L.A.-- the Good, the Bad, and the, like, Yucky

Mitchissmo with kite board in Malibu, while watching studly male friend surf

Over the ten years that I’ve been a New York City resident, I’ve learned there’s one question New Yorkers love asking each other: “What do you think of L.A.?” or, alternately “Do you like L.A.?”

Admittedly, the question is a total blast. What a better geyser of passion than pondering that puzzle called Los Angeles, that land of “there is no there there” against the (overly?) “here-here”-ness of New York? Now that I am wrapping up a two-week habitat stint in L.A., let me get started on my West Coast Mecca vs. East Coast Mecca rant, in a fair-and-balanced pro-con format.

The Car Thing—a.k.a., the big purse on wheels

Pro: People say you live in your car in Los Angeles. That is not a hyperbole. All throughout the streets of L.A. you’ll happen upon over-sized vans and mini-trailers with people who live in them. Add that to the 24-7 sleepers on Venice beach and I think you’ve got a much better homeless methodology than sleeping on air vents in the Flatiron…any day.

For the rest of us roof dwellers, though, cars are a mixed purse. You can shove your crap in it and go wherever you gots to be goin’, and your stuff is with you. Cars are bigger than purses, so you can shove more stuff in them. Too bad that this great benefit is lost on most Los Angelians, who do not suffer from New Yorkers’ shoe-box living conditions and the way it makes us salivate at any opportunity to stow our crap somewhere.

Con: Cars are not purses. For one thing, you can throw purses in any old corner. Ah, if only we could do that with cars! Mais non; one must spend an hour a day looking for a twelve feet of a non-red lined space, circling block after block like a hawk hunting a dodging mouse. How different L.A. would be if you could snap your fingers and poof! away with your car. (take note, engineers!)

The other difference between cars and purses: cars are the leading cause of death, next to cancer; purses cannot claim nearly such fame. What’s worse, people do in fact live in them cars, on average some 2-4 hours a day. Like, that is between 10-20 hours a week. Like, that is 10-20 hours of doing that and not something else per week. Because here’s the REAL deal breaker, folks: you can’t do anything while you’re driving. And no, listening to a.m. radio, books on tape or making unnecessary phone calls (while driving, mind you (see leading cause of death (next to cancer) above)) does not count.

This brings us to a major and often overlooked difference between New York and L.A.: as an inhabitant of the former, you can read on the subway. Go ahead—try it, and look around. Everyone reads. While I am no teacher, I am fairly certain there is a relationship between reading and a sharp, inquisitive mind (note: New York City went 85% Kerry). So, in addition to the general driving bummer, remember that the people who surround you matter in your quality of life equation. Just sayin’….

The Driving Thing



For those of us who do drive in New York, be warned that when you are in L.A., do not drive like you are in New York. The disciplinary wrath of your fellow drivers, not to mention pedestrians shall fall hard upon you. Take, for instance, the time I slowly nudged along a left turn across a cross walk on Main Street in Santa Monica. Yeah, sure, there were pedestrians walking. But in my New York driving language, this method is not only a time saver, but also the way walkers and cars talk to each other—a pedestrian-car tango, if you will. The 6-foot Amazonian blonde who attacked the hood of my car apparently did not speak this language. Once you get used to it, though, Los Angelians drive much, much better, like Zen Masters. As well they should, because again, driving is their life and livelihood, not just a (hopefully but rarely) better, faster alternative to the subway. For the record, I applaud their unspoken two cars turn left on a yellow light rule. That is utter genius.

The Walking Thing

Nobody walks in L.A. because if you do, you’ll be mistaken for a hooker. I found this out the hard way while ambling down Third street to the 99 cent store. How people stay in shape here is beyond me. As we all learned in “Super Size Me,” New Yorkers walk 4-5 miles a day. That’s why we stay sexy and younger despite our diverse nature-given bods, even without plastic surgery. Not that I’m biased…

The Laundry Thing



L.A. has huge Laundromats where you don’t get into testy butt-bumping square-offs as one does in New York. And there are always enough dryers. And man, is it a LOT cheaper.

In sum, L.A. wins this one hands down. No contest.

The Beautiful Thing

Yup, there’s a lot of beautiful people here. Some of it’s real. Some of it’s not. For those specimens of beauty begotten through natural means, it’s both wondrous and totally weird to look at. They are in greater concentration here because they’ve come here to be stars, duh. As for the manufactured ones, I’m sorry the culture is the way it is and you feel you had to do what you did, especially for those of you who went to a really bad plastic surgeon who snatched the credit card out of your hand.

So, I guess that was the Con part. The PRO part of being in such a place where beauty is a mainstay is, well, a pure example of reverse psychology. I call to the floor my visits to Crunch Gym on Sunset, with a clientele of 99% young actors—you know, the skinny fit kind. I am not a skinny fit actor, but rather a normal girl wearing grungy gym clothes. And yet I have never had so many heads turn ands smile at me for an hour straight. It occurred to me that being pale and of a normal weight and looks-rating gave me the appearance of not needing to care, and hence, of being very powerful—someone these skinny-fit actors on-the-rise should get to know (“What’s up with her?”). Add to that my cold, wary-to-smile New York edge and I was pretty much a Development Exec doing lats.

The Money Thing

Pro: Quality of life per dollar is better in L.A. While I would really have to do a binder full of various cost-benefit analyses charts and graphs to qualify this statement (rent is cheaper (although not as cheap as you would hope and think), but this is offset by the car-gas-insurance thing, etc.), given that you beaches are public and you can live on them, I’d say it’s true.

That being said (Con), money somehow matters much, much more in L.A., which would make sense since it is much more a microcosm of today’s America than New York (note strip mall after strip mall, Hummers, TV, etc.). The City of the Angels is a company town, and money is a sign that you’ve made it and that your American dream of stardom and glamour has come true. Money says who you are. New York may have its doormen, but unlike 20-feet hedges, they can say hello. When living in the great urban experiment known as the Big Apple, no matter whether you emerge from your penthouse or your overcrowded hovel, once you’re out on the street, we’re all the same, bumping and passing and eyeing each other, two legged dogs sniffing eight million different scents.