We’re paying almost $100 for fast-food tacos — LA has gone crazy

Buddy, can you spare a hundy?

I don’t know what’s going on in the world, but this inflation is really becoming straight-up bananas! Especially here in Los Angeles, where life has become almost too expensive to believe.

Just last week, my hairdresser, Pepper, told me that she went to a local fast-food taco joint with her son, and they had food and two drinks. It cost them $63! And she’s a tiny woman, so she’s not exactly ordering the two chicken chalupa supreme.

Some food and two drinks at a local fast-food taco joint can cost upward of $60. San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Another friend of mine, who works as a masseuse, complained that she has to pay $3,000 a month for childcare — for one child. That is a lot of back rubs.

She also told me that filling her car’s gas tank cost $140! Unreal.

Another friend, Angela, who also has to drive all over town, couldn’t believe the cost of a dozen eggs was nearing $12 in some places. Mine are $13 at the farmers market. One avocado — one! — cost me $7! It was a big one, but still.

My girlfriend, who lives up in northern California, got evicted for not paying her rent when the living conditions were uninhabitable. Even after making $40,000 a year, she still couldn’t afford her apartment. So now she is forced to live in a shipping container in the foothills. Literally. And it’s so hot in there.

My fellow wellness nerd friend, Jasmine, can’t get over the prices of supplements. It costs an arm and a leg just to keep your body together.

I have a car, but I’m working all the time, and can’t drive my 15 year old around everywhere she needs to go. Yet I can’t keep up with the cost of the Uber and Waymo rides until she gets her license.

My friend Linda, who lives in LA part time and spends the rest of her year in Buffalo, has figured out how to tag along to barbecues — whether in back yards or on boats. It’s not just about making friends with the neighbors. It’s about affording dinner.

A few days ago, my friend Victoria told me how outraged she is at the parking situation in Santa Monica
— not only that we just don’t have any free parking near anything important anymore, but that they are now changing the meters near the farmers’ market from three-hour limits to 15-minute maximums.

Who can get anything done in 15 minutes, besides men? Way to squeeze more money out of the local residents!

Personally, I would have to say that my biggest complaint about expenses is the cost of laundry. To do two loads of laundry in my building is now $11. And now laundromats are even worse!

And when you get so stressed from all of this ridiculousness, you wanna go out and have a drink with your friends — and one glass of wine can cost more than $20!

What do we do? Get Three Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s and share a bottle with the girlfriends.

It goes without saying that vacations are out of the question.

Maybe we’re slipping back toward some prehistoric bartering system. Will offer massages for food!

Or perhaps we will have to subsist on beans and rice? Didn’t our Irish forebears survive on potatoes before the famine?

That reminds me; I have a great recipe for hash browns, courtesy of dear old Dad.

And where’s my wine again? I need to decompress!

Thank God for good friends! I’m also so grateful for the free things in LA — like friends, sunshine, surf and street performers.

To my fellow Angelenos: Hang in there — it’s gotta get better eventually. Right?

Liz Angeles is a massage therapist in Santa Monica.

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