The Legends of Los Angeles by Taylor Harrison

My weary body is cradled in old cotton sheets in a home that rests on Californian land, where my maternal grandparents settled because, to them, New York was inhospitable in climate and temperament. Long ago, my mother told me that my Syrian Jewish grandfather had said it was too cold in Brooklyn, her birthplace, even though he had lived there his entire life prior to his stint abroad as a soldier in World War II. My grandmother, born to Polish immigrants, grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to New York prior to marrying my grandfather, and when my mother and uncle were toddlers, they all left for Los Angeles. Perhaps these familial roots are why I’ve always felt drawn to the east coast, especially as my career has led me to New York City time and time again, but even amid my fantasies drinking in the thick impenetrable city air as I traverse the crowded streets toward my company’s office in Manhattan, that yes, I can make it in New York, days later, I stumble off the plane at Hollywood Burbank Airport with a deep-seated sense of relief that I am home in this place of mythological significance. 

My grandparents lived in a three-bedroom apartment off Melrose in West Hollywood, on a side street across from what became the infamous, influencer-adored Paul Smith pink wall. When looking at a modern-day map of the street, I see a variety of luxury vehicles and lush landscaping, but my memory of my grandparents’ residence is vastly different. Upon Googling their address, the unit is renting for nearly $4,000 per month, a far cry from the three figures they paid until their deaths around 2012 and 2013. I remember what it was like as a child to visit their home, ascending uneven stairs and walking into the dark living room scented of my grandmother’s Pall Mall cigarettes, George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” on a seemingly unending loop. Their apartment, where they had resided since 1985, was a time capsule of that era, insulated from the complexities of modernity. 

“Do we have to go to Los Angeles to see Fanny and Papa?” I asked my mother throughout my childhood, knots in the pit of my stomach. Growing up in the suburbs, where all the homes and residents looked the same, the city scared me because I saw how it had the power to change people. My father transformed into a different man when he visited Los Angeles, donning Ed Hardy shirts and ostrich-skin cowboy boots with his yellow gold Rolex, stepping into the Wanna Buy a Watch? store and admiring the glinting dials in glass cases. While my mother was with her ailing parents, my father took me up and down Melrose, enamored of the fashion and the fashionable women, never afraid to make his ardent appreciation of beauty well-known. 

Like a siren, the city sang her song to my father, enchanting him from his Orange County residence in the late seventies and beyond. Dad would ride his Harley Davidson up to the city on the weekends and visited Rodeo Drive on a balmy day in 1985. He saw my mother working at one of the boutiques, the now shuttered Courrèges, and parked his bike and introduced himself. My mother, a self-proclaimed “LA Woman” in the tradition of The Doors, later blamed him for isolating her from her friends and family after he took her away from her native city, promising a secure and potentially lavish lifestyle in the suburbs.

My father was not a rich man in his younger years, but he did all he could to appear as though he was, even driving a Porsche at a time when he was in significant debt. He was also keeping a deep secret about his identity. He was born in San Diego, one year after my paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Mexico. They eventually moved to north Orange County. Despite its distance, the seduction of Hollywood was overwhelming, so much so that my grandparents created their own mythology, one that revolved around made-up European identities that discarded the rich heritage and culture that permeated our ancestry. After all, how many stars went by stage names? Except the change to my father’s surname when he was in fourth grade was very real, and also, very permanent, which was why my sister and I thought we were half-French until my grandfather’s death, when the truth was revealed. My father was forgiven; my mother had had her suspicions. Dad started his own business in the late nineties and, years later, delivered on his long-kept promise to my mother, who privately maintained that his inconsistencies were side effects of financial security.

***

As a teenager, I fell in love with Los Angeles in the same way my father had. It was shortly after my maternal grandparents had passed away that I found myself making innumerable trips to the city with my mother to tie up loose ends, fathoming that in LA, anything was possible, being anyone was possible. Tumblr, my favorite social media platform at the time, had demonstrated to me what I was missing out on through photos and GIFs of teenagers enjoying themselves in the city. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was reliving my father’s youth, that like him, my friends and I would leave our suburban Orange County hometown for Hollywood and spend all night exploring the boulevard, lying across the tarnished stars on the Walk of Fame and pretending to be people we weren’t. I was a sixteen-year-old who lived most of her life online at home, but in the city, I was a young woman on the precipice of the Great Unknown, listening to indie musicians in the car and hoping to meet them backstage after their live show for no reason other than to say I had. I mean, where else is that possible, I’d say to my friends, and we’d all agree that we were the luckiest kids in the world.

“Los Angeles was a different place when I was young,” my mother said to me while we lay on her bed together. I asked her a lot about her youth as I went through my adolescence, attempting to live vicariously through her adventures, which seemed unending. I dreamt of moving to the city as an adult, to be as interwoven with LA’s history as my mother was. She once said her proudest achievement was modeling in an iconic men’s magazine and the ensuing media attention she received in the early nineties. There were plenty of other brushes with fame and famous people, but my mother seemed mostly unfazed.

In one story, she claimed to have met an aging Timothy Leary at a party in her late teens, and I gasped. “Maybe one day I’ll write a book,” she’d say, and I’d beg her to. 

