Palm Trees in Los Angeles

I think I might be the only person living in San Francisco who actually loves Los Angeles. Part of that is having grown up there. But part of loving LA is the palm trees. You can be on any freeway in LA and look out over the horizon - their little heads dot the landscape. A great example of this is in the movie "Chinatown". Pay attention to it next time you watch it.

This is an old postcard, probably one found in my grandmother's drawers. You can tell it's old because you don't see palm trees looking like this anymore, with the fronds left hanging down the trunks. Rats love to live there, so now the trees are all neatly trimmed - no more shaggy fronds. I don't know when that started, but shaggy and natural seems to have disappeared in a variety of places in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons.