Love Letters to LA
Los Angeles, how I love you.
You’re a city like no other. There’s so much I cherish about you.
I grew up in the Valley, and those warm summer nights were always my favorite. As the sun sets, the air shifts, and we’d drive over Laurel Canyon and across Mulholland. There is nothing like the Hollywood Hills! From the top, you can see the whole city sprawled beneath you, lights twinkling like a million stars. Winding through those iconic roads, surrounded by the beauty of the canyon, it feels like you’re at the heart of something special.
Los Angeles, you’re a beautiful chaos—a blend of old and new, tradition and innovation, all wrapped into one vibrant package. I’ll never tire of you. In your crazy, warm, unpredictable way, you make every moment feel like an adventure.
— Sheryl Sexton, 64, Studio City
Dear Jefferson Park:
Thank you for being there for me. Your community comes together, to picnic, to read, to watch movies in the park, and gives me a sense of belonging. Your food is everywhere, easily accessible and open for people to walk in and try something new. Your neighbors are friendly and kind, offering ginger ale when my mom spends the entire night throwing up, sharing food over the fence, letting the kids play in your well-kept lawn. Your mobile vendors are amazing, providing snacks and food and candy and treats on a semi-regular basis. Your library is well-kept, with a wide variety of books and opportunities, easily used. Your parks are relatively clean, your public workout equipment functional and tidy, the people you pass on the street friendly. Your many nearby churches, synagogues, and mosques allow a huge collection of varying religions to safely practice without fear of judgement. I am so incredibly grateful to have lived here for years, and I hope to continue living here for years to come.
— Love, Anonymous, 17
Dear Los Angeles,
You've been my home for my whole life. My heart breaks every time I see footage of what we've all been through. But I am constantly inspired by the people. The people who help each other. To check in on each other. To feed each other. To talk to each other. To lift each other up. To rebuild together. And although this rebuild will go on for many years, I am confident that we will rebuild for everyone. To ensure that we are all taken care of. That we have a roof over our head. That we have food to eat. That we have communities that look out for each other and make sure that we all have what we need for future generations. And that together we will win.
— Carlos T. Navarrette
You are strong, gritty, elegant. Talented, scared, resilient. Empathetic to a fault and brilliant beyond measure. You are we; together free.
— Christina Hall
I love Santa Monica because it showed me all the different ways I could love...myself (at the Charmont -- my first solo apartment), my soon-to-be husband, Andrew (at our current home together -- The Fireplaces), fresh produce and friendly faces at the Farmer's Market, community at St. Monica's Church, providing serving survivors and working alongside those who inspire me at UCLA-Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center, long walks along Palisades Park, voting in-person at the Santa Monica Bay Women's Club and by mail in front of the Santa Monica Public Library, dozens of movies (the Aero and the AMC), meals alone and with loved ones (Ashland Hill, Bun + Mi, Cassia, Fritto Misto, Michael's, West 4th and Jane, just to name a few), and listening to KCRW and dancing into the wee hours at Summer Nights at HQ!
— Rio May del Rosario
Los Angeles is a place but also an idea. The idea, I believe, is to fuse the spectacle of mountains and an ocean, with human values and human ingenuity and human culture. What the city of angels does is to bring that fusion firmly joined, resplendent, and beautiful. I love you dear city and I salute your ongoing experiment in joining.
— Najeeb Shirwany, Irvine
We eat in our cars.
At 1 am, down go the bars."
— Jill Brown, Fairfax
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¡Gracias Los Angeles!
You welcomed my parents with open arms.
Your beaches swelled their hearts with hope for their children.
Your mountains reminded them of their homeland but as the years passed, your hills became home.
To them, LA was America, the USA where they learned to say good morning to their neighbors in English and with a friendly nod to those that also came from afar.
Your palm trees swaying with the summer breeze planted their love for you.
They joined in cheer watching the Dodgers, LA Galaxy, and Lakers play. Tacos, pastrami sandwiches, and pizza became Friday night favorites.
They admired your courage and welcoming spirit.
Now, you hold their grandchildren and great grandchildren in your embrace.
— Patricia Restrepo, 58, Burbank
Edge of the world, this is where sweet-faced angels seek. Something sepia and paintbucket blue in the air. Like the precious succulent, the toughest survive and become beautiful.
Sharp frigid shadows, always return to a sun soaked joy. The light hits different. Realities are made here for the silver screen and so reality will be made here again.
An eternally changing many headed goddess, Los Angeles persists through the ghosts of her past, the winding freeways of her present, and the gilded promise of dreams in constant samsara. To love her is to love yourself. To love each other.
