Every time I had the chance to sit and stare into traffic from the unsettling proximity of some or another sidewalk cafe (“Do you guys want an ashtray?” “God I wish, lady.”) I found myself wanting to bring up the Great New York - LA debate. I believe it ranks up there with HOW SOON IS TOO SOON? (to do it) (it’s always too soon, ya’ll, so throw that line of thinking out the window) and OHMYGOD WE JUST GOT TO COLLEGE AND YOU ARE FROM THE MIDWEST AND CALL SODA POP YOU RETARD HAHA ARENT PEOPLE CRAZAY?! Those conversations you know are Things but you end up having them anyway. And, oh, do you have them.
“So what’s the verdict?” I think I asked Lindsay that no less than 5x. Each time squinting into the sun, forgetting my sunglasses were on my head. Each time swirling my straw in an iced coffee that I couldn’t help but chuckle, “NOW THAT’S A LOTTA COFFEE!” and then promptly drank it all.
“I dunno…,” we’d each say, growing more sincere every time we touched on it.
(And let it be known are never ones to withold an opinion! if we say we don’t know, well, goddammit, we don’t.)
Los Angeles seems to be a place where you can have your own life. A life the way maybe I thought a life was before I moved to New York and was inundated with the idea that there are always Things You Are Supposed to Be Doing and Places You Should Be Doing Them— whether you ignore them or subvert them or blow them out of the fucking water is up to you— all with signifiers and connotations, of course, and always coupled with the idea that you are either actively rebelling or conforming and then the personal evaluation running atop all of this (which is, of course, parallel to everyone else’s evaluation of Your Life Choices.
And maybe this is just what it is to visit somewhere else, to be in the middle of a certain moment in your life, where you are living with the burden of your own freedom and you have that goddamn Joan Didion essay practically memorized and maybe today you trust your own decision-making ability and maybe tomorrow you don’t.
What I mean to say is, they are so far beyond compare, which motherfucker, makes it even harder. It doesn’t feel like somewhere that would be My City I say. No one is in New York defending why they don’t live in LA, but here, it seems, everyone has a reason or two explaining why they aren’t on the East Coast, or a story about their time there, and how exhausting it was or how cold it got.
Maybe all I can say is: It is fun to drive in a car late at night and share profundities with someone over the car radio. To look up and find the mountains every time, unexpectedly; they are always there.
