"A Fight L.A. Has Picked and Won for 150 Years"

"Climate was what L.A. sold, and really, for years, that's all it had to sell. Far into the 19th century, L.A. was a scruffy village of dust and mayhem—but just look up, the new Angelenos insisted. Look at our fine mountains, breathe our air, fragrant (eventually) with citrus blossoms. Look at us—in shirtsleeves, in the winter!"

In the Los Angeles Times, Patt Morrison writes that Los Angeles "made its first fortune by selling winter."