— Sarika Reddy
The canals bring a calm for any step in run or in a walk. Sure waters sit green, but there's a reflecting sheen that tells us what this city is meant to mean. A rawness is Venice. A truth. A grit. People the world over come to marvel, to visit—for a setting sun, to sit. Skaters smoke. Concrete shifts in paint from day to day. Those without work their wares as if it's all they've known. That's a fine life. Trying. Getting by. Takin' sunshine. That's the earthiness we may come to love (or hate) about Venice Beach. I'm 36 and lived there for five years. Five years that made me stronger. Five years of fun surf at the rocky breakwater. Where nights go calm and cool and waves kiss back and you're never alone. The town is all the good, bad, the ugly personified of this life. It's what makes us see clear harshness of our time. The vibrancy of what it all means—being alive.
— Vic
Los Angeles Love Letter
Lovers in gold will never stand the valiance of its necking madness.
A desert's heat, towered by concrete on trespassed land.
Dancing soil where angels weep great tears but once a year
Music persists, coexisting in bounties of vehicles
Exhausting under the burning metric stars.
It is easy to claim in disgust and beauty.
Yet to claim it as your own, is the most honorable task.
— Sabrina O'Reilly
"My little sketch by no means reflects everything that's great about this city, but I tried to get my major loves in there""
— Gracie, Los Feliz
"I was looking for a piece of paper to write my love letter on, and realized that all the little things I scrawl on the tickets, wrappers, napkins, and receipts from this city are love letters in their own way. This is a collage of some of the LA ephemera on which I've written notes, numbers, lists, and lyrics on, and together they're my love letter to LA.""
— Emma Lehman, 24, Highland Park
"I grew up a staunch Northern Californian with all the disdain for SoCal that entails. But then I came here to attend film school at USC and I found my home. A city where I can eat the best Thai food outside Thailand, go for a hike at Fryman Canyon after dropping my son off at school, hear music at Disney Hall, see great art all over town, go to the best movie theaters in the world, and live a life full of diversity of all kinds. I met my husband and my dearest friends here, had my son here, and found a neighborhood and built a community that I cherish. We will come back from this devastation like we cam back from Northridge and everything else that's come our way. Viva Los Angeles!"
— Suju Vijayan, Sherman Oaks
My Dear LA,
Born into your waiting arms, you were always my third parent—shaping me as much as the ones who raised me. You gave me my first taste of independence, my first infatuation with natural beauty, and my lifelong draw to creativity. Every day, you whispered that anything could happen, instilling in me a relentless pursuit of possibility. Your extraordinary ethnic diversity—woven into our food, language, neighborhoods, music, and festivals—seeped into my marrow. Your contrast of brazenness and exquisite, ancient Western-ness flowing in tar, sand, and mud beneath the surface fueled me from the start. In the aftermath of the fires, as neighbors across the street and from throughout the city rushed to help one another, I was reminded of the 1994 earthquake. My family was in the final stages of buying a home in Miracle Mile, and as we went to check its condition, we found our soon-to-be neighbors sweeping up each other’s fallen chimneys and shattered windows, rolling out barbecues in the middle of January to cook and share food from their powerless freezers. It hit me like an aftershock of goodness—Angelenos show up—for each other and for the city we share. I love you, LA. And dear Lady of Angels, there isn’t another place on Earth where I would have rather been born.
— Marina Muhlfriedel
Two Haikus
Did you pack enough
love into your go bag for
four million people?
Dear Unfair Wolf Moon:
Did childhood evacuate
before the fires won?
— Jolia Sidona Allen, 52, Playa Vista
"I did a project this past summer for a show at BozoMag that is literally my love letter(s) to LA. A series of 9 posters inspired by old Colby posters installed on telephone poles around the city as well as the gallery. Some specific, some personal, one sadly prophetic.""
— Jonathan Casella
LA is a tiger,
Hard to wrestle to the ground.
It prances, bats me between paws,
Then turns its head and eats catnip.
But the colors! I cannot avert my eyes.
From the cat tongue pink and saber tooth yellow.
I cry when it walks into the smoke,
And its stripes blend with flames and ashes.f
— Martina Blumenthal, 46, Palms
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— Brittany Saake Gonzalez
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— Daisy Green
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"Los Angeles, oh, Los Angeles!!! The whisper of possibility carried the Santa Ana winds. A symphony of cultures dancing beneath your endless sky. Your bountiful love found in the kindness of strangers, the warmth of golden hour-light. In your hidden pockets, creativity spills over like laughter, blooming in murals, melodies, and midnight musings beneath city lights. You instill hope, an electricity that charges our spirits, a reminder that reinvention is not only welcome but inevitable. The rhythm you carry that never stops dreaming. And in the deepest chambers of my heart, you will always be home."
— Michelle Tanjuaquio, 41, Eagle Rock
"LA! Balmy winds, watercolor sunsets, undulating waves. Your splendor deceived, burnt from the inside. Even your detritus, deceptions; multitudes gripped by fear, loneliness, greed, offer beauty. You cradle possibility in succulent canyon hands, sage scents. In your sleepy sister, Catalina. You welcome all, even as you spurn some seeking fortune. Fickle but amorous are you, LA."
— Diane Solomon
"Two bags, one-way flight,
Midwest girl meets sun and streets -
Dreams and roots converge."
— Shana Brewer, 42, Lincoln Heights
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