In full, the real name of Los Angeles is "La Puebla de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles"--"The City of our Lady the Queen of the Angels." Founded by Spanish settlers about 1780, it is built upon the plains that roll from the foothills of the Sierra Madre down to the sea. It represents the very last word in the civilization of the Far West.
Los Angeles is a city of which to be proud. It is a hustling metropolis, but not too hustling. Its streets are wide and well-laid, its buildings clean, and its residences are just too wonderful for any words of mine. It is moreover the "movie centre" _par excellence_ of the world. "Duggie" and "Mary" and "Charlie" are not merely familiar characters on the screen. They are your neighbours. You see them pass in the streets and go shopping with them in the stores, like ordinary human beings. Undoubtedly the development of Los Angeles in recent years is due largely to this industry. So also is the amazing beauty of its feminine population. Going deeper still, we find that the secret of its success lies in the wonderful climate. There is but one rainy season in Los Angeles during the year, and that is the month of December.
Strange to say, Los Angeles is not on the sea-coast. It is twelve miles to the nearest part of the beach. This seemed rather extraordinary to me, particularly as San Francisco, with whom they are so eagerly competing, stands on one of the finest and largest harbours in the world. I remarked so to the _Times_ reporter one day. "But why," I asked, "did they build Los Angeles so far from the sea?" "Oh well, you see," he replied in all seriousness, "they had a mighty good idea about things. They reckoned that by the time Los Angeles had really started growing she'd be right on top of the Pacific, so they gave her a chance and laid the place out twelve miles away." "Oh, was that it? I see," was my innocent retort.
Be that as it may, there is a network of beautiful, straight, concrete roads leading from the city down to the coast in all directions. Dozens of small residential towns are springing up amid this network of roads--towns that some day will be suburbs of Los Angeles. At least that is the way to think of them. And the roads themselves? On Saturday afternoons and Sundays they are like great living arteries along which flows an endless stream of motor-cars. The Californians know how to enjoy themselves. There is not one fragment of the art of exterminating boredom that they have not studied. They frivol _en masse_, and to do it they naturally choose the sea-beach as a habitat. Consequently the coast is strung with dozens of seaside resorts of every type and shade of description, and with only a mile or two between them.