Downtown Loft Living Just Ain’t the Same as High-Rise

“If I have to drive one more hour on the freeway, I’m going to shotgun-murder everyone in the car-pool lane,” my girlfriend declared several months ago.

This was becoming an increasingly familiar reaction to her daily commute from our Orange County home to her job in the downtown Los Angeles garment district.

I chuckled, having misread her statement as yet another whine from an ex-New Yorker, spoiled by real mass transit.

“I want to move--now,” she snapped sharply. “You coming?”

I was firm. “Uh, I guess so. Where to?”

“I’ve always wanted to live in a warehouse loft,” she said. “Let’s look in downtown Los Angeles.”

I felt something in my shoe.

I think it was my heart.

It’s not that I hated the idea of living in downtown Los Angeles. It’s that placing a traffic and smog-hating paranoid, such as myself, in the middle of Los Angeles makes about as much sense as giving a claustrophobic a submarine ride for a birthday gift.

After 16 years of living and working in Orange County, I had grown accustomed to lifeless tract housing, wide boulevards and spoiled rich girls driving convertible Cabriolets. I had turned into something I had feared I might become when I moved out of the Los Angeles area so long ago: ‘Burb Boy.

My girlfriend’s wish was not entirely of her own volition. Like many former New Yorkers living in Southern California, she suffers from the lingering Big Apple Transplant Syndrome.

Mention the word loft to one of the afflicted and the ensuing blank stare and vacant smile is reminiscent of one in the throes of a mystical experience.

(It is said that during such Loft Comas, the victim is transported to the middle of a Metropolitan Home article where designer furniture and tasteful accessories are forever wholesale.)

My girlfriend called me at work a few days later.

“I found it,” she said.

“Found what?”

“The loft. It’s beautiful. It’s 2,000 square feet and it has wood floors, a fireplace, big windows, enclosed parking, a laundry facility, a heated pool and a spa.”

“That’s not a loft. That’s the Love Boat. How much per month?”

“You just have to come down and see it tonight. Somebody has already looked at it and it will go fast.”

“Great. How much?”

“Meet me at work. We’ll go over from there.”

“How much?”

She had hung up.

The loft space was in a converted three-story warehouse near 14th and Alameda. To be honest, it was beautiful.

“I can’t afford this,” I mumbled as the manager showed us around.

“Think of all the room we’ll have to work in,” my significant other chimed.

“I’m a writer and cartoonist, not a jai alai player. How much room do I need?”

We signed the one-year lease the next day, accompanied by my mantra, “Whatifilosemyjob, Whatifilosemyjob, Whatifilosemyjob?”

Ironically, after a month of commuting from our new home in L.A. to my job in Orange County, I wished I didn’t have to drive so far. My wish came true. I was laid off.

It is odd to find myself transformed from an employed denizen of Orange County to an unemployed resident of a loft enclave in an industrial neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. Sometimes I can’t fathom why I pay a lot to live in a vegetation-free zone near a sheet metal shop and a truck stop.

I am part of a colony of loft-struck artists and professionals who are paying premium prices to live in a downtown area that many of the less fortunate residents would gladly vacate if they could afford to leave.

My loft neighbors range from disheveled, black-clad artist types to fashion victims to yuppies whose right ears have evolved into cellular phones. My artist side loves the perceived Bohemian lifestyle.

That’s not to say that dangers do not lurk in downtown Los Angeles--especially for the neophyte.

I have survived labyrinthine one-way streets; the East L.A Interchange; potholes that qualify as Eighth Wonders of the World; supermarkets with security forces the size of Third World armies; the prices at Gorky’s, and wraiths who materialize out of nowhere to sell me disposable razors and window washing services.

Then there is parking.

What I had taken for granted in land-rich Orange County--where perpetual parking privileges were deeded down from Spanish kings--I soon came to dread in Los Angeles.

I feel like a lot attendant should be pointing a gun at me while relieving me of $2.50 for 20 minutes. I sometimes awaken from nightmares, soaked in a cold sweat and shouting: “Do you validate?”

It’s not that I mind living downtown. I have learned much from living in this multicultural hub:

Buildings without graffiti are beginning to look lackluster.

I have grown accustomed to the perpetual street sounds of rattling shopping carts, police sirens, rumbling trucks, the ever-present hum of traffic on the nearby 10 Freeway and the occasional terrible scream of a psychotic.

I can watch a bonfire burning on the street corner without succumbing to the urge to call 911.

My girlfriend has convinced me that when thousands of people walk on the streets downtown, it is normal and not a prelude to an uprising.

And I can practically rationalize that the homeless can exist outside of my loft complex, while tenants of my building play pool volleyball inside the safe, gated enclosure.

I recently attended a champagne-laden, valet-parked art opening in my building. While patrons ogled derivative paintings by a successful Soviet emigre who gets $20,000 to $200,000 per painting, I watched out the window as a homeless prostitute sold herself to one of the many truckers who drive through here every night.

These are the times when I seriously wonder why I’m living in downtown Los Angeles.

Then I remember a conversation my girlfriend and I had with a photographer who lives in our complex.

After informing us that he was moving from his loft because of the expense, the truck noise, and the dirt, he asked us where we had moved from.

“Orange County,” we said.

He laughed. “Orange County? What’s there besides the Crystal Cathedral?”

“Disneyland!” we shouted in unison.

I realized that I had reduced the the sum total of my Orange County experience to an amusement park.

Late that night, I watched the pack of wild dogs that haunts our neighborhood engaging in an activity as old as time itself.

Every few weeks, as the street sweeper lumbers down our street, the dogs try to hunt it down--barking, yipping and snapping at it in a vainglorious attempt, I suppose, to kill a city vehicle.

Even in this land of steel and concrete, nature tries to prevail.

Loft living in downtown Los Angeles can be exhilarating and frightening.

But, I’m sure of one thing: It’ll never be accused of being Disneyland.