ARTHUR - the magazine

dude if yr in the publishng business you go where the publishers are

also advertising $$$

i'm not an LA expert.

as far as where i'd go to hang out on vacation, NYC every time.

but honestly there's something about the messiness and sprawl and weirdness and randomness of LA that seems to me like it would be more conducive to a *real* arts/music scene evolving...lots of abandoned places and space, where NYC is too cramped and media microscope, it seems like it's hard for stuff to breath, literally and figuratively.

art needs a place to hide

but what do i know i'm just thinking out loud

I will say this. It's easy to start your own thing in L.A. and NYC moreso than other cities, mainly because things get built up and shut down in both cities all the goddamn time. I got sick of it and moved to Seattle, one of many reasons being that Seattle (as one example) has had some consistent assemblence of arts support. It may not be perfect, but it's been alive and not-so-fucked-with-as-much for decades. Also, I got sick of having to build from scratch over and over again -- like booking bands at Koo's Cafe in Santa Ana only to have the police bust it the year after I moved. Greater NYC and greater LA fucking eat people. I don't want to move to cities where I try to fucking duck and hide all the time.

As for the "dude if yr in the publishng business you go where the publishers are" comment, don't get me started on the cynicism and arguments I have with this concept of LA and NYC being the only places to make this happen.

things happen in portland, oregon (in the pacific northwest) and austin, texas (in the south, and in the same state as houston!) too

atlanta is pretty good from what i hear too

the twin cities have stuff. like places to look at art nobody likes and hear dudes making a godawful racket.

arthur, i think we have a winner

'Because I'm an Ohioan -- Cincinnati -- who was born in Louisville, I wanted to find out what was happening downriver along the Ohio. Overall, I discovered an intriguing, funky scene and a good-humored, pop-culture-savvy populace . . . plus more.'

twin cities have always sounded really awesome to me. too bad it's so goddam cold there.

Whoa, boy do I sound like a doofus. Talk about quotes being taken way way waaaaaay out of context, and all the nuances and buts and commas and em dashes and so on being dropped. Ah well, good for some chuckles for everybody.

Obviously there's plenty of awesome people in L.A. and plenty of awful stuff in NYC. But NYC is a more hospitable environment for publishing. So, we're gonna try and make a go of it here. 's all!

Best of luck! (seriously)

I think I support much of what you are interested in accomplishing, based on reading yr magazine, but...yr approach leaves a lot to be desired, from my perspective.

commas and em dashes

These only would have made your vitriol sound more premeditated!

Good to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Good luck with it all. And goddamnit, send some more issues to London! (Fine, I'll subscribe).

I still love L.A., though, and miss it like a son of a bitch!

The dude asked me if Hollywood/Westside people bailed out Arthur when we needed $20k and I said No, those people are all busy blogging on Huffington Post, the people that helped us in L.A. were poor artists and other folks [see the benefit at the Silent Movie Theatre last year]. But the way it reads makes it sound like I feel ENTITLED to SERIOUS CHECKS from All My Celebrities. It's weird. I told the dude about the bummer that is Sam Zell... the bummer that is Rick Caruso... the overdevelopment that is going on in L.A., which adds to the traffic and smog and stress and misery and crowded schools, and ... he didn't include it. On and on. Ah well. Good for some chuckles, maybe even some laughs -- I mean check out the LATimes comment board -- how dare I leave the city of SILVERSUN PICKUPS???? Oy vey.

yeah, but every-fucking-place sucks in its own way, obv.

dell - There's a special flavor of suck to L.A. -- but yeah, it can be an okay place to live if, like Seward said, you have a chauffeur!!! In the end, the people that seem to dig L.A. the most -- or cheerlead for it hardest -- are the ones who can afford to insulate themselves from its faults. These are the people who send their kids to private schools, only get their health care at Cedars-Sinai or UCLA, live up in the Hills beyond the shit and the crime and the ever-dumber billboards and the random shootings and the shitty stucco-and-plastic architecture and miles-long shopping malls that all the rest of us have to live amongst. What can I say? Not my cup o tea. So it goes! I gave the place 20 years, that's enough.

Also dell -- L.A. police are A BREED APART.

well, that's not L.A. but about 90% of California... Blame Prop 13.

Sean Bell RIP

Yeah Prop 13 killed California that's for sure. Mackro OTM.

The cops in L.A. shoot, harass and intimidate a lot more people than the NYPD do, QN. Cops in L.A. are on steroids, they're trained military-style, and they've got helicopters! Lookit up. Awesome.

i agree with a lot of arthur dude's points actually, mostly about liveability and this sense of dread i tend to have about spending more than a few more years in this city, even though i have a ton of friends here and a decent pad and a steady gig.

you want publishing, come move to quebec. quebecor yo.

...but yeah, it can be an okay place to live if, like Seward said, you have a chauffeur!!

haha, yeah, i feel like i would do that in a second!

In the end, the people that seem to dig L.A. the most -- or cheerlead for it hardest -- are the ones who can afford to insulate themselves from its faults.

meh, there are countless other cities that one could make the same complaint about, though, right? most definitely, including nyc/brooklyn.

