That infamous quote came from late American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who, many insist, meant it as something of a slight towards the great city of Los Angeles: a restless, urban metropolis, collecting rudderless dreamers from around the world. But talk to a native Los Angelian today – or more likely, someone who’s come from elsewhere to make L.A. their adopted home – and they’ll wear Wright’s quote as a badge of honour.
On arriving in Los Angeles for the very first time – perhaps as one of those ‘loose’ people Wright referred to, being an Aussie visiting from my new home of London – I visited the Huntington: a tranquil private art gallery, library and botanical gardens out west of the city in Pasadena that houses a collection of materials from iconic gay novelist Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man). Poring carefully over some of his rare personal documents, I arrived at a letter he sent home to his mother in 1939, shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles: