Show Frank the Door

Los Angeles is a Distance City, where its iconic features are best consumed from afar—up close, things kind of get crummy and disappointing. Example: Hollywood, both hilltop sign and industry. Another: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Though the building’s sweepy-curvy reflective vibe really does serve as an excellent metaphor for a city that kind of operates as a cultural mirage, its most-touched, interactive feature is unforgivable. Up some stairs, at the base of a bell-bottom slice of glass within the metal jumble, there you enter. Doors are a critical detail, of course, not only for access but as one of the very few things one actually touches—and these ones are shit. Same as a Honda dealership, just a half step above a 7-Eleven. To be touched by a building, I’d argue, one must also enjoy touching it.