What can I say? Not my cup o tea. So it goes! I gave the place 20 years, that's enough.

awesome. i respect yr life experience. best of luck to you!!

also, try to interview dale pendell!! and karl jansen!! seriously!

it't the usual thing; if i've invested enough energy in questioning yr publication's output or whatever, then i obv. respect where you're cominng from. but i still am suspect of scenic motives

you want publishing, come move to quebec. quebecor yo

what d'ya mean by that? just out of curiosity...b/c i have a friend who is moving to quebec next month

insulate themselves from its faults

jay--i'm sorry you had such an awful experience in los anegles. where did you live during your twenty years here? were the people the same kind of dumb and shallow everywhere? why did you wait so long to escape? good luck in brooklyn--i'm sure you'll be a much better fit there.

but i still am suspect of scenic motives

that was couched horribly

sorry

how dare I leave the city of SILVERSUN PICKUPS???? Oy vey.

sorry I went to lunch and missed this lolololol

It's not that I'm moving to NYC for a "scene" -- I never said that anywhere!!! Ay yi yi. There's a lot more art, music, dance and yes thinkers and readers and who knows maybe even some new partners and advertisers and OMG really great street league hoops that is a lot more fun to watch than the NBA bazillionaires. Geez louise. We're just doing our thing. Sorry I was so poorly quoted everybody! But that's what's going on at the LATimes! They've gone from 1200 reporters to 700. It's gonna be the Weekly Reader with Page 3 girls by October at the rate Zell is going.

i just don't understand ppl who move to the east coast from the west coast

when i lived in philly, every time someone would say they were moving to california we would say: "great, have fun! we'll miss you! *see you in six months*."

that last part we would say under our breath or in our heads. and then when we saw that person again in six months we would ask them how their trip was!

Cops in L.A. are on steroids, they're trained military-style, and they've got helicopters! Lookit up. Awesome.

Jay, you're moving to the city of that thing called "911." You don't think they have helicopters and a bulked-up police force trained in military-style surveillance and crowd control?

I'm sorry but the disparity between the have and the have-nots is no diff in NYC than it is in any other metropolis.

i know. the times isn't great and it's getting worse. public radio stinks. the fascists shut down your no age show. nobody noticed that you'd left. traffic is bad during most times of day.

what neighborhoods did you live in?

that last part we would say under our breath or in our heads. and then when we saw that person again in six months we would ask them how their trip was!

lolz my friends from Philly out here have nothing but horror stories whenever they come back from a visit - mostly about how crack and crime are even worse than they were in the 80s, etc

I've got a $500/mo room in a shared, non-A/Ced apartment in an awesomely Puerto Rican-heavy area of S'Side W'burg and IT IS LOUD ALL THE TIME AND IT IS AWESOME. I can get anywhere I need to go for $2. And there is stuff going on every night. Feels a lot safer than L.A. cuz there's always people on the street. Total classic Jane Jacobs scene. I'm digging it.

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Philly is one rough town.

i dont gte why this dude doesn't live in san francisco i thought that's where all the hippies were

More like a Midwestern city, but with old east coast buildings!

I could give a shit whether anybody knew I'd left. That's another one of those lame Answers he made up a question for. He asked when I was moving to NY and I said Dude I'm already here. Arthur wasn't an "L.A. thing" -- if it was, people would've known we were gone.

The No Age/LA River thing is part of a larger issue having to do with access to nature in general and to the River in particular. Check my "Nature Trumps" blog -- it wasn't just the No Age show they've been going after (and btw, it wasn't cops, it was rangers), they've been ticketing fishermen and duckfeeders. And removing sanctioned graffiti murals. The level of bullshit is high.

re: COPS AND THEIR COPTERS. I've heard one here in the last 5 weeks. In Atwater Village in L.A. we had them almost every night. It's a style of policing they do in L.A. because of the sprawl. Read up on it. It's not that other PDs don't have copters, it's that in LA they have SO MANY and they use them all the time. They're also trained military-style. There's BOOKS on this stuff, dude.

i miss philly. after i left it became the big hot town for ex-nyc hepcats or something. or that's what i read in the paper. and jess from the gilmore girls opened up a cool publishing house/gallery. i love jess.

i just assumed this magazine was from SF

dude SF is fucking expeeeeeeeensive!

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NY is fucking expensive

Yes, you're the only one who reads. You are the enlightened hippie living in America's last stand for culture and art, and everyone else in America is a know-nothing. Dork.

i moved from d.c. to sf. sf was great.

except it only rained for a few months out of the year. that sort of broke me.

i moved from sf to philly.

philly sucks. except it rains sometimes.

Sorry, that's how all of us living in the wasteland talk.

what d'ya mean by that? just out of curiosity...b/c i have a friend who is moving to quebec next month

-- dell, Thursday, July 24, 2008 8:28 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

quebecor, who i work for, pretty much prints everything in existence

"There's BOOKS on this stuff, dude."

and every movie about L.A.! i'm kinda scared of L.A. just from scary movies. but intrigued too.