Location.

Location, location, location.

Ask any Realtor and they’ll tell you it’s all about location. Bull riders agree; the location on the bulls back is far more agreeable than the location on the bull’s horns.

Earthquakes are about location. You don’t have them everywhere. We have them here. That’s our location. Location, location, location. We say it three times because we’re trying to point out a location while the earth is shaking.

Earthquakes teach you three things about location. One: any structure built on any location will come down after enough shaking. Two: a location’s value isn’t permanent. Three: location is more than location. Location is people, place, and atmosphere. They’re everything that makes a location a Location. After the Northridge earthquake, I lived in a Location built on rebuilding. People grouped together, standing on the shoulders of what had collapsed, and reached upward. The night the earthquake fell was pitch and flat, but the day after, a Location rose from its knees, determined.

The next week we forgot the whole thing, and started hating each other again, but that’s LA. It’s all about location, and earthquakes.

Tornados don’t care about location. In fact, they’re all about location redistribution.

“My house was in this location, now it’s in that location…”

Tornados are more about timeliness.

So am I.

What good is a good location if your timeliness is bad? Any swimming pool is a great summer location, until Mrs. McGitche’s third grade class shows up to pee in it. That’s just bad timing--and too much lemonade.

“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee...." 

I’ve spent almost twenty years in this SoCal location. Sometimes my timeliness has been great, other times my timeliness has been pee pool poor. Ask MyEx. She’ll tell you.

Talk to my queen, she’ll say she loves my timing. She’s not wild about my location. My queen hales from the land where the timing-tornados are great and the location-lakes are greater.

"’Superior,’ they said, ‘never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early…’"

Timing, timing, timing.

Timing is not a SoCal concept. For me, timing and finding employment in this location is like locating a snowball’s timing in Hell. I’ve knocked on every door at every location not selling french fries. My timing syncopates with opportunity’s knocking rhythm. Call me the little match girl.

No, really. I’m trying to start a trend. Trends are all about timing, and LA needs a new one.

My queen started a trend; she got a new job. Yeah, I can’t find a job needle in a unemployment stack, and she can’t shake her peg leg without stepping in one. This time she stepped in something big and squishy and it stuck.

It’s all about timing.

We’re moving.

And location.

Timing and location, I’m beside myself. And myself is leaving California.

It’s weird. For all the great leaving Los Angeles songs, I never thought that I would ever sing one. I’ve left LA before, but I’ve always returned. This time, I don’t think so. This time, the change of location song sings with the tones of permanence, like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, only I don’t know these words.

‘At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said, ‘Fellas, it's bin good t'know ya…’"

Yeah, shut up Gordan. Nobody likes a six-minute and thirty-second know-it-all.

Location. I chose this location almost twenty years ago. I stood on the great ship LA, and here I stayed even when everything nearly capsized, and staying didn’t seem like what I wanted. It’s been a love/hate bull-ride relationship. I’ve taken the butt. I’ve taken the horns. Now I’m taking my leave.

“The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times…”

Goodbye Southern California.

I won’t miss much, but I will always miss your location.