Present and future fires.

Tonight, after a week long heat wave in Los Angeles that has brought up the rear of a sublimely pleasant summer I thought I'd write about the current strangeness of this city...and by implication, the country. But alas, Kunstler already has. Being a visitor, not a resident, he captures the oddness of Los Angeles very well - which is odder than usual of late.

The fire, still burning out of control just north of the city, has produced a Hiroshima like plume of smoke and ash visible everywhere for days now. Having commandeered the southeast horizon it seems to be saying "Look over here. This is the entrance to Hell."

And so it may be. Mount Wilson, where most of the area's radio and television transmitters are perched, is threatened by the inferno. The symbolism is too much. Too easy. Too blunt. The great unifier in a mess of a place like Southern California is the relentlessness of television and radio. What Angelenos do during and after fires, and riots, and earthquakes is watch TV. Lots of it. Contrary to popular myth we do talk to neighbors in these moments...mostly about what we're seeing on TV regarding what is happening around us as it happens. The agitation provided by local news is part of the experience of living here. Watching fires, earthquakes, and car chases is our common arena.

The harsh reality of Southern California is that 80% of us shouldn't be here. There is not enough water. We borrow and barter for it. So much has been stolen and diverted from other places that a mega metropolis of 15 million - give or take - has erupted in 60 years. This is unnatural.

The tiny river that gave birth to El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula has long since been cemented in to control periodic, but severe, floods. The water that the city came by naturally had to be controlled. And L.A. in order to fulfill the dreams of millions of migrants from the east - and now the south - has to obtain the bulk of its water from elsewhere.

Until WW2 the most important city in California was San Francisco. Now it is not in the top 3 - a fact that still drives some residents of that city around the bend. (L.A., San Diego, and San Jose are all more important to the state and the country. )

Then a city that couldn't sustain itself without water from elsewhere became a city that chose the unsustainable car culture. I'm old enough to have a slice of memory from that brief period in which the freeway society made sense. One really could get anywhere in 20 minutes. There was truth in the P.R. tag line that one could ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. It was, very briefly, an American miracle.

Of course, fossil fuels have a way of

A. running out

and

B. polluting.

Griping about the air here now is the privilege of those who did not experience the dark brown soup we inhaled in the 70s. The worst days now do not compare to entire summers before pollution controls came into effect.

Even so the people still came and came and came. With cars. Lots and lots of cars. Until the 80s they mostly came from the east. In the last 2 decades they've come from the south. I also have a memory of when Los Angeles was a white city with a substantial and largely impoverished black minority. In some ways, the Rodney King verdict riots signaled the end of that era. By the second day what we saw on television was the Hispanic underclass openly seizing the moment. LA is now the second largest Spanish speaking city on earth.

Regardless of how people communicate, the fact is that aside from Phoenix and Las Vegas, Los Angeles is the least sustainable city in the United States. How these places manage the coming energy shocks is any one's guess. Most of us should not be here.

Not spoken but just under the surface during all fires is this: Those with homes threatened by the flames should not be there in the first place. In this way those residents represent most of us here. Water from elsewhere, land that must periodically burn, all to undergird a suburban car culture that I suspect will baffle future historians. Did they actually think that could continue? will pass the lips of history undergrads everywhere.

Meanwhile this weekend, the Daytime Emmys were held in the slowly revitalizing downtown and club kids and tourists roamed genuinely revitalized Hollywood -both pockets of the L.A. urban landscape in which people live, shop, and play because mass transit on rail actually exists there. I have no idea why subways and light rail make for a more civilized city whereas buses and cars only corrode it- but they do.

Of course, an awards show for daytime television is not exactly a hopeful thing. Chat show yappers and soap opera actors being awarded for distracting us with aplomb - while the country's metaphorical house is on fire just over the ridge - is also to blunt a metaphor to ignore.

The summer is over. While I look forward to my beloved USC Trojans smacking some teams around, and the shorter, cooler days, the Autumn has been commandeered by an ominous sense that the jig is all but up. Hell is on the horizon. There's a pungent whiff in the air of coming chaos. The bear market rally is dead, the President and his men have emptied their bag of tricks in the first 8 months, 20% of the population is under or unemployed, and Israel is done waiting for Iran to cease and desist.

It is not just L.A. that's on borrowed time. We all are.