GalacticMu

I’m headed into my second month of Los Angeles living (I’m subtracting a month I was in Washington visiting family), and indeed, the blessed return to the West-most Coast of these United States.  For posterity, and because my Photoshop is still borked and I can’t seem to conceive of a post that doesn’t require photography,  here is a 2-month review of The City of Angels.

PROS

• Food.  Oh my god, food.  I had sadly and honestly forgotten what it felt like to be able to find just about any cuisine you wanted, and to have to choose between a dozen places once you’d decided on which cuisine.  Taco trucks, sushi, proper Jewish delis, Ethiopian, Korean, decent espresso, you name it.

• Weather.  Everyone always mentions the weather, and they are always right.  I was initially put off because its nearly November now and we’re still having 90° days (it was nearly 100° early last week), but from what I understand October can be the hottest month of the year here.  Apparently I have a “chilly” winter to look forward to.  I’m guessing they didn’t just move here from somewhere that occasionally got sub-zero, like I just did.

• Art.  I’m frustrated because we haven’t had much opportunity to do, well, anything.  But there are always advertisements for art shows that have me scrambling for my datebook.  Right now a Vanity Fair portrait retrospective has me determined to museum-hop.

• Grocery stores actually have stuff.  If you don’t cook much, you can skip this part, but if you do: look, there were both Jonagolds and Macintosh apples at the local Ralphs today, in addition to all the usual suspects.  Do you know how long its been since I had a neighborhood grocery store that stocked more than Red Delicious and Granny Smiths?  Or a selection of bread flours?  Or the fact that there’s a Trader Joe’s literally two blocks from my apartment?  Full of angry, pushy hipsters, yes but… I’ll save that for the next section.

• Dogs!  Everyone has dogs! Honestly, every time I take a walk I pass at least half a dozen people out walking their dogs.  This last weekend we had a rental dog and - aside from the fact that he’s a visually striking animal - everyone would let their dogs stop and say hi. Surprisingly, they are all pretty quiet.  I’ve never had to listen to a dog barking all fucking goddamn long day like I did at my last place.  Maybe people are just less tolerant here.  (As this was written a neighbor’s dog has gone batshit insane barking for the last 10 minutes.  Of course.)

• Walking distance.  I’m within walking distance of everything I need on a normal basis: grocery, drug store, post office, gas station, bakery, cafe, movie theater, bank, Sur la Table (what?), 24-hour donut shop, etc. etc. etc.  This goes for all cities, (condense a million people into a few dozen square miles and shazam - walking distance to everything!) but it is still always nice.

• Possibilities.  This is the most vague and most important aspect of the last few months.  Los Angeles feels - and unique to any place I’ve ever been - like there are options, for anything.  Anything at all.  It’s hard to explain, but I don’t feel naive thinking I could get a screenplay sold.  A friend of a friend is actually an actor, or works at a studio.  And I use the entertainment industry merely as an example - want to design action figures?  Video games?  Youth literature?  The city is seething with productive, discretely artistic people and while the cliche of coming to Los Angeles to “make it big” is still a cliche, the realistic desire to be merely successful in an interesting career isn’t.  I haven’t felt this energized in years.

CONS

• Parking.  Oh my god, parking.  It wasn’t until after we’d signed the lease that I read our neighborhood, which is called “Miracle Mile,” is not-really-jokingly called that because “It’s a miracle if you can find parking within a mile.”   Suddenly, everything we do is weighed against the trauma of having to find parking; do we really need to go to Target?  No?  Do we really want to go to that restaurant?  No? And not just because we can’t find parking when we come back home, also because we probably won’t be able to find parking at our destination.  It’s one thing to bitch about traffic (yes, it’s horrible), but for me, parking is the difference between a pleasant errand and deciding to stay home to work on unpacking.  The super-downer is that this will not change.  This is our neighborhood, and there is no getting around it - it is I that must change.  Next place we live, we aren’t signing any leases until we’ve got dedicated parking spots for both cars.

• Prices.  We’re paying too much for our apartment, it’s true, but since we were running out of time and our apartment is pretty cool, I don’t regret it.  Yet.  But the local grocery store is also slightly overpriced, possibly because of our proximity to Hollywood - I don’t even fantasize about shopping at the Whole Foods down the road, that place is so retardedly, humorously, scandalously overpriced.  Utilities seem high to me, but they always do (wait, I have to pay to use my stove???) Now that gas is dropping again (under $3!  holy jesus!) the pressure is slackening a little, but the burn of moving across country is still smouldering, particularly since we need to invest in some furniture.  Yes, this is a first world “problem” and yes, this is partly due to the current economy, but I don’t recommend anyone move across country unless you bail on most of your stuff (we didn’t and regret it) and have a friend who can help at the other end.

• People can be mean.  It’s not super common to have a chatty, friendly encounter with a stranger, which I don’t really mind.  In Cincinnati, every goddamn person was like, “Hi, stranger!  What’s your life story?” As an introvert, this was hell.  Here, people are pretty into letting you not even speaking when paying for groceries.  I’ve had some super-friendly random encounters, as well as some super-unfriendly ones (dear girl who intentionally pushed me in Trader Joe’s: no really, fuck you - you’re a cunt and you’re going to get prematurely wrinkly).  Instead of a medium middle ground, Los Angeles is a exercise in extremes - even inside Canter’s Deli, where the waiter might be a peach and the woman working the bakery counter is trying to kill you with her mind.  As a contrast, people in Seattle are frosty bitches, so L.A. is still one up on The Emerald City.  Also, we live next to a huge neighborhood/mini-town of orthodox Jews who don’t make eye-contact with me or answer my friendly greetings (they do when I’m with a man).  I don’t know if its because I’m a woman or have tattoos, but either way it makes me feel sad sometimes.

• Cockroaches.  Yep.

• Crazy people.  I kind of like crazy people, but this is the first city I’ve been in where I’ve been really freaked out by someone.  Here it was an old woman wearing expensive, garish clothing and lots of real jewelry who had a gaping, red, angry hole where one of her eyes used to be.  It’s a metaphor for Los Angeles: fifteen pounds of gold hanging on a zombie-movie specter.  At first it seemed like a funny story, but two seconds later, as she wetly gasped for air while lifting grocery bags, I had a deep and real chill.  There has to be an explanation, I thought: maybe her doctor highly recommended her bloody socket get plenty of air?  I don’t know, man, and that’s the point: everyone is reduced to a freaked-out 7-year-old when that happens.  Literally 10 minutes after a dude on a bicycle rode be me and made kissing sounds at me while looking at my boobs.  Still fragile from the socket-lady, I couldn’t process the harmlessness of it and instead felt self-conscious and weak.  It’s embarrassing to admit.

• Our apartment is cool, but the sound quality is POOR.  I can hear the guy upstairs pick his nose, the floors are so thin, and I hear the girl down the hall talk on her phone - when I’m standing in my own living-room.  Not a murmur, an actual “Hey, Scott!  Yeah, Friday would be awesome!” conversation.  Luckily we live in a building of adults who all go to bed at a reasonable hour, but that doesn’t mean I want to clearly hear the neighbor watching Jeopardy.  I think the last brick-encased apartment spoiled me.