What they tell you about Los Angeles is that it’s a city for cars. They’ll tell you you can’t live here without one, and that being in one can be frustrating. They’ll tell you about bad drivers and parking problems and about how the meter maid has a stick up his ass. But none of that matters, because those things aren’t problems—they’re just annoying.

See, driving is like smoking. It’s fun in the beginning. If it’s not pleasant, it’s at least exciting. Maybe it gives you a little bit of a rush, but as time wears on, it becomes routine. That routine can get pretty annoying, but nobody ever stopped smoking because it was annoying; People stop smoking because they don’t want cancer. Well guess what:

Los Angeles has cancer.

Our experiences driving cars in this city are, for the most part, fleeting. We drive somewhere, we get out of the car, we close the door, and we walk away. But to think that we can escape the world that cars have created as easily as we escape the car itself is foolish. In fact, when we leave our cars, we walk into that world. We have to live in that putrid mess.

I’ve heard enough about traffic. I don’t care. People only complain about traffic because they don’t have the balls to talk about the real issue, which is that car culture is leeching away their quality of life, and there’s nothing they can do about it. We’ve spent more than enough time at this point talking about how being in a car is annoying. Los Angeles has cancer. Let’s talk about that.