D.J. Waldie
D. J. Waldie is the author of "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" and "Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles," among other books about the social history of Southern California. He is a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times.
I’m always being asked directions, typically because I’m the sole pedestrian who looks harmless.
Where I live is where most Californians live.
In the late 1970s, I thought that looking at buildings had something to do with love.
I’m not a historian. I don’t live in the City of Los Angeles. I don’t drive. I write about home.
I had wanted to talk about the queasy uncertainty of autumn in LA, not grief. But I was overtaken by events walking home from the office.
I have a habit of referring to you and me collectively . . . naming us as Angeleños or throwing us together as “we” by the fourth of fifth ‘graph of just about every essay I write, as if you and I were passengers on the same Metro bus.
Named one of the city’s most influential interpreters by Los Angeles magazine in 2006 and called “a gorgeous distiller of architectural and social history” by the New York Times in 2007, D. J. Waldie is a contributing writer at Los A...