies and techies of Northern Cali. Upon making his case for why I should make a move up there, his greatest claim to his substantial argument was that there was no culture in LA. My only response was, "Well, you have to find the culture". He replied with, "Exactly".

This statement of his sat uneasy with me. I suddenly felt defensive about my concrete jungle and I didn't know why. Perhaps because ridiculous shows like 'The Hills' have given people the impression that Los Angeles is all Hollywood, but it's not. Take a stroll around Venice Beach and tell me there is no culture vagabond artists, home to skateboarding, and just an overall plethora of off-the-wall characters. A far cry from Spencer and Heidi.

I am not a Los Angeles native and I actually didn't want to move here at all. But I somehow found my little plot and fell in love with a grimy, newly gentrified city. I sat around wondering why I felt this way and it suddenly became as clear as the bright sunny skies of La-La land.

Downtown Los Angeles used to be a wasteland. No one lived here aside from the seedy residents of skid row and raunchy, formidable streetwalkers. Gangs to the east, immigrants left and right. This was not a place anyone in their right mind would want to invest real estate into. Within the last decade or so, downtown LA has become a completely different place. Its skyline has changed with the development of incredible structures, as well as an extraordinary modernization of the original buildings. And I live in one of them. The building I live in is over a hundred years old and that may not seem like much to most of the world or this little country of ours. But for LA, that is ancient. Charlie Chaplin used to sit in the theatre that is 6 stories below me.

Its residents can almost seem to be a cliche mid-twenty and early-thirty year-old, single artist types writers and photographers and designers and actors. Most don't work or work for themselves, hustling for the next paying gig. Everyone sleeps in till lunch because no one really has a regularly scheduled 9 to 5 job. They dream during the day and live at night. Perhaps these people are attracted to downtown because they are just like the city themselves a little rough around the edges, but have the foundation for greatness.

I guess the entire point of this is that cities like New York, Paris, Rome, and even San Francisco GIVE it to you. These cities are established with its own distinctive culture and its populace is given everything the city has to offer. For the inhabitants of downtown Los Angeles, we live on a blank canvas. It is having its own coming of age story and we are in the midst of its most tender years. Instead of adapting to the city you move to, downtown LA conforms to you. This city is whatever you want it to be and whatever you make of it. It takes a certain soul to find your place in a city that gives you nothing but has everything to offer.

I've fallen in love with this canvas and have painted my own story, found MY bar, and etched my name on the sidewalk. I may not live here forever, or even for much longer, but I have had a real love affair with LA. And what makes this even better, she loves me back.

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Story by: Samantha Nguyen
Images by: Miles Jason Casupanan