[mturmon]

"she spent most of her life west of Hollywood"

Yes, this is just not a very well-informed article. It's pitched as kind of a pithy survey of the city, but it works better as some impressions from the viewpoint of a teen who grew up there.

The author appears to have graduated Brown in 2011 and been in Brooklyn since then. In her childhood and teen years here, it's unfortunate she didn't get to visit more of the city. ("All I ever did was drive the familiar loop of surface streets I knew, smoking cigarettes, blasting the heat with the windows down on winter nights.")

That's all ok as far as it goes, but what mars the article to the point of profound irritation is that she seems to have taken on a lot of tired and dated viewpoints. (Hollywood as an over-riding explanation, the freeways, hauling Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht up from their graves for one more anecdote, the remarks about Downtown.) The article sounds like the way stereotypical older Westside residents talk.