If LA had a good public transit system and the possibility of a devastating earthquake wasn't constantly looming, I think I could really enjoy living there. I don't care if they have a high assholes per capita ratio. If you try too hard to escape assholes, you'll end up like the Unabomber.
But fuck a city where you have to get in your car every time you want to go anywhere.

Have any of you read City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis?



I highly recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in L.A.. Mike Davis seems to be the city's fiercest critic, but simultaneoulsy loves his subject. He's an incredible writer. I probably know more about L.A, through reading his books, than I do about any other city in the world.

According to him it's Crap(but fascinating).

Read it!

I've read "City Of Quartz."

Mike Davis is a good writer about Los Angeles. So is James Ellroy.

I've lived in Los Angeles. I go there a couple times a year. I still can't really figure out what Los Angeles is.

I guess all great cities are a bunch of different things - culturally, aesthetically, politically, etc. - all at once. But it's my experience that Los Angeles contains the most extreme differences within itself. Even more so than NY.

Incredible early-20th-century palm-tree-Craftsman-bungalow glory. Intense, violent ghetto poverty. An exact replica of a small, poor South American city. An urban hipster-bohemian enclave where everyone is creepily good-looking. A huge Disneyland full of 50-foot inflatable animated movie characters. A bustlingly vibrant Koreatown. A post-apocalyptic downtown. A relaxed beach town. Depending on the freeway exit you take, this is Los Angeles. And some of them are literally one freeway stop away from each other.

Based on the exits I choose to (and choose not to) take, I've learned to make a nice Los Angeles for myself. To do this, there is much that you must willfully exclude. But it's doable.

NOT CRAP.

I live 4 miles from Downtown, work on the edge of Little Tokyo, in Downtown, have lived in and around LA for 26 of my 29 years. I voted not crap, but wf 5 with lingonberry sauce.

Thing I like- if you look hard enough, you can find anything that you're looking for. This is a big thing, encompassing many little things, but I think it captures the Los Angeles experience.

Things I dislike- the destruction of the Owens Valley perpetrated to supply the water needed to sustain this city, the destruction of Chavez Ravine, one of the city's oldest and most tight-knit communities, to bring a freaking baseball team to town, the schmoozocracy masquerading as a meritocracy, cell phones, traffic, "Hollywood".

(Here's a secret, though, for all those who bemoan L.A.'s traffic: most of the traffic is in the suburbs, going to and from the city. Traffic in the suburb where my parents live is ten times worse than that in Downtown. Like I said, if you look hard enough, you can find anything, including an alternative to sprawl and traffic jams.)

I've never ever gotten paid for any show that I've played in L.A.

Another reason why L.A. is crap.

I moved here 11 years ago (from NY -haha) and I used to fucking hate it. Now it's just home and I love it.
I'm one of the lucky few who can walk to work. Driving's great though, it's like your own personal music blasting fantasy chamber.

Like this one sunny afternoon, I'm listening to Spanky and Our Gang at a red light on palm-lined Highland, behind a hot blond L.A. goddess in a '69 mustang convertable. The light turns green but the car in front of her is stalled.

Without missing a beat she gets out of her car, pushes the stalled car over to the side, blows her bubblegum, gets back in and we continue north towards Hollywood. It was like I wasn't even driving, like I was on a ride at Disneyland. You had to be there. And maybe slightly stoned. Fucking beautiful, maaan.

Read Day of The Locust, read Waiting For The Sun by Barney Hoskins.
there's a lot of suckage which you can ignore, like anyplace else on the planet, and a lot that sucks not. ALso, I work with a lot of cool people from Chicago. They seem to be coming out here in droves.

overall: Los Angeles = not crap

horsewhip wrote:I've never ever gotten paid for any show that I've played in L.A.

Another reason why L.A. is crap.

The Cocaine at Live Jazz in Little Tokyo does everything it can to pay touring acts. The people that run the night are some of the most reliable, generous people I know, as is the bar owner, an old Japanese dude named Matsumoto who allows the crazy kids into his restaurant just because he loves music, I think. It's rarely much, but it is a valiant effort by my favorite place in LA to play. Mind you, my band doesn't generally play at the big, or even mid-sized venues, but for what it's worth... www.thecocaine.com

The Kid wrote:If LA had a good public transit system and the possibility of a devastating earthquake wasn't constantly looming, I think I could really enjoy living there.

The way I see it, I look over at the midwest and Florida and think, "Yeah, we've got natural disasters, but at least we don't have a fucking natural disaster SEASON."

Another thought:

Los Angeles is a factory town, the same as Allentown, PA.

Except that, instead of steel, Los Angeles gives us "Big Momma's House 2."

Once this dawned on me I felt like I had a better understanding of Los Angeles.

I hated LA when I went there in the past, but I am willing to have my mind changed if I end up going out there for Glenn Branca Round 4.

So I am on the fence right now.

I dunno how the hell I am going to get around the city though, since I do not drive.