ARTHUR - the magazine

when i first came to l.a. via an internship program they brought in a couple lapd officers to give us the lowdown on safety and one was a totally chill laura harring looking cop and the other looked like bill romanowski. the latter advised us that jaywalkers in l.a. were lawbreakers and if you happened to run one of them over, "no big deal". he also said you should be careful about people pretending to be cops and when a girl asked him what he would do if he pulled her over and asked to see his i.d., he replied, "i'd take you out of the fucking car and put you facefirst on the pavement". then he sort of twitched and the other cop sort of shook her head.

*she asked to see his i.d

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Yeah, they've been beating up Mohawks for decades now.

Milo Z - Re LAPD. I don't have my copy of (of course) Mike Davis - CITY OF QUARTZ at hand (guess where it is...) but there's a good potted history of the LAPD in there. IIRC, the LAPD was flushed and rebooted wholesale after WWII in response to (um) rampant corruption. They trained a whole new force according to military principles, since those had just won the war and blah blah blah. The upshot is that cops in L.A. are trained not to be policemen so much as they are an occupying force... This affects the way they talk, the way they carry themselves, the kind of attitude they bring to bear on the population. They are to Establish and Secure Authority at all times. This plays out all the time in pretty scary ways. And yes, it's been replicated since then in other police 'cultures' around the US. Whatever. No point in getting in a 'my cops are worse than your cops' argument. Just sayin.

most cops i've met are pretty cool

i'm white btw

Amadou Diallo v. Rodney King

and even here I would point out that NYers relations w/cops were not so bad that they BURNED DOWN THEIR CITY in response

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They can't. It's brick.

roflz

sf cops are great! fajita-gate, etc.

all cops suck sorta

but jesus christ, there are better battles to be fought if you wanna get into some hc polarization shit

c'mon, now.

ah fajita-gate. good times.

yeah, i dunno at this point

i would like to live somewhere next to the ocean

weirdly enough, sf was the only place that i have lived post-hs and been on the receiving end of homophobic comments (i ain't even gay, so go figure)

again, i would like to live somewhere next to the ocean

everyone seems to have a litany of complaints regarding where they live and where they've lived in the past. god knows i do.

and again, jay has made a rad magazine out of nothing, which is more than i can say for myself!

pls interview dale pendell, etc...

I love SF, but it is expensive. I now live in the South/Appalachia, which I adore as much as any place I've ever lived. So go figure!

oh, i forgot to add that i would alternatively like to live near mountains! california is an easy target, b/c there is mountains/ocean in close proximity

but i would be cool being in mountains, i think

plus southern ppl are friendly!! no, but, it's true!

nah I love SF, I have no real complaints. I mean yeah I hate the cops here but I would probably hate the cops anywhere. It's my way.

More laffs on the LATimes "comments' -- HOW DARE I SPEAK ILL OF THE MIGHTY KCRW, LISTENED TO FROM COAST TO COAST????

i understand fully. i visited the bay area last month and it was the highlight of my yr thusfar.

when i lived there, it was whole 'nother story entirely-- i was totally miserable for the bulk of it, on a personal level. but, if yr gonna be miserable, you might as well be miserable among beautiful surroundings. e.g., go freak yr neurosis out in hawaii...or alaska...or the himalayas

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.

None of this applies to me in the LEAST and I love L.A. and cheerlead hard. I spent multiple years living at Vermont and 129th St.; on Sycamore Ave. in Hollywood; and Downtown.

But I realized we live in two way different universes when you were psyched about the lack of A.C. in your pad!

I fear you may see that NYC cops aren't that much more awesome than L.A. ones, though, on the South side of Williamsburg.

The times article's comments

Weird. I'm not typing that out again. Oh well.

the LA Times is, for my money, the best written paper in America.

lolololo

http://gawker.com/5028824/la-give-brooklyn-your-tired-your-poor-your-weary

http://blogs.laweekly.com/play/la-to-arthur-magazine-can-we-h/

But I'm sure he'll find the New Times' syndicated content that fills The Village Voice to be far superior to the New Times' syndicated content that fills the L.A. Weekly.

second place in less than 10 minutes where I've seen someone imply Jay is a coke-snorting trustfunder oh teh lolz

I think 99% of them are saying he's a smug douchebag, so for two people to stretch that a little further, really is to be expected.

^^^

B-b-b-but I didn't say those terrible things. Egads. Now I understand why some interviewees record their interviews...

don't worry jay, no press is bad press ;)

anyway lol @ comments section guy calling little joy a coke den, the dude just sits back there and chills and reads new yorker.

have you even read the new yorker dude

jay what do you think about the cover of the new yorker

i imagine that the la times guy must have had a bone to pick or wanted to create some "controversy", assuming the context of the comments is completely missing

no kidding

but still i really don't think l.a. is any worse than nyc except in terms of public transportation and lack of snow and constant presence of cobrasnake

Cobrasnake is never at El Cholo when I am eating mind blowing Green Corn Tamales and having unbelievable non-Mary Ann's margaritas

yeah i can't imagine a better place for food anywhere.

i find it very easy to avoid cobrasnake or anything cobrasnake-related.

but i'm also able to avoid dumb and shallow people and bad experiences with the lapd. i'm unusually blessed.

ay i just moved east from LA and while im not actually living in nyc im spending a lot of time there and even tho i have a lot of affection for LA i can totally understand this sentiment:

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.

ESPECIALLY "I can get anywhere I need to go for $2"

yo I'm jealous of that shit

plus the fucking cops made the taco truck near my work stay away from this area for a few days

For a while, I've been thinking that those two cities cater to different age demographics

How do you see it split?

yah jay's ny sentiments make a lot of sense to me, but then i've only visited ny. san francisco has a similar "omg, people are WALKING... on the STREET" feeling to it, but you know, i've only visited.

i'm pretty sick and tired of l.a., but i'm ready to grant that it has more to do with my neighborhood and state of mind than anything. in my (limited) experience, the easter you go (before the end of the san gabriel valley), the better it gets.

i meet so many douches here though. more than in salt lake city, utah! don't know what that says about me or means...

xp
I'd say LA maybe feels a bit empty when you hit early adulthood and becomes awesome again in your mid-30's?

OTM

or: it's a bad place to move after going to college in some shithole to try and meet people. i'm sure n.y. is just as bad or worse. i dunno

this might be a challops but people in l.a. get SO defensive when they're compared to people in ny. hence that 400+ reply in l.a. weekly to mr. babcock's screed. and responses i've heard in local crowds to ny bands here...

l.a. gets a weird bad rap

yeah, i would totally hate living in a city that hugs the ocean and is relatively affordable and has all kinds of commensurate cultural shit going on