Tourist Makes Local

I got up the other day with Alana, my girlfriend from Massachusetts, and made fresh orange juice. We took six oranges from a large plastic sac, knocked them around a little to soften them up, and squeezed their sweet, pulpy contents into a glass. I scooped out the seeds with a spoon, and we sipped it all morning.

Two weeks before, we were driving through a section of L.A. equally unfamiliar to both of us on the way to Hollywood. I've become accustomed to drives like this in this city.: start somewhere I know, have no idea where the hell I am for awhile, and get spit out in a familiar spot. Usual for a city, but in L.A. it just gets stretched out over miles of long freeways and boulevards full of traffic and stoplights, which augments the nervousness and bewilderment. This role as the semi-lost, local chauffeur-cum-tour guide can't be reassuring to my passenger when I'm the one who's supposed to know my way around, but honestly, I've learned more and seen more of L.A. this way than I have as a resident.

On the way, we stopped at an ATM tucked away form the street at the rear of a drab, beige adobe bank building, and pulled up next to a midsize white pickup full of oranges. The man standing next to the truck offered up a taste, and told us that an entire sack of what must have been thirty medium sized oranges was only six dollars. Granted, he probably picked the best looking one from his lot, but what we tasted was fresh, juicy, sweet, not to mention that it came from the back of the truck, and was handed to me by a man who either picked it or knew the people who did. It was a little bit of L.A. packed into one moment: fresh produce (citrus, no less) and food hidden in a mini mall.

We threw the oranges in the back of my car (for only $5...he gave us a deal), and the first thing we thought of, never before having so many oranges at our disposal, was to do something a little reckless: make fresh OJ out of them. Easier said than done, of course, because she had to return to MA the next day. Alana took a few oranges back with her, and I was left with a huge bag of oranges sitting in the kitchen to chip away at slowly and remind myself of unmade orange juice and her absence.

Alana returned, of course, and we got to squeeze some oranges. They literally hissed with juice when I cut them in half. From six oranges, we got one delicious eight ounce glass. The juice tasted a bit green because not all of the oranges were perfectly ripe, but it was nice to get a little more of the citrus bite and lose the sugary viscousness that's in even "fresh squeezed" store-bought OJ.

Running into the orange truck was a complete surprise, one that I should perhaps come to expect in L.A. I was happy to get credit for the chance find as tour guide. But it made me think, why wouldn't the city be literally brimming with oranges during citrus season, so much so that usual channels aren't even enough to unload them all? Why can't I always have oranges that aren't covered in wax and that I pick from a neat pile at the grocery store? Why shouldn't I make my own fresh juice? This the kind of stuff that I can only do here. What I loved about this was that it wasn't just new to Alana, but it was new to me too in a different way: it made the myth of L.A., of finding good food in a parking lot or in a truck, real. It's like when I ate at Zankou Chicken the first time: it made the the vast unknown knowable. Where do I go to eat when I've got hundreds of square miles to choose from? In a dumpy mini mall.

So when Alana asked me, "why wouldn't you have a juicer if you lived here?" I told her that I'd be getting one soon.