A fond farewell to L.A.

Los Angeles is an easy target, and the jokes are as cheap as they are deserved. The smog. The corruption. The shallow garishness of the parvenu. In fact, there is much of beauty to see here (OK, there; I'm back home now), some of it due uniquely to the city's social and historical circumstances. While I catch up on work and recover from jet lag, I'll show you a bit of it before returning to my normal programming later this week. All photos by your humble blogkeeper.

Los Angeles has some fine older buildings, though it has leveled many and done less than it might have to preserve the rest.

Its industrialists and other moneymakers caught the art bug later than did their East Coast counterparts, which means they were left to acquire unusual and eccentric pieces by European artists after the artists' major works had been scooped up by rich, socially ambitious collectors in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.

The Norton Simon Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have excellent collections of Asian art, and the Getty has all kinds of good things, both at its main museum and also at the Getty Villa. And you may have heard about the city's sunsets and magnificent trees. Have a good night. I'll be back.

(A weather-related note: I began this journey in Chicago, where the locals went out in T-shirts when temperatures hit the low 50s. I ended it in Los Angeles, where Angelenos shivered in coats, hats, scarves, and gloves in 60-degree weather my first two days in town. The United States is one big country.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2013