We were approaching the "Mecca" of the American way of life. We had been thinking about it since the very beginning of our trip, even earlier—from the very moment our American Dream was born. We had seen it as a backdrop in endless movies, imagined ourselves surrounded by it, and marveled at how beautiful and simple everything seemed! It felt like the place where it’s always warm, where tall palm trees sway to the rhythmic "taps" of the sea breeze, where beaches are filled with muscular lifeguards glancing peacefully at ideal forms hidden under thin bikinis, where the skateboard and oversized t-shirts were invented—that was the true, ideal American paradise, the entrance to which is crowned by white letters on a cliff! ("Hollywood").

This is roughly how the vast majority of people who know about America only through its main export product—cinema—imagine the City of Angels (Los Angeles). In reality, many students who were so eager to get to this paradise corner fall into a slight stupor when they arrive in a huge megalopolis, several times larger in area than even New York, where you seem to live in Los Angeles, but at the same time, it takes 2 hours by train to get to the nearest beach! The city is very technogenic: cars are everywhere; in California, they account for 35% of the country's total, i.e., about 2.0 cars per person, including infants and 100-year-olds, and roads, parking lots, and interchanges take up more than a third of the entire area. As a result—the indestructible smog that hung over the city 40 years ago during its rapid growth.

Poverty is a separate conversation. Los Angeles is located in the very south of the country, not far from the Mexican border, from where crowds of illegal immigrants pour in, not speaking English, with weak education, low qualifications, and corresponding "boorish" behavior. In addition, Southern California, for historical reasons, is also a breeding ground for the traditionally disadvantaged Black population. As a fact—thousands of hectares of ghettos, blatant chaos—abandoned houses, cars rusting right on the streets, the regular sound of gunfire, weapons, drugs, etc. By pure chance, I ended up at night in the East Los Angeles area, which starts in downtown—what I saw not only caused slight anxiety inside and a desire to get out as quickly as possible, but also immediately awarded in my mind another Oscar for the most realistic depiction of a ghetto in the movie "Havoc" (by the way, the movie is very interesting, although it was not presented in Russian distribution). And such landscapes are a large part of Los Angeles! The exceptions are only the famous Beverly Hills and the more or less successful Santa Monica! But there everything is limited to kilometer-long fences surrounding green lawns of golf courses and massive mansions! There aren't even sidewalks everywhere there, just like in many other places in Los Angeles.

For those whom I haven't talked out of it yet, and who are going only to take a picture with the Mickey Mouse star on Hollywood Boulevard, this paragraph is for you. Hollywood Boulevard is my biggest disappointment! I could have easily endured all the inconveniences if I had received what I expected here, but alas... It is a street, very ordinary, like many described above, somewhere in the middle of a Latin district, where instead of sidewalk tiles, every other one has the names of stars, and the Kodak Theatre with a Chinese entrance is located, where the Oscars are awarded annually. There is absolutely nothing interesting there. I think that without looking under your feet, you will never feel that you are on a street with such a loud name. Moreover, the street itself is quite long, but tourists, disappointed like me, inspect no more than 2-3 blocks in both directions from the mentioned theater. That's it—that's all of Los Angeles.

Although there is one undeniable plus! It was in Santa Monica (the beach area of Los Angeles) that I saw the most beautiful sunset of my life; it is here that the most beautiful beaches in the states are. It is worth getting to California for this, but some resort and quiet Santa Barbara looks much more preferable than the smoking Angeles.

Now that's it, enough criticism, I'll tell you a little about our trip. Knowing about the globality of Los Angeles and having neither a map nor much of an idea where things are here, we decided to leave our car at a service station and dedicate the whole day to the city, opting for public transport. As it turned out, in vain. If in Boston or New York everyone without exception uses buses and the subway: you can meet both students and very wealthy "diamond collars" there, then in Los Angeles, as in the West as a whole, this is the lot of exclusively the poor. And not even the poor, but the homeless. Because the simply poor here fit into the average value of two wrecks per capita! Apparently, that is why, and to save the inventory, there are no turnstiles in the subway here, and if you didn't buy a ticket, it means you didn't buy it—it's your conscience! Secondly, you cannot get to all areas of the city by public transport, but you can still get to the main points of interest.

