Comments on I Loved L.A.
I also secretly love LA. I agree with everything you said, and I add one thing--diversity. Even though it is massively spread out, LA possesses that "real city" feel to me, where as Seattle is still a small town.
L.A. is a nice place to visit, and is still only that great because it's so close the desert.
But I still love to go there and see friends and gape at the excess.
I went through a similar transition in thinking about L.A., Eli. Totally agree. And I love your painfully accurate description of us Seattlites.
Visting LA for a few days can be pretty great, but man I was glad to not live there anymore.
I moved from Seattle to LA some years ago. When I moved, all of my Seattle friends had the same response: "LA? Everyone's so fake there, etc." The truth is, Los Angeles is a great town. The people might be "fake," but no faker than the average Seattle holier-than-thou hipster. The weather's great. Hard to complain when it's 80 degrees and sunny in January. The food is awesome-- anyone in Seattle that thinks they know Mexican food (or Korean food, or Armenian food) will be in for quite a happy surprise. The other thing about LA is that most of the people are transplants, so there's no clique-ish, locals-only attitude like Seattle. People in Seattle like to tout their liberal inclusiveness, but LA is one of the most racially integrated and diverse cities there in the world. You're never gonna go to a bar full of only white people, unlike the the overwhelming majority of bars in Seattle. There are negatives: driving, pollution, etc, but still, the only people who hate LA are the ones that go there hating it already or have never been there at all. I'm glad the author's mind was open to this unique and underappreciated city.
I had the same thing happen when I went there. I loved it. Before I went, everyone told me... all the same things they told you. I can't wait to go back.
Thanks, Eli, for the reassurance. This is exactly how I know I'll feel when I eventually move down there.
L.A. is a 100 times better than Bellevue and Kirkland, but Seattle's got them all beat.
I don't so much love L.A. as I love the In'n'Out Burgers that dot the So. Cal landscape. So, so good.
LA beats any city out east thats for sure.
still San Francisco is my choice between LA and Seattle. Its like a mix of the two.
I also loved visiting LA. The only down sides were the pollution and having to drive everywhere in the endless traffic jams, but the natural beauty is stunning and the perfect weather can't be beat.
And the true shocker: everyone there was so damn friendly! I went several places including the Abbey in West Hollywood and people actually talked to me and made conversation (unlike Seattle where people are usually cold and A-W-K-W-A-R-D).
So yeah, I truly understand that the city has a massive clusterfuck of problems, but I see why people enjoy living there.
OK, can't hold back.
I was born in L.A. My parents were born in L.A.. The people are some of the friendliest you'll meet in the U.S.. The weather is unbeatable. Some oldworldy parts of it are magical enough to let you have the tragic realization that treated right, this could have been paradise. (And the transit is excellent - though the distances are huge, and it is flat enough to bike easily, though carefully.)
Spend a little time there, though, outside the protective spell of your smart, tapped-in friends - they know YOU, Eli, so this is an easy assumption - and it will start to kill you. The average of three or so hours a day you spend in a car anytime you want to go somewhere with someone who won't spend ALL day on the subway and bus. The - sorry - stupidity of people. In one day at work there this winter, I heard one adult explain the Iraq War to another. I don't mean Sunni/Shia, British colonialism, I mean "Sadaam Hussein was the dictator of Iraq..." Later another co-worker put out a trashcan fire with water for tea and another said, "Don't put hot water on a fire!" He was not kidding.
Because it is an 'industry' town (though aerospace - at least it used to - employs more people) Angelenos feel no guilt about having in the place of where most Americans have a useless and embarassing knowledge of celebrity trivia, an ENCYCLOPEDIC familiarity and obsession with such. And lifelong locals have so little sense of place it is hard to believe they actually live there.
You need to walk a place to know it. You just do. That hardly ever happens in L.A. On the bright side, if you do choose to embark on these walks, even in 'dense' areas like the middle of Hollywood, you can stop and take a leak anywhere you want because there is never anyone around to see you do it.
