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useunknown · 7 years

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To Avoid Making Small-talk With Someone Who Just Moved to LA, do This

We’ve all been there-- someone’s just moved to LA, and you’re, well, you’re talking to them. Maybe they moved here from a small town with stars in their eyes. Like this guy, who moved to LA after he booked a Colgate commercial. Your instinct is to gloss over this link, but just listen to how he says “eighty percent” and tell me it isn’t disbelief personified.

Or maybe they merely moved from another big city, having found a new job opportunity in LA and decided they were ready for a change. People make these kinds of moves all the time. It can be interesting to find out what happened in the last place they lived, and what they’re looking for in the city to which they moved. Finding this out can help you understand what makes a person tick. Maybe they bring a perspective that changes how you look at your own city: they’ll remind you that life here isn’t like other places. There’s no real city center, it’s largely devoid of the interactions and bustle that’s supposed to characterize “city life.” It’s a city of dreamers, freelancers, hustlers, with a veneer of pool-side relaxation, legal weed, and surfing, but an unforgiving undercurrent of road rage and broken dreams.

But most of these conversations don’t play out this way. Instead they’re an exercise in perfunctory small talk, a survey of platitudes about traffic, housing, and weather. I hear it at coffee shops, as informational interviews emanate from the tables next to mine, at bars, as I watch the cautious optimism of a first date, at house parties, when I end up pouring a drink next to the person who just moved here from New York. Yes, New York, the greatest city in the world, seems to be hemorrhaging burnt-out and somewhat traumatized careerists as it becomes an island of empty skyscrapers owned by Russians and Chinese and thousand-dollar Hamilton tickets. And they all seem to be taking refuge in Los Angeles.

At least a few of them have talked to me. Maybe they’ve talked to you also. If you’re like me-- and you’re probably not, because you’re more patient and better adjusted-- you can’t have many more of these conversations. So I’ve compiled this script of what to say:

“I’ve just moved from New York.”

“Ohhh, is that right?"

“Yes, just a few weeks ago.”

“Well, allow me to save us the next fifteen minutes of empty chatter. You were there for six years and loved it, and you’ll always love it, and pity anyone who never got to live there, as you did, since it is the greatest city in the world, plus the bagels and the pizza, because the water, it’s better water-- but you were ready for a change of pace. Are you in a relationship? If so, you or your significant other found a job out here."

“I’m single.”

"Are you recently out of a long relationship that was debilitating to you, and necessitated a change of environment?”

“Well, no.”

“Then you got tired of tindering with a bunch of alpha-dog psychopaths and neurotics, and I can’t blame you. You never managed to navigate New York’s manic dating pool, and found the assholes who casually dated you to paper over their own insecurities were “afraid of commitment.” You found the only way to cope with the pressures of your career while navigating sexual harassment in the workplace was through manic drinking. For that you have my sympathy. The final straw was your 30th birthday, or 33rd, or 36th, or whatever milestone you channeled your anxiety into to decide you had reached a seminal moment, as hangovers became more difficult to process and your cold careerist New York heart started to melt at the sight of a baby. You never thought that would be you, and yet there you were. Sadly, I’m afraid you’ll find a different set of destabilizing problems in Los Angeles. But we can move onto the question of housing. Are you planning to live in Venice? If yes, you’ll fit in quite nicely there, and I doubt I’ll see you very often.”

“No, I was thinking of something on the east side. You’re not entirely right, you know-- I lived here growing up.”

“But you didn’t live here, here, did you? You lived in some distant suburb which isn’t in LA County. But okay, let’s say you’re conversant enough in what LA-proper used to be to take that conversational tack...Things sure have changed the past few years. Yes, Venice is no longer a bohemian artist community. as it’s now full of yuppies and instagram yoga models and is one of the most expensive places in America. Yes, public transportation and uber have changed the city. And yes, the increasing density finally makes investment in public transportation viable, isn’t that interesting. Yes the weather’s still amazing, and what a blessing it is to live in a place where it’s always sunny, and you can be at the beach 300 days a year, and you never have to check the weather, and no, you really can’t beat it. I’ll bet you don’t miss those New York winters, nor the subway during the summer. And yes, the traffic on the 10 and the 405 fucking suck, and commuting more than 45 minutes every day begins to make the city unlivable, so yes you should live close to your office downtown, and yes, how about downtown these days, it sure wasn’t like that fifteen years ago, because when they built the Staples Center in 1999 nothing was there. And that’s to say nothing of the housing crisis and homelessness epidemic now plaguing the city. Someone should really do something about that-- though at the same time, it is kind of unpleasant to bat away homeless people when you’re leaving whole foods-- do you have spare change? Of course you do, you just spent forty dollars on cheese and cold-pressed juice. But you spent your last spare dollar bill tipping your barista. Anyway, it didn’t used to be that way. No it didn’t used to be that way. So where to go? Well, you’re looking at the quote-unquote “east side,” "east” as in East of...La Brea? “Quote unquote” because it would render the area east of downtown, where millions of people live, as the ‘real east,’ or ‘far east.’ But my, has it gotten expensive.”

“Still cheaper than New York.”

“Yes, cheaper than New York. And I think we can both be grateful we’re not in San Francisco.”

“Yes, thank god we’re not in San Francisco.”

“But LA, it is expensive now. 8th most-expensive-city-in-the-world expensive. Anyway, you’re thinking of Los Feliz, Silverlake, Echo Park, Koreatown, Downtown, the Arts District, Atwater, Glassell Park, Eagle Rock, Mount Washington, Highland Park, and maybe you’ve heard things about El Sereno, Boyle Heights, and West Adams. But even in those “up-and-coming” areas, the developers have already come, seen, and conquered, as the landlords have kicked out their long-standing tenants in defiance of the toothlessly enforced Ellis Act.

“Now that you mention it, I have heard good things about Echo Park.”

“Just like every person who’s moved here from Williamsburg the past five years, after some fucking New York Times article heralded it as ‘a cheaper Brooklyn?’ The irony of all of you leaving New York to turn Echo Park into your own New York hipster hell is of course lost on all of you, because you’re too busy eating avocado toast and taking selfies of yourself standing in front of murals of fucking angel wings.”

“Well god, if you hate everything about it so much, why don’t you just leave.”

At which point you stop dead. You hadn’t considered this option.

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