Perhaps it's a little early for me to be judging what the best things about LA are, a mere 9 days into my residence here. However, it might be interesting to see what changes about this Top Five over time and what remains. I have a funny feeling about a few that are pretty certain to reserve a permanent spot on this list...please enjoy.
1. The weather. Everything you've heard, everything you've seen and everything you've read about the weather out here is entirely true. And most of the time, it's vastly understated because folks don't want to make 'other people' (aka New Englanders) overflow with jealous rage. Let me tell you something pal, it's fucking fantastic. I've been working outside as I've mentioned, and thus far, the variations in temperature have been no more than 5-10 degrees away from that magic number of 75°. That's a pretty nifty number when we're talking temperature. So when people talk about "it must be the people", or "it must be the sunsets" or even "it must be the air" (save it, the smog isn't even an afterthought) they are lying to you. They are lying sacks of shit. It's the weather, man. The WEATHER.
2. I already mentioned the weather, yes? Let's move onto the coffee. I guess I was growing tired of Dunkin', or better known to New Englanders as crack. Starbucks is everywhere, yes. But Coffee Bean is not. I'll never understand why more places don't serve their drinks with crushed ice. It improves the rating of the drink by 2 points alone if it simply has crushed ice. Is it that much more expensive to use it? No way. Coffee with crushed ice. A-ok in my book. Although as I champion Coffee Bean, I encountered my first gripe yesterday: too much ice. Not only did the peabrain take 10 minutes to make my ICED COFFEE, he left me with what equated to three sips of coffee. Thanks Dbag. Time to go back to ice school and learn about what an acceptable amount is. What's not acceptable? An assload, which is what you delivered to this guy yesterday. Tighten it up, sport. (avoid the little black dude at the Bean in downtown Palisades...he's an icy little fucker)
3. The food. This is merely a consequence of moving to a new city. The food is new, it's exciting and in LA, there are waaaaaaay too many new places to go on a given day. I feel as though I had a good handle on dining in Boston. I knew where to get great sushi, great steak (once upon a time), great chowder, an awesome sub, a tasty breakfast...now I get to learn the culinary ropes all over again and I'm amped up about it. I will tell you that there's an incredibly cheap and generous sushi place in Santa Monica that has good stuff and the service is fast. Well, fast might be the understatement of the year. Lauren and I are there last night and our first roll came out in 30 seconds. I shit you not. 30 seconds. And it was constructed well, I might add. The others, not so much but they were acceptable. We had finished the entirety of the meal and paid the bill in under 20 minutes. You can't power through McD's at that speed, son. I am suddenly cautious of the fish quality, however. Lauren pointed out that their overuse of mayo might be simply hiding poor quality. Maybe so. But I'm going to keep testing that theory until I get violently ill there. Stay tuned, puke fans.
4. The roads are mostly freshly paved from what I've seen, and the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and the endless beaches off of the Pacific Coast Highway will never get tired. And the drivers here are a fucking delight! I never really considered myself to be an asshole driver. Maybe a tad aggressive at times, sure. Unreasonably impatient, yes. Occasionally prone to violence inflicted on the steering wheel, mhm. But I'm a good driver. From what I've seen so far, no one is terribly aggressive. People obey the rules of the road and, get this Mass residents, Angelinos apparently understand what a YIELD sign means! I can now die in peace. So for all you fucking halfwits who continue to STOP at a YIELD sign, take a lesson from drivers out west. It means proceed with caution. And under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you stop, lest there be a free beer stand that suddenly appears out of nowhere. Then and ONLY then can you stop at a YIELD.
5. The Dodgers are growing on me, slowly but surely. Yes, Manny being here gets the bulk of the credit for that but also receiving votes are Vin Scully, the uniforms and the all-you-can-eat tickets. Let me rephrase that...the tickets that include an all-you-can-eat buffet. I hope to get to a game this month and I can't wait to count how many Manny t-shirts are in attendance. I heard that people had them on from game one of his stint here, #99 and all. (side note here...the whole "great one" moniker that certain SportsCenter anchors are using in Manny highlights needs to stop. Seriously. It's an insult to the actual Great One, not that Manny isn't great. He's just not THE Great One) I also really like the fact the Dodgers are the only team in baseball that have the rights to a color; Dodger blue. And there's something really neat about the red numbers on the front of their jerseys. Neat. Hey, that's neat.
I don't know what's gotten into me lately...I'm apparently using the word 'neat'. Must be the weather.
4 comments:
Here's LA from a native's side...
The weather is great until you realize the trees never change colors. The little black guy at The Bean has a possie that will kick your little white ass, so drink the ice and be happy. If the sushi came within 50 miles of the Santa Monica Bay you can rest assure you WILL be sick, clearly you have not yet sat on the 405 at 4:05, always bring a sweatshirt to Dodger Stadium and only eat grilled Dodger dogs, they're the best. All the best in LA, say hi to Lolo. JP
And I have officially been brought back down to earth. Thank you Jackie.
Speaking as a native New Englander the trees turning colors around here are a mixed bag. They look beautiful for approximately 3 weeks, then they fall to the ground, need to be raked up or will get buried in 90 inches of snow.
Constant tree coloring sounds great.
No, NO SNOW sounds even better!
French - beware the sushi that is served in 30 seconds or less. It has probably been sitting out back waiting, because some other jerk ordered it, then left without eating it! Think about it, even "fast food" is not that fast! Attention!
"Dodger Dogs"? They even have hot dogs named after them? Hell, I thought we had the corner on that market, what with "Fenway Franks", "RemDogs", etc. Guess again, eh?
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