All that said, Angelenos who live in an engaged fashion with the city (and almost always do so because they are very poor) have a raw moment-to-moment vitality about them that is entirely absent in the NW. But almost anyone with any kind of delicate or aesthetic sensibility or thinking brain finally just says, "this is hell, I'm outta here." The exceptions like David Lynch and Thomas Pynchon (who lived in Manhattan Beach for the 70s and 80s) I believe are at a level where it all plays like a giant joke.
I can't recommend highly enough two sources for understanding the place: Mike Davis' 'City of Quartz' and the doc 'Los Angleles Plays Itself'. The messages of L.A. history are clear: don't destroy neighborhoods; don't build for the car; preserve the good places. Seattle pretty much is deciding to ignore these lessons, and will before long be like L.A.. Only the people will be meaner.
As a native northwesterner, I spent a year and a half living in LA and found some things I really loved about it especially the drive and energy everyone seems to have for creative projects. In LA people are much more forthcoming about their ambitions, and have no qualms about admitting that it's all about who you know. In Seattle, we like to sniff at such "shmoozy" behavior, but I appreciated that people in LA are over the pretense of pretending that it's not all about promoting your shit. I learned much from the wise whores of Los Angeles.
That said, I hated that I had to wear blinders all the time. There's a lot of cool stuff happening in LA, but you have to studiously ignore all the nastiness happening around the cool stuff.
LA is nice. It has lots to offer. But God forbid the water should stop flowing as it does now. When and if the water does slow down, LA will be a desert again. But until that time it's nice to visit and nice to live there.
I can't agree with I LOve LA enough. I moved here last fall and haven't missed Seattle for a minute. It's a great place AND I walk everywhere. My commute is easier here, the people are more open (and better looking :)), better restaurants. Of course, people in their cars are assholes, but at least they're up-front about it. The LA Weekly is as bad as the Seattle Weekly and I do miss The Stranger, but the ethnic and economic diversity combined with the weather more than make up for it. Maybe LA could get a Stranger?
I grew up in East LA until I was 20. After that I moved around the country, tried living again in LA, then finally settled here in Seattle. I left because the parts that make life difficult(traffic, jobs, pollution, heat) had become the only thing that I could think about. Once I moved up here I started missing the area again.
But now when I visit my family for 4-5 days I get some mountain biking in, I go to the beach, check out the museums downtown, take the gold line to see friends, and generally eat out for every meal.
LA is a great place to visit, especially if you have friends, but I'd never live there again.
But to agree with some commenters above, the diversity up here is shameful compared to LA. I miss being among different cultures. But you can't have everything everywhere. So I choose the NW.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The grass is always greener on the other side--especially when you're on vacation somplace.
And for those of you complaining about the racial diversity in Seattle, try living in Memphis, TN or Little Rock, AR for ten years.
I gotta say, I always feel like LA is unfairly maligned, and all too often, it is maligned by people who have never even really been there.
An actress I met once said that LA was like a treasure hunt. You have to find the good stuff. But when you do, it's incredible.
And it is. The food, the ethnic diversity, and no kidding, more THEATRE than any city in the US besides New York.
People who claim that that people in LA are superficial and stupid have clearly not ventured afar from the Sunset Strip.
It's a big, beautiful city and I love it. And it's home.
The traffic is God awful though. THAT, is true.
one of the best things about LA is the fact that you can grab a pretty cheap flight from seattle almost all the time.
it's a great city. i spend as much time as possible down there, staying with friends in silverlake and steering clear of the plastic culture that does dominate teh landscape.
but, to dismiss LA on its superficiality is to ignore the abundance of good to be found. the influence of latino culture is reason alone to love the place.
i've flirted with the idea of relocating for years and i'm still not convinced i won't, for a little while at least. the one thing that always holds me to seattle, though, is the water. there just isn't enough of it in LA.
the pacific ocean doesn't count. santa monica is not LA. nor is malibu or even venice. but, man oh man, i sure love LA.
