Via Raph’s Blog comes this interesting article in the Boston Globe: How The City Hurts Your Brain.

Its conclusions are striking, but without actually reading the (uncited) paper referenced by the above-linked article, I’d approach the article with caution. It was only a few months ago that the folks at F13.net got a first-hand lesson in the pitfalls of peering through a journalist’s filters, and it’s the frequent pop-science article that leaves the educated shaking their eggheads.

Thus disclaimed, I find it interesting that purely anecdotally, the idea that crowded, noisy urban environments wear us down by neurological overstimulation makes perfect sense. I’ve voiced very similar thoughts, in a somewhat less-formal manner, whenever I get into a comparative discussion of the many places I’ve lived. Given that Icelanders’ favorite question is “How do you like Iceland?”, the topic is brought up not infrequently.

My two former residences that stand most indicted are, of course, Los Angeles and the City of New York. I’ve never hidden my distaste for LA; it only takes a wee bit of crawling through this very site’s archives to find invective leveled against it. When you boil down all the comments on its social scene, traffic, layout, attitudes, housing and other issues, you find that the problem’s pulsating heart lies in the fact that Los Angeles is a multi-hundred-square-kilometer concrete cancer festering on the side of California. Go to Google Maps and look at it from space; even at the distant scale linked, there’s a notable pallidity to the landscape.

It doesn’t hurt that, as a desert, Southern California is naturally antiviridian.

New York’s case is closer to the Newbury Street example than the naturalist slant found in the article. Whenever I visit the City, and especially Manhattan proper, there’s a palpable pulse in the streets themselves, a neverending crush of ideas, words, people, things. While invigorating for a few hours or days - though that may, of course, be partially attributable to nostalgia - remaining there longer leads inevitably to the anxiety, tension and irritability spoken of by the study. As much as I may admire what New York stands for, its pace is impossibly hostile.

On the inverse, examine Iceland and San Francisco. In San-Fran, I lived close enough to Golden Gate Park that, after a light drizzle, I could open my windows and welcome in a wonderful arboreal scent that instantly refreshed my apartment. The ocean lay a ten-minute streetcar ride away, while the hothouse of downtown was similarly accessible in thirty. Here in Iceland, I can see the literal edge of civilization from my rear porch and escape humanity entirely with a simple forty-five minute drive into the moonscapes and glaciers of the interior.

Oddly, an orbital survey of San Francisco looks objectively similar to LA, although the latter’s sheer area is still unmatched. What you do, see, though, is a greater proliferation of intra-city green space, and in far less concentrated lumps. It makes a difference, I suppose.

Tomorrow I depart sunny Los Angeles for stormy Atlanta, and once there I get to finally start working again. Ten weeks “off” was nice and all, but after the first two or three without much to do, I get fidgety. I doubt the hotel I’ll be staying in, for the first few days at least, will have decent net access, so this could be the last update until later this week.

I’ll try to start taking some photos when I get over to Georgia, too. There has to be something interesting to see in the area. Right, guys? Right?

Going to the South, though, is a little weird. It’s the one region of the US I’ve never actually set foot in, which means visiting will be cool, but it also means all I have to go on right now are a raft of more-than-likely unfair stereotypes. But I do like cornbread, so it’s got that going for it.

I don’t know about you, but I like my humor black as jet and desert-dry. I also happen to enjoy quirky British screenplays shot in unusual locations. Perhaps that’s why In Bruges, a recently-released Noir Brit-Com, had me tickled.

Now, first, a word on cinema. One of the things Los Angeles has going for it is the sheer diversity of theaters. You can find your mallplex outlets filled with texting teens and screaming babies and you have your indie arthouses showing third-run Lithuanian art films from the mid-Eighties. What most other cities don’t have, though, is the equivalent of the ArcLight. It can only be described as a tier above the “Deluxe” theaters some major cities have started opening. Excusing the shitty computer analogy, the Arclight is the freon-cooled multi-proc quad-core solid-state megabeast rig of moviegoing. It is the only theater I’m capable of going to any more, having relied on it for my silver screen excursions while I lived here in years past. With vigilant ushers, no pre-movie advertising and assigned (ultra-cushy) seating, it is the screening-house Jesus would build if he were a film magnate on a mission from the Almighty.

This is where I viewed In Bruges, and the reverent silence and cooperative laughter from the slightly-higher-brow-than-average crowd may have assisted the experience. Cinema is meant to be collective entertainment and the proper audience goes a long way towards making the most of your ticket, as any Rocky Horror veteran will no doubt attempt to convince you.

It also helps that the screenplay is downright brilliantly funny, and, further, well-balanced between dark comedy and the drama necessary to propel the story forward. With most films, the structured divisions of Act I, Act II and Act III are quite transparent. In Bruges beautifully toys with the formula; despite having drank a full pint immediately before the film, I sat through straight to the credits simply because, for the latter half of the movie, I could not honestly tell if it was going to end in five minutes or thirty. The story climaxes perfectly - and I’ll spare you the obvious metaphors - with a series of escalating peaks over the course of about half an hour.

The casting is also excellent. Irish hitmen Ray and Ken, portrayed by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, respectively, work very well together. Both project the perfect indifference or enthusiasm in each scene required for the Odd Couple gags to fly. Ralph Fiennes is superb as the sophisticated, sinister English gangster employing the main characters.

The location of Bruges is ideal for the film. Far enough off the beaten cinematic path to avoid any expectations or the curse of familiarity, Bruges itself should elicit some interest from wanderers-at-heart as well as the simply curious, and the small size of the city center is tailored for this sort of story, allowing the characters to split apart and run back into each other at the most comically opportune moments. Further, the rich history on display can be, and is, woven intimately into the story, providing a consistently interesting backdrop to the humorous foreground.

Recommendation: See it, now if you’re into dark British comedy, on DVD if you’re not.

Also known as ‘The Arc‘ and located, eponymously, in scorching Arcadia, California, I had pretty high hopes that this would be a good gym for bouldering while I’m stuck in LA. Unfortunately, I went at high Noon, at the apogee of the inland desert heat. This made for a less-than-sterling experience, but I did still manage to eke out an hour before tearing some skin.

The gym itself is a semi-hidden affair, a small warehouse behind a physical therapy center off a divided avenue in affluent Arcadia. There’s a bit of parking available, but it proved to be a non-issue as mine was one of two vehicles occupying the half-dozen spaces closest to the building. A low-slung edifice, one would never know it was a climbing gym, as opposed to, say, a garment warehouse, were it not for the open garage-style doors on either end, revealing plasticine rocks and padded mats instead of stacked sweaters. Large letters in the rear also identify it, although this does not help the casual passerby attempting to locate the damn place.

The staff was politely friendly and a day pass was a reasonable 15 dollars. Upon inquiring, I was informed that there exist no real lockers, nor a locker room. The restrooms are available for changing purposes, but that’s about it. There’s the first warning flag. After donning my shoes and chalk bag, I scanned the walls for a good starting point.

ARC is a pretty traditional medium-sized bouldering-focused gym inside. Nondescript blue carpeting, affixed to a half-inch or inch of firm padding; super-firm black crash pads everywhere. The east and west sides hold the colored plastic rocks, which are mounted on faux-rock-finished wooden backboards. North and south are the large garage doors, which are mercifully kept open, allowing the sporadic Inland Empire breezes to moderate the swelter within. The gym is about fifty paces and vaguely square.

While most of it appeared to be boulder-centric, the northwestern section, which had a large arete protruding a good fifteen paces towards the center of the room, was kitted out for some short sport-leading. The gym, on whole, is not very tall - five meters or so, perhaps six in the leading area. A bit higher than I’m normally comfortable bouldering, but not terrible. Most of the walls have a considerable degree of incline to them, from moderate to severe. I was disappointed to find rather few vertical, balancing-heavy problems. Most seemed more about good grip and proper incline technique.

There were quite a large number of routes available on each wall, with a decent difficulty spread between V0 and V6; the highest I noticed was a V12, but I wasn’t particularly looking that high. I also saw a VB. Unfortunately, the gym seems to be at a loss when it comes to consistently marking routes. Some are entirely determined by the color of the rock, while others are taped with a variety of schemes. Some routes are single-color taped, others are marked by a pair of colored tapes, while still others have colored tape with a symbol drawn on it.

I found the difficulty of the routes at ARC strange. V1s I could conquer without issue; they were, for the most part, unchallenging. The V2s I tried, however, were extremely difficult. I don’t recall finishing a single one, and could get to the three-quarter mark at farthest. The grips were smaller than I would expect for a V2, the reaches longer and the footholds sparser. Having not climbed in the area before, my recent illness, and a month of not climbing could all also have made them more difficult than I would expect.

I climbed for about an hour, but towards the end the heat was getting to me. When a particularly sharp rock sliced into my left middle finger, scraping off a dime-sized chunk of flesh at the third joint, I decided to call it for the day. In the end, I wasn’t particularly impressed with this smaller-sized gym. If it was nearby, I might consider going again, but the 30-minute drive and heat don’t endear it to me. One good note, especially considering the environs, is that a half-liter of bottled water is only a dollar.

Recommendation: Pass. Hopefully there are other, better gyms in the LA area that I’ve yet to discover.

This ‘burg is a curious beast. I lived here nary three years. And when I left? Sick, and sick to death, I was of it. Still, here I find myself, on layover between San Francisco and Atlanta - a new world and an old, or so I would imagine the lack of parity. Reliving all the slights and inadequacies I recall from that lost trilogy of annualities can only make one wax philosophical. Or, at least, sophistical.

Today, a particular conjunction struck me as extraordinarily metaphoric of the City of Los Angeles and the bizarre subset of humanity that chooses to call it home. A conjunction involving a rump of pork, frosted and roasted in a most commercial fashion.

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