Wealthy California Homes & Communities, As Well As Other Pics

"Beverly Hills" sign at Lily Pond

It has been very nearly one year since my work-related trip to southern California. I knew that my desire to publish posts about the trip was more ambitious than the final results, which is admittedly par for the course for such trips. However, I recently ran into this particular blog entry, which never was even published. 

Now that it has been just about a year, it seemed worth sharing these pictures here. No longer do I even remember specifically where these pictures were taken. Some of them are of LAX Airport, some are aerial shots, and some are shots on the ground in affluent southern California neighborhoods. But it felt like publishing them was long overdue. So here is my remedy. They are being published today, on a soggy and cold night in New Jersey almost one year after the trip to sunny southern California. 

Better late than never, right?

Enjoy:

Ever since I was a kid, the legend of the affluence of southern California, and of all the wealthy homes with sparkling pools was something which seemed to capture the imagination of many people. This is particularly true of Americans. I myself know a number of people from my past who went to southern California, specifically, in pursuit of dreams of pursuing success. 

Admittedly, that was part of the draw for me to see on my recent trip to southern California. I never was one of those people who dreamed of living in some grand mansion somewhere in southern California and enjoying the high life, or of seeing myself on the silver screen, or other such grandiose dreams. Nor did I look at all of those dreamy homes and properties with the feeling that these were people who had "made it" and achieved the happiness of the American Dream. Yet, having heard of how glamorous the lifestyle and everything about southern Cal is, I was at least curious. 

Some of the most revealing moments during my trip came from some of the other coworkers who, like me, were not from the area. Many of them were taken by the signs and showing off of extreme wealth, in the form of those huge mansions and properties, as well as fancy cars clearly meant to grab attention. They expressed amazement, and some degree of awe, regarding the signs of extreme wealth which we (sometimes) were surrounded by. That was true of the actual site where we were working, at the Hearst Mansion in Beverly Hills. But it was also true when we passed some of those fancy mansions, or whenever someone driving a car clearly meant to show off, judging by their reactions. And as puzzling as it was to me that the evidence of the existence of the poor and disadvantaged were all over (literally sometimes just feet from those wealthy neighborhoods, and clearly visible if one actually cared to look), it was perhaps even more puzzling to me that these same people almost acted shocked when I mentioned my surprise at such a disparity of wealth in such close proximity. It almost seemed like they had not registered the presence of poor and homeless people there.

This is something which I mentioned before in earlier posts. But it really did surprise me. Like almost everyone else, I had seen some images and video clips of massive tent cities somewhere in the Los Angeles region. And while I did not actually find these tent cities myself, the impression that I had gotten was that the poor had mostly been restricted to certain parts of town. Which is why I guess it seemed so surprising to me to find that, in fact, extreme poverty seemed to live side by side with extreme wealth. The most telling and symbolic moment was when I was at that park across the street from the glamorous Rodeo Drive, and with the homeless sprawled across the lawn of that park. That was not quite how it was described when I had heard about it before actually seeing it with my own eyes. After all, Rodeo Drive seemed like this mythic boulevard here you might rub shoulders with the rich and famous, and see some rare and expensive cars driven by chauffeurs and carrying people you know from television or movies. And indeed, there as some of that. The shops clearly were high end, and there were some impressive cars, including a Rolls Royce which went by too quickly for me to take a picture. Still, I could not quite forget the homeless people, who were in a park within easy walking distance of where we were. It felt surreal. Or maybe that's just me. 

In any case, though, I get it. Because while the poor are visible in much of Los Angeles and the surrounding area, there are whole neighborhoods where you might easily not come across them. Like, ever. These really did feel like the wealthiest, most affluent suburbs of southern California that I had long heard about. There are more regions like that. I believe that Orange County, for example, is the wealthiest county in all of the United States, and possibly the world. San Diego also has more than it's share of extremely wealth. And I get how that can look extremely attractive, and how people can be taken in by it. On the surface, it feels like if you can make it here, you really can say that you've made it, that you are on top of our economic food chain, if you will.

So since this was most assuredly part of the draw, one of the things which I wanted to see, even if I had not made a point of making a trip there specifically to see them, it seemed like a good idea to take pictures and share them here. These are impressive homes, and yet, I get the feeling that there are some neighborhoods which show off even more wealth. I am not familiar enough with the Los Angeles/southern California area to recognize what neighborhoods we went through which seemed very affluent. I saw it on my first evening there, when we cut across some of these neighborhoods from Beverly Hills to Venice Beach. There were more such neighborhoods when I took an Uber from the Griffith Observatory back to my hotel in Beverly Hills, and it seemed like the driver was making a point of avoiding highways and major arteries. The neighborhoods which we crossed looked like the very picture of California Dreamin', the way most people would view it. Large homes with nice, green lawns and palms trees surrounding it, and often with some of those shiny, expensive cars parked in the driveways or on the side of the road. If you live there, you may indeed might not see poor people anywhere near your neighborhood.

That was also the case during my walk from the Rose Bowl to downtown Pasadena. There were a lot of beautiful properties and homes with clearly expensive price tags. And it seemed to me that there were a lot fewer poor people in those parts of Pasadena than in the downtown, even when these were just a few blocks away.

I guess that's part of California Living, as well.

Anyway, I wanted to share some pictures of the wealthy and impressive, and seemingly distinctively southern California homes which I saw during my trip. 

Enjoy.

(Too late I noticed that these first aerial shots are from when we flew over Philadlephia. But they seemed to fit well with this post, and thus were included. After all, that was part of the trip, too, albeit the very tail end of it).