The Fake Angeleno

L.A. Vs. NYC 6 Month Report Card: 7 Things I Miss About New York

So maybe I came down a little hard on the rotten apple yesterday.  Without further ado, here's the Fake Angeleno version of the empire city strikes back. 

6 Months Removed -- 7 Things I Miss About NYC

The Waiters: Dude, I don't want to know your name.  And no, you won't be "taking care of me," so much as you'll be making sure I get everything I want immediately so I'll consider coming back to your restaurant in the future.  And bro, I could care less about the specials.  Why yes, I would like my water refilled.  In fact, why don't you just assume if my glass is half empty it's time to fill it up, k bra?  Good luck with that commercial audition tomorrow, brother.  Oh, right, I forgot.  Your name is Zach.  We're all pulling for you Zach, but for now, could you try a little harder to follow the New York model?  Keep the banter to a minimum.  Never try and upsell an upseller.  Don't ask, just do it.  And for the love of Batali, it's not that hard to wait on four tables at a time, my friend.  Your NYC counterpart usually juggles 10 tables with very minimal difficulty.

The Seasons:  April/May and September/October are no doubt four damn fine months to be a New Yorker.  November-March and June-August -- not so much.  Yet I still get a pang for a little snowfall every now and again.  These pangs are pretty manageable.  Oh, and I spent January through March here wearing my heavy, black winter overcoat.  That thing got looks and comments all over town.  As a tribute to my freezing comrades back East, I plan to wear it often next year too.  It's a nice way to hold on to my New Yorker identity and looks a hell of a lot sharper than a ratty fleece.

The Late Night Dining Convenience: Between me and my beloved ex-roommate, we probably paid for the last two renovations at the 24 hr. Brooklyn delivery restaurant Anytime singlehandedly.  This is not even to mention our staunch support of the all-night deli on Manhattan and Greenpoint, Maria's on Meserole, and the Turkey's Nest mini-pizza-nuclear-option.  In my neck of Mar Vista, you're pretty much out of luck if you want to eat something after 10 PM.

The Skyline: Downtown L.A. is right up there with downtown ... Dallas.  Then again, the NYC skyline makes Chicago look anemic by comparison.  There can be only one big nasty.  

The Thai Cafe: This place fed me three times a week for about six years.  Never has so much delicious food been so lovingly prepared for so modest a price.  I can still close my eyes and see the proprietor outside his restaurant, late in the evening, deeply enjoying a smoke and reflecting on another day of consummate craftsmanship.  Mr. Thai Cafe: You have no equal in Southern California.  Not even close...

The East River: No, I'm not setting up the L.A. River as a feeble, concrete patsy... That would be too easy.  How about the East River vs. the Santa Monica Bay?  Sure, I can mosey down to the beach at the end of pretty much any day and watch the sun slip off into the Pacific.  But for my money, there is no better sunset view than the end of Java St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn -- 11222.  You see, Java St. runs right down to the river, where you can sit down on the rock-strewn embankment and enjoy an intimate encounter with a sweeping Manhattan Island vista.  You can see clear up from the Lower East Side to the Queensboro Bridge -- while the street grid lights up with rays shooting in from the soon-to-be-dark fields of the republic just across the Hudson.  Sitting there on the bank, Manhattan seems to be a living creature, a smoldering behemoth, but from this viewpoint wholly benign.  It all makes for prose just as purple as the dusk-time cloud cover, and it goes well with a six pack from the bodega too...  Just be sure you toss your beer-can-in-a-paper-bag into the river if the NYPD decides they'd like to admire the view as well. 

My Friends:  As Lord Buckley once said, "People are the true flowers in life, and it has been my most precious pleasure to have temporarily strolled through your garden."  The strange and exotic flora I encountered during my brief gambol around the five boroughs are most precious indeed.  There is no people garden in the world quite like New York City. 

Fairy Tale of New Yo*!

BBC Radio 1 decided to censor The Pogues Fairy Tale of New York this year because of "gratuitous vulgarity."  But after a massive public outcry, the beeb was forced to reverse its decision.  "Listeners are smart enough to distinguish between maliciousness and creative freedom," said BBC1 controller Andy Parfitt.

My two political cents: It's nice to see democracy at work.  A government-run radio station censors a beloved, if raw, tune, but a strong constituent response forces a reversal in favor of free speech.  This scenario probably wouldn't happen here.  Clear Channel would never play Fairy Tale of New York in wide distribution, and even if they did, they could censor the song and few would complain.  NPR would probably censor the song too, with little complaint.

So much for the soapbox.  Here's the music video for one of the greatest overwrought New York love letters in history:

The Airing of the Grievances

Spike Lee's 25th Hour is underrated in my opinion.  The movie's ending is kind of laughable, but what comes before is quite solid.  The best scene is a harsh, harsh, foul-mouthed (sorry mom) five-minute Edward Norton monologue that manages to take an uppercut at everyone and everything in the city.  Under the surface of the stinging language, though, is a passionate valentine to New York.  Enjoy.

Two Views of Manhattan

NOTE: This was one of the original Fake Angeleno posts -- written back in December of 2008. In my pre-Angeleno days...

New York was his city, and it always would be:



And for you Kerouac fans, this version is a surprisingly nice musical substitute.  It's making me look forward to our upcoming cross-country drive:

Overwrought Quote of the Day

"I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years."

Joan Didion -- Goodbye to All That

Come Back, Come Back, O Glittering And White!

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then understood-everything was explained : I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits -- from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground. That was the rash gift of Alfred E. Smith to the citizens of NewYork.

Thus I take leave of my lost city. Seen from the ferry boat in the early morning, it no longer whispers of fantastic success and eternal youth. The whoopee mamas who prance before its empty parquets do not suggest to me the ineffable beauty of my dream girls of 1914. And Bunny, swinging along confidently with his cane toward his cloister in a carnival, has gone over to Communism and frets about the wrongs of southern mill workers and western farmers whose voices, fifteen years ago, would not have penetrated his study walls.

All is lost save memory, yet sometimes I imagine myself reading, with curious interest, a Daily News of the issue of 1945 :

MAN OF FIFTY RUNS AMUCK IN NEW YORK

Fizgerald Feathered Many Love Nests Cutic Avers

Bumped Off By Outraged Gunman

So perhaps I am destined to return some day and find in the city new experiences that so far I have only read about. For the moment I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage. Come back, come back, O glittering and white!

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, My Lost City