[deaddodo]

> My family still lives there, but every time I visit I feel how soulless and fake the area has become. It has abandoned any sense of being an actual town in favor of becoming a de facto amusement park.

Anytime someone would complain about Hollywood, I would just mirror the same sentiments. It is an amusement park now, and most Angelenos (and probably Southern Californians, in general) rarely go there unless an out-of-state friend insists on seeing the Walk of Fame.

[toast0]

When was Hollywood not an amusement park? The 1923 Hollywood Land sign, advertising a housing tract feels like a sign that it was already an amusement park by then. I grew up in Orange County and had no desire to ever go to Hollywood; Disneyland was just as fake, and much closer. :P

[efields]

But that industry is soooo massive, and such a huge economic force, and is kind of built on the idea of Constructing Fantasy, so it _makes sense_ that the Hollywood neighborhood is like this.

I have no numbers to back this up, so feel how you will about this comment, but I’m sure the STR economy does not create much more than income for the single homeowner, and makes it _harder_ for these sudden AirBnB boom towns to build an economy beyond more than renting rooms.