Want some advice about Los Angeles? Don't believe everything you've heard, because chances are you've heard some exaggerated claim, good or bad. The truth lies, of course, somewhere in between. There's probably no other city on Earth that's as hard to categorize. That's because L.A. is just too big to be distilled into a neat, accurate description for a travel brochure. The city of 3.5 million sprawls across 467 square mi of desert basin, mountain canyons, and coastal beaches. Outside city limits, another 6 million people live in 80 incorporated cities within Los Angeles County. Beyond that, another 5 million reside within the economic shadow of Los Angeles, in the region's four other counties. But that, as they say in the movies, is the master shot, the big picture. If we zoom in for a close-up, we discover a city immensely rich in human diversity and culture.

Much notice is given to L.A.'s ethnic diversity and its status as a cultural hub of the Pacific Rim. After all, the largest population of Pacific Islanders in the nation lives in L.A., as well as the world's third-largest Hispanic population (after Mexico City and Guadalajara). People from 140 countries speaking 96 different languages call L.A. home. Signs in Spanish, Korean, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Armenian, and Russian are as common in some areas of the city as English signs. What isn't so well known is that this kind of diversity dates back to L.A.'s beginnings: Indians, blacks, mestizos, and Spaniards were among the 44 settlers who first arrived from the Mexican provinces of Sonora and Sinaloa in September 1781.

While diversity adds rich texture to the city's makeup, it does not always create harmony. Bloody rioting has torn the city along racial lines more than once; in 1992 the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney King provoked the nation's worst civil unrest ever. That experience left a scar of misunderstanding and mistrust that has yet to heal completely.

But another close-up angle reveals images of people pulling together to help their neighbors after the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake and the Malibu wildfires two years later. This view of L.A. contradicts the popular media portrayal of self-indulgent Angelenos concerned only about going to the gym and buying expensive gadgets for themselves. By and large, Angelenos are also generous in spirit. People come to Los Angeles seeking a kindred spirit and the hope of finding acceptance for ideas or lifestyles shunned in less tolerant parts of the country. In the early years of this century, moviemakers, pioneers of a sort, established Hollywood as the capital of a new industry, filmmaking, which in no small way helped create the myth and mystique of L.A. as a place where dreams come true. In the 1980s the small city of West Hollywood forged its own destiny when a coalition of gay and lesbian, elderly, and immigrant residents pushed through a charter for cityhood. Today, West Hollywood is one of the country's most progressive small cities, where individual difference is celebrated and legally protected.

If there's a universal symbol of Los Angeles, it's the automobile. Cars and freeways have been a part of the L.A. image for so long that a driver's license is seen as something of a birthright here. And like it or not, freeways are the passages to the city's far-flung pleasures -- at least for the time being and as long as the air remains cleaner than ever, thanks in part to tough emission controls on automobiles. Just as the automobile symbolizes the limitless possibilities in L.A., where anything goes, vanity license plates such as MUZKBIZ celebrate that spirit of freedom and self-definition that Angelenos take for granted.

So people keep coming to the city that's like no other. To the tens of thousands of resident immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and Asia, Los Angeles represents the opportunity for a productive life their own countries failed to provide. To the would-be actors and actresses who come here with stars in their eyes, this is the place where the dream of fame and fortune may come true. Each year, millions of visitors arrive in Los Angeles eager to see for themselves why people want to live here, to make sense of all they've seen and read about this sunny center of popular culture on the Pacific Rim.

We can't predict what your Los Angeles will turn out to be -- lazy afternoons on the beach, touring Hollywood or the movie studios, taking the kids to Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm, eating dim sum in Chinatown, practicing your Spanish at Olvera Street, or exploring the city's museums. Whatever you do, let it be a close-up shot on Los Angeles that's yours alone.