Cars fanfiction

I woke up this morning and went to get breakfast. I’m alone at my friend Manny’s apartment, he’s at a wedding in Arizona. I stepped outside and immediately the sun beamed down on me. It felt amazing for a second, but once my eyes got used to the sun, I looked around and saw nobody. Just cars, parked for blocks and blocks. Not a single person outside. I looked up at the sky and saw pure blue from end to end. Not a single cloud. Somehow that made me feel even lonelier. I walked over to a coffee shop on the other side of Sunset Blvd, the main artery of a “city” that seems to never end. I saw nobody, just cars passing by. I had to wait two minutes to cross sunset on foot as the cars whirled by me in both directions. Finally I was able to run across. I got coffee and an $8 bagel with avocado, and returned back to the empty apartment. When I got back, I went to Manny’s porch to sit outside and eat. He has a beautiful blue table with intricate square tiles painted by hand. I pulled out a chair to sit down, and I realized it (and the table) were completely caked in dirt, accumulated from the thousands of cars passing by on the nearby 101. I cleaned off a chair and the table, and I sat outside alone eating my (surprisingly good) bagel. All I could hear when I ate was the sound of thousands of cars on the highway, kicking up dirt from the road that I was then slowly breathing into my lungs. LA feels so much different to me now than it did a little over a year ago. When I first moved here, I was overwhelmed with excitement. I had my first job, I was meeting so many new people, and it was my first time living outside of Chicago. I was just happy to be somewhere new. I still cherish the time I had in LA, but when I reflect on it now I’m remembering all the time that I spent alone in my car. I remember in the winter of 2020 I loved the Phoebe Bridgers x Conor Oberst album, and I would always listen to the song “My City” as I drove around. When I lived in LA, I always really wanted a girlfriend (preferably Phoebe Bridgers). I think it was because although I had made so many great friends, on some deep level the city felt very lonely. I never feel this way in New York. I’m always around so many people. I never realized how much I love density. LA just frustrates me now. I feel like I’m in the movie Cars. Who designed this place? Who ripped out all the streetcars? Who put in all these shitty strip malls? The public transit here is so terrible. I’m not saying that New York doesn’t have a million and one problems, but it’s so much closer to the type of city that people need to live in. LA is just so wasteful. It’s a desert that spontaneously sets on fire more and more because of climate change, which is in part caused by the horrible design of this city that makes people drive everywhere. Three cheers for NYC (and moodring.nyc).