ABSTRACT
The author Rob Sullivan attempts to show that Los Angeles is a one-of-a-kind city that is also absolutely ordinary. Simultaneously celebrated and derided for its enthusiastic uptake of all that is quirky, deranged, larger-than-life, self-referential, and superficial, Los Angeles is home to working class folks, inveterate experimenters, idealists of every variety, as well as the plain and the boring. The city has benefited enormously from being at the center of everything while also somehow maintaining a weird status as a backwater wasteland. The glare of the media being so intense on certain parts of LA, much of the rest of the city exists in shadows. This has caused much of the history of Los Angeles to recede into obscurity, yet it has also allowed an enormous amount of freedom for creative activity to occur without being pre-empted by critical attention.