On another occasion, she said, “We used to hitchhike in Topanga Canyon in the seventies, when I was at Fairfax.” I imagined what it would’ve been like to let my fate reside in the hands of kind strangers, a concept made newly familiar to me by the release of Lana Del Rey’s “Ride” music video. As a high school student, the prospect of ambiguity seemed intriguing. Of course I wanted to live an exciting life, just as my mother had, but I told myself I wouldn’t make the same mistake as her and end up in the suburbs after marrying the wrong guy. 

“I would never move back to LA.” She’d conclude each story with the same words. I’d scoff. “It just isn’t the same anymore.”

At the time, it hadn’t occurred to me that my mother was sharing an idealized version of her upbringing. Rarely was my mother secretive, except when she was trying to protect my sister and me. I didn’t realize that in a decade, she would tell me of a life-altering incident from that era, and how the perpetrators of a horrific crime against her and her friend were only partially charged due to a lack of evidence. 

“Statutory,” she said over the phone, when I was much older. “That’s all they got.”

***

When I was twenty-two, I moved into a small bungalow in East Hollywood, walking distance from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The bungalow was not mine; it was rented by my now-husband, L, who I had recently met on Tinder. There was limited street parking, and the area was a far cry from the suburbia that I was used to, but I was finally home after years of yearning to live in the city. I was young enough to still feel invincible, and despite hearing about crime occurring after dark, I took my chances anyway and invoked the spirit of my mother in the seventies and eighties as I experienced all LA had to offer.

Like my father had in my childhood, I too transformed in the city. I experimented with hairstyles and cut baby bangs. I shopped at farmers’ markets and stopped drinking soda. Everything in my closet that wasn’t vintage was donated, and any new clothes I ended up purchasing had to emulate Jane Birkin in her “Je t’aime… moi non plus” era. The person I had known in the suburbs was irrevocably changed.

In 2019, one year later, L and I were coming home from dinner around nine o’clock from our favorite Indian restaurant. We parked the car far away since there were no available spaces and walked toward the bungalow. Suddenly, a man jumped in front of us and attempted to grab L’s keys. As fight-or-flight kicked in, I backed away in fear, ready to run. Another man appeared from behind and trapped me in a bear hug. As I wailed to the top of my lungs for what felt like hours, a neighbor came out and ushered us into the gated part of the bungalows, and others opened their windows and doors and began shouting at the perpetrators. In my memory, it happened in slow motion. The men rushed into their getaway car, a gold Lexus SUV, and drove away. L and I, retreating to the bungalow, emerged later to speak to the police, visibly shaken.

I heard a knock on my door a few days after the incident occurred. I peered through the venetian blinds, hesitant to open the door.

“Hey,” the voice said. “This is for you, from all the neighbors.” On the doorstep was a basket full of lotions, bath bombs, candy, and other items, along with a card. “I hope you’re doing better,” the voice continued, “and we’re so sorry this happened to you.” Prior to the event, I hadn’t formally met my neighbors. Now, they were coming to my aid. I opened the door and gave my neighbor, a young woman from across the street, a long hug. It wasn’t lost on me that I was finally experiencing the kindness of strangers I had romanticized as a teenager, however inopportune the timing was. Even though the mugging led to an impulsive move elsewhere, it was in that singular kind act that I realized my love for Los Angeles had been returned tenfold. 

***

At twenty-nine, I am married in the suburbs, just as my mother had been, in a long-distance relationship with Los Angeles. L, who works in the TV and film industry, brings the city home with him each day, which is enough for me. I once thought that Los Angeles was what made anything possible, but as I hinge on my thirtieth year, I understand that it is the person, not the place, that realizes their own dreams. And perhaps it is not the city, but California as a whole: when I am in need of alone time, I find myself on the beach in either Oxnard or Malibu; in the winter, my husband’s property adjacent to Joshua Tree feels like home. The central coast was the first vacation my husband and I took weeks after we met; it is also where we were engaged five years later. I wake up each morning on hallowed ground, wherever I am in this state.

When I am on work trips in New York City, I think of my maternal grandparents and how they had yearned to escape the humidity and the cold and figured that the West Coast was the solution. I understand now that Los Angeles failed to rectify their problems, which were deeper than weather. They had a tumultuous marriage, my grandfather prone to violent outbursts. My grandmother was hard of hearing and would turn off her hearing aid to avoid listening to the insults my grandfather would hurl at her. My mother, desperate to leave their home in her youth, was relieved when my father proposed to her after three months, only to end up in her own version of her parents’ relationship. 

Years after my parents have divorced, my family is spread throughout the Southern California region, and I sometimes wonder if I will be the first one to leave the state, maybe even the first family member to leave the country if my husband desires to return to his native England one day. Still, landing in Los Angeles after being abroad or out-of-state reawakens my penchant for the legends of this area, many of them derived from my familial history, and I know deep down that it is unlikely—impossible—that I will ever leave.

Taylor Harrison is a writer whose essays have appeared in Thirteen Bridges Review, Chicago Story Press, and elsewhere. You can learn more about Taylor by following her Instagram account, @tharrisonwriting.

9 April 2026