The original 42 residents of Los Angeles, isolationists at heart, bestowed upon their town a name so long that people would often become tired and drift off to sleep in the middle of saying it. This was surely by design. If you couldn't make it through the entire name you probably wouldn't want to move there. Just as L.L. Cool Jay is going back to Cali, not California, and the people who are so in need of a vacation that they trail off after getting as far into the word as "Vaca", the town's novella of a moniker was shortened to Los Angeles and that stuck. Until the ultra-lazy moved in and started simply calling it L.A. And man, did people ever move in! If L.A. and its surrounding counties seceded today to become their own state, they'd automatically be the 5th most populous in the nation.
Everyone knows Los Angeles plays host to the heart of the country's movie industry but employing far more people than the movies is the city's manufacturing industry; it's the biggest in the nation. Sure, manufacturing is less glitzy than movies and superstars, but people need stuff and stuff has to be manufactured. Invented in L.A., to name a few things (all of which it is possible to enjoy simultaneously), were the space shuttle, fortune cookies, the modern bathing suit and skateboards.
Where you now see a major highway system in Los Angeles there once was the largest system of Interurbans (heavy duty, intercity trolleys) the nation ever knew. In the late 1930s, those trolleys carried 80 million passengers around the city each year.
Our friends in L.A., Vanessa Brack, Yordis Brown, Ryan Carlson, Richard Funnell, Linda Hillman, Bill Lancaster, Darcel Lang, Aaron Stillman and David Taylor are so enthusiastic they're doing two projects for Labor Day in May. They will spend the first part of their day working to preserve the Bolsa Chica Wetlands and the afternoon cleaning up Huntington Beach - the one and only Surf City (really. It's official).
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