“Welcome to Los Angeles”? Thanks, but no, thanks—I’m from New York. I don’t need to engage in cordial small talk with strangers. In New York, we greet newcomers by giving them incorrect directions to Times Square and criticizing the way they spread their cream cheese.
Already ripe avocados? Get out of here with that nonsense, Ralphs. I’m from New York, where, in lieu of avocados, grocery stores put out six hundred petrified dragon eggs and shoppers must squeeze every last one of them before buying the softest but still rock-hard option, and then bring it home and watch it go from unripe to completely rotten without ever once being edible. That’s how New Yorkers do avocados.
Oh, L.A. has perfect weather? More like pathetic weather. I’m from New York, where the weather is only nice two days a year, and do you know what we do on those two days? We stay inside and work, because we’re New Yorkers and we’ve got too much stuff to do to care that it’s lovely outside. We only find out that it was nice at the end of the day, when we’re leaving our offices at 9 P.M., and a co-worker says something in the elevator about the weather. Do we feel regret that we missed our chance to experience an actually enjoyable climate? No! We just wish this other person would stop talking to us, so we can escape into the now freezing/scalding/hailing/pit-stain/slush-bucket awful environment that awaits.
A two-bedroom house with a front yard and a back yard? Psh. What do you need all that space for? Yoga? I’m from New York. I once paid two thousand dollars a month to live in the freight elevator of the former Filene’s Basement, in Union Square. Then I paid five thousand dollars a month to live in the garbage chute of a postwar luxury condominium on First Avenue. It’s important to live in terrible places when you’re young. A postwar! On First Avenue! That’s how you build character. All of this “actual house” business makes you soft.
A kale-apple-ginger cold-pressed juice? Yeah, right. I’m from New York, where we’re given a lipstick-stained mug filled with dirty hot-dog water to carry down Sixth Avenue until a big drop of what is either Legionnaire’s-disease-infected air-conditioner leak or somebody else’s spit lands in it, then we drink that to get our immune-system boost, thank you very much.
Would I like to go on a hike? A hike? Do you know what we call a hike in New York? We call it walking. And I walk all the time. Once, I walked nine miles through the streets of Los Angeles, tiptoed through the hobo village under a 101 overpass, got briefly trapped on a crosswalk-less median, and then stood on line behind waiting cars to enter the Warner Bros. lot. Because I’m not a Hollywood wuss. I’m from New York. I don’t drive. I don’t know how to drive. I don’t know how to do something that teen-agers can do, and I’m proud of it. That’s how much of a New Yorker I am.
You let people buy specific seats at this movie theatre? What the hell is wrong with you? I’m from New York. I believe in a first-come, first-served free-for-all in a dark room where everything is damp with synthetic butter. If you don’t need to get there early to wrestle for a seat, you’ll miss all the celebrity-name scrambles, trivia about movies from eight years ago, and, of course, the commercials. When I pay fifteen dollars to see a film, you’d better believe I want to watch at least twelve ads before it as well. Your theatres also sell cocktails you can legally enjoy in your seat? Uh, I’m good. I think I’ll stick with the three Coors Light tall boys I snuck in in a long-stemmed umbrella. I know what I’m doing.
No, I don’t need my parking validated. I didn’t drive here, because I’m from New York and I don’t know how to drive. I told you this already. You thought I was joking? I make much better jokes than that, because I’m from New York and we all have a dry, intellectual wit. I once saw “Much Ado About Nothing” performed entirely by rats and a pigeon on a G