I was completely full up on the hectoring tone of Seattle’s gripers, finger-waggers, and utopia-demanders. It’s unbelievably grating to live in a city where the dominant civic discourse is one of lament about the absence of the perfect (twined with perpetual disagreement about how to get to the perfect, and achingly slow steps toward that end).
Best Slog post ever. Thanks, Eli.
@12 your comments about walking made me think about trying to get to know Manhattan that way on my first trip this year; I swear I spent the whole 4 days just walking. It was fantastic.
But my friend I was staying with was obsessed with taking a piss everywhere and trust me, even in Manhattan, you can really take a piss anywhere.
ALSO just so nobody thinks anything stupid:
LOS ANGELES IS MORE DENSE THAN SEATTLE. Look it up on Wikipedia. Seattle has no business looking down their noses at anybody else's car culture or lack of density.
I lived in LA for three years before moving to Seattle for about two -- now I'm back down here for work. There is absolutely no comparison in the quality of life between the two cities. The clean air, walkable neighborhoods, natural beauty and civic engagement make me want to get back to Seattle every day.
My experience with moving to Seattle was the opposite of Eli’s, but I agree with his points entirely. For me it was so refreshing to have people actually care about the city they live in, think about something other than work and value things about their home that weren't entirely self-serving. People in LA (at least many of those who define the dominant working professional culture) are consumed by networking, logging 12-hour workdays and getting ahead -- at the end of the day no one cares about the fact that there is no green space, you can’t see downtown or are surrounded by endless billboards and decaying strip malls.
LA’s energy and sheer size are exciting for a visit or even for a few years, but for a long-term home I’ll easily take the frustrations of Seattle over the apathy of LA.
Yeah, LA is a real great place:
Grant @12:
Enjoyed your comment.
Add my voice to the chorus of Seattle dwellers for whom LA is a breath of fresh air (in a manner of speaking). The people are much friendlier and hipster much hipper.
At the age of 17 I packed up all of my belongings (that is, the ones I didn't sell) and moved to Hollywood for four months right after high school. I'm not sure why my parents let me do this, but I did it.
My car broke down on the way and I ended up spending most of the money I had to get it fixed (it took two days and I had to convince a hotel clerk to let me check in because I was underage) and when I got down to L.A. I was broke and ended up standing in line at McDonald's with homeless people also there to purchase the 39-cent cheeseburger special.
Sometimes I got two.
It was horrible only that I nearly starved but fun that I experience much of what Eli did.
However, I doubt that you'd enjoy it after a longer stint, Eli.
Just saying.
I love living in L.A. Always have, most likely always will. The "fake people" comments have always really bugged me, though; usually, the people talking that trash are the fake ones. They've moved here to be an actor or an actress or a write or a director or a rock star; then they found 5,000,000 other people who all wanted the same thing and who were always working to acheive it, so they do too. After that, it's always about who you know and what you can do for someone you just me, hence creating "fake people". Luckily, they don't last long. They go back where they came from and leave us normal people to have great friends and lives in our awesome city.
p.s. - to throw a bone seattle-way, i was there for the first time about a year ago and i loved it. great town y'all got there.
The Northwest remains a breeding ground for ignorance and white trash, in spite of the recent economic boom brought about mainly by Microsoft's repeated and illegal predatory behaviors at Silicon Valley's expense. I lived there in the early 90s during the previous Bush administration/Gulf War/recession/jobless recovery, swore I'd never go back, gave it another chance during the Dot Com bubble, regretted it and left again. Meanwhile New York and California continually attract and produce world class people. The only claim to fame Seattle has are a bunch of bullying, greedy and non-innovative nerds, some trashy and forgotten-elsewhere copycat grunge musicians during the aforementioned recession, and whole lot of self-satisfied smugness derived mainly from their few brief glimmers of fame and notoriety.
Go ahead, look around at other people and places to try to make yourselves feel better, but Seattle will never be New York or L.A. and Seattlites will certainly never be New Yorkers or Angelenos.
George, honey, that's the point. Seattle doesn't want to be New York or Los Angeles, and Seattlites don't want to be New Yorks or Angelenos. That's why Seattle is the way it is.
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