Tinseltown no more

The heat is relentless, the traffic daunting and the homelessness distressingly in your face. It could almost be Auckland. 

- COLIN HOGG

Visiting Los Angeles, an Aucklander can't help but think of home, though not in a homesick way. It's more to do with wondering if this vast, sun-baked, car-mad, homeless-filled place is actually future Auckland.

The taxi driver from the airport is garrulous but, unusually liberal for an LA cabbie, says the city is hurting over the Hamas-Israel war. "There's a lot of fear." And, as usual, he's never been to New Zealand, but he hears it's very beautiful.

Wife working, me tagging along, for our first few days in Hollywood we're based at the Thompson Hollywood, new and hip and full of rich youngsters. There's a rooftop bar and a pool. It's just a hop off Sunset Boulevard and I can see the skyscrapers of Downtown in the heat-hazy distance.

After 6pm, the sun a fading glow way above Santa Monica, we venture out for a drink and food and go around the corner to the rooftop bar in another hip hotel. The seats have no backs and everyone is less than half my age. There's no tap beer, just cocktails with names like Jolene. Incongruously, the sound system is playing Dire Straits.

Next morning, even hotter, an Uber driver says, "I'm starting to notice the homeless in parts of town they weren't before, like Beverly Hills, even Rodeo Drive. There was an influx after the epidemic. For the first time, it's starting to feel dangerous."

But the thing he's really in a state about is the price of petrol. "It's so expensive now, hitting $6 a gallon." When I tell him that back home, we pay the equivalent of $14 a gallon, he refuses to believe me.

TAKING SHELTER