I Was DONE With L.A.
Published December 16, 2025 · 9:17 · 114,576 views
About This Video
A reckoning with Los Angeles that most transplants perform privately, if they perform it at all. Van lays out the case for leaving: the friction, the cost, the particular exhaustion of a city that demands constant reinvention. When the 2025 fires hit and leadership let it burn, the case closed itself. Then something more interesting than following through. The title's past tense ("I Was Done") signals that the story has already turned, and what remains is the archaeology of why he stayed.
What keeps this from being another "I almost left LA" video is the specificity of what pulled him back. Not the weather, not the industry, but Topanga Canyon: a pocket of resistance within the city where the analog life Van advocates actually has room to breathe. The video opens with a repair. A great-grandmother's sewing stool, pulled from the ash and rubble of the fires, its wood charred but recoverable. A screw extractor bit snaps off in hardened steel. The bit broke. That's the turn. The tension between being done with LA and being unable to leave it is the tension that defines the channel itself.
Transcript
The bit broke. LA. And you know what? While I'm at it, [music] running, too. This neighborhood is called Glassell Park. And I actually used to live up over there.
All right. So, this is the only [music] thing that survived.
Yeah. I pulled this out of the um out of the ruins. [music] Everything was ash. I went looking for this, so I was
relieved. I mean, it's ash, but it's also like, [music] you know, piles of ash and debris. It's not just clean ash. So, it was like in
the rubble, you know. I knew where it was. It was like right by our fireplace, so I knew where to look for it. And what was it originally?
So, it [music] was my great grandmother's um sewing stool. [music] And it had like wood across the side.
Yeah. Yeah. Wood. It was a black piece of just like wood. Okay, now this is slipping in my hand.
Might just put vice grips on it because I'm going to replace it. Shoot.
It broke. Damn it. When 2025 started, I had written off LA because the
leadership let it burn. And while it was burning, I couldn't leave to go to Dr.
rightous funeral and give my eulogy. May not have been my doctor, but he was a very positive influence in my life. Damn
it. That's was my fear. This is going to be a much more difficult repair than I had expected. All right. Well, I'm just going to go for broke with this one. I think this one's broken, too. Oh, no.
It's coming out. This is what was supposed to happen with the other one. I might be able to back this out.
A screw extractor bit is threaded backwards. So when I tighten [music] the extractor bit, it loosens my bolt.
First you got to I'm going to drill a hole into the bolt
that snapped off in there. First I drill into the stuck bolt so the extractor has a place to dig into. Then I twist lefty
loosey which tightens the extractor bit and loosens the bolt.
Theoretically the bit broke. Unless of course you break the bit off in there. Hardened [music] steel and I can't drill it out. Oh boy.
and running because Dr. Rich was a lifelong runner and died of a heart attack at 79
and I had an injury. Just diagnosing this injury took months and two emergency room visits. Booked an appointment with my doctor. Waited
something like a month for the appointment. Rode all the way to Santa Monica for the appointment. Remember, our roads are closed because of the fire
damage. So, I have to go all the way around the valley to the 405 to I get to the office. The receptionist says, "Oh,
your doctor is on vacation. We sent you an email." Had I known about Zachdoc, today's video
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Thank you. Zach dock. [music] So, the bit snapped off into here. I'm
going to dremel it and try to back it out with a screwdriver.
So, we dremel a groove into the broken extractor bit and back it out with a
screwdriver. Oh, yeah. I got the bit out. Okay, I'm just going ham now.
This doohickey cuts threads into the new hole so I can screw in a fresh bolt.
And the black and steel just blends in perfectly. Sasha told me the original top was black, but if I paint it black, it's going to look like a shiny black brand new thing. And I want to put something
special into this. And these are the shelves from my previous studio. So, these have like good energy in them.
This is what this wood looks like fresh after you linseed oil it and after it's been exposed to the sun and really dries out, it turns this beautiful orange. And
I think it just blends in. It looks like they're married. It looks like they've always been this way.
Hi. All right. Don't feel like you have to react like a TV person just cuz I have the camera. I just knocked your dog's water over. Sorry.
Oh my god. I love this. It's I actually love it so much more than its original state.
And that is when my year turned around after Sasha said, I love this. It's I actually love it so much more than its original state.
That was the inflection point for 2025. [music] I started to look at LA through a lens of gratitude. Sasha and her wife and their two kids lost nearly everything.
Just about every item in their new house had been donated, including their clothes.
My family lost nothing in the fires. Thank God. And I would have ended my eulogy for Dr. Rich with a bit of wisdom he taught me on a ski lift about 35 years ago when I was 15.
He said a parent should teach his children to master their environment, not to fear it.
So now for exercise we do trail crew climbing mountains and maintaining the trail to a firewatch lookout. [music] We're in love with LA again.
Like I said, like everything like this and everything is donated and this is like like a piece of our familiar home, you
know? It's like the first Yeah. familiar piece. Okay, go.
December is going to rule and so is 26. If you have something special and broken in your life, join my Patreon and send me a DM and maybe I'll come to you and
fix it. End of December, beginning of January, I'll be in the Park City, Salt Lake City area. So, if you live around there, I'll have the Land Cruiser with me. Join the Patreon. Send me a DM. Link's right there. And I hope I get to meet you.
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Zocdoc mentions — sponsor ('Zachdoc'/'Zakdoc'/'zdock'/'zdoc' in transcript - auto-caption misspell
- Dremel uses — used to groove broken extractor bit
- vice grips uses — used during repair
- screw extractor bit uses — tool for removing broken bolts
- linseed oil uses — wood finish
- Toyota Land Cruiser essential — mentioned for upcoming repair trip
People Referenced
Sasha, Dr. Rich