The city of angels is many cities, a patchwork of cultures and influences. It grew in what was basically a natural desert made habitable by human irrigation systems.    The Colorado River reached the coast then. It doesn’t anymore. Just a few muddled marches remain of the once bountiful coastal wetland.    The city was originally Spanish/Mexican. The Mexicans are still there, to the chagrin of many of its dominant Anglo-Saxon people. The city also has a large Afro American population. Like the Mexicans they’re confined in ghettos, isolated and closed off from what is seen as the more savory parts of town, the suburbs and townships outside the central city. The LAPD - the Los Angeles Police Department has a reputation the world over as one of the most brutal and racist group of cops ever.    In Hollywood movies designed to make the audience stay braindead and asleep are produced on an assembly line.    In Venice, an important place in the Sixties’ rebellion business interests have long since taken over and real estate prices have soared to the point that no one without a fat wallet can own a residence.             LA Downtown - financial district    It’s said about Financial District in Los Angeles that it isn’t constructed for humans to live there. Or rather: That it is constructed for humans not to live there.    Indoors there are offices and space in abundance, where there are spared no expenses. The luxury is evident everywhere. Outside there are spared no expenses to make people stay away. Scores of homeless used to practically live on and off Pershing Square, but the police and the forces of Order, public and private chased them away. And elsewhere in the district there are no benches, nothing green, nothing encouraging people to stay or even walk through there. There are gangways, high above ground level where the elite may walk, so they don’t need to walk down on the streets, where concrete and lifelessness rules.    One may still encounter beggars and homeless on street level, pushing themselves at a cold wall, but generally speaking they have sought elsewhere, places not that hostile to life.    The city of Los Angeles is, along with San Francisco a main host to the Californian economy, the fifth largest in the world. Only Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, New York with Wall Street and the now defunct Twin Towers, and a few other places can possibly surpass its influence.