We left our car at a service station in downtown, mistakenly considering it the very center of the city, from where it is worth starting the tour. Downtown is small and miserable, with only a dozen skyscrapers in a very modest and disadvantaged area. After walking a little along the street, we wandered into a very small Chinese restaurant where we ate the cheapest breakfast of the entire trip, paying less than 10 dollars for 4 people. Moreover, the portion was traditionally large for the Chinese. We noticed a lot of poor and homeless people on the street, coming to an awake state after their restless night and carefully arranging their things in personalized carts) Everything seemed terribly ordinary to us and did not attract attention. Then we decided not to waste time and head to the ocean...

I fundamentally refused the services of transport and, not supporting the group, decided, as always, to get there on foot. My principle cost me a day and 25 miles! I didn't suspect that it was so huge. I spent the whole day to get from the skyscrapers, blindly to the famous pier on Santa Monica Beach! Three times I got lost, three times I cursed, three times I replenished my water supplies, three times I asked for directions. I walked through Mexican ghettos, through fashionable Beverly Hills, through the largest and most monotonous cemetery I have ever encountered (several kilometers in length and width and consists of absolutely identical gravestones, it makes your eyes ache) and only by sunset did I reach the designated point. Although I can't say that I wasn't interested. It was interesting to watch the southern, sluggishly flowing Californian life all this time! The flocks of Latinos cleaning, watering, mowing, and taking care of the masters' lawns in expensive areas. I was dying of heat when, in the middle of kilometers of slums, I couldn't find a cafe or a shop to buy something to drink. Not even a person to ask—everyone here drives! Given that a mile distance is unbearable for an American, I didn't dare tell them that I was walking to Santa Monica so as not to be laughed at)

But I made it! My friends also hung out on the ocean shore all day because of me and even suggested spending the night there, but I refused, citing the need to pick up the car... and then the most interesting thing began.

The sun was setting over the horizon with southern lightning speed, leaving a pleasant aftertaste in the form of an unforgettable crimson sunset reflected in the mirror of the sea! In contrast to this romantic natural phenomenon, homeless people from all over the neighborhood were pulling up to the beach to finish their next homeless day in a mundane but tasteful way right on the cooling sand of California. And we had to return from all this Hawaiian paradise late, late in the evening to the most criminal area of America—East Side.

The accordion bus, which here bears the proud name of "metro," flew uncontrollably along the deserted wide streets. In general, if in Russia public transport crawls in the far right lane, then in the States, this is, perhaps, the most reactive way of moving. First, we crossed downtown, then entered the ghetto.

Everything here is like in the movies: one-story shops with cheap neon signs were already closed and pulled with grilles and protective shutters, on every corner of every intersection, Black guys in white t-shirts down to their knees were hanging out, someone was waving a gun, someone was selling weed, others were just wandering around for no reason. Those who had already lived their youth were just lying there in stacks in alleys and under canopies, comfortably settled and clutching their precious cart with one hand. Every now and then the sound of a police siren rushing to a call was heard. From the bus stop to the workshop parking lot, it was a fifteen-minute walk. We had previously memorized all the turns well.

Here we were dropped off and pitifully followed with eyes. By that time, there were no white homeless people left in the "metro," at best—Latinos. WE clenched our fists and started walking quickly, not along the road, but along the alley between the houses; there was less chance of running into trouble there, especially since I had a laptop on my shoulder and 3 cameras for the company. But everything worked out, we only met one peaceful homeless person. We dived into our tractor and rushed south, towards the Mexican border.

P.S. As confirmation of my words, when transferring photos from one computer to another, I irretrievably deleted all the photos of Los Angeles and part of the photos of Las Vegas. Please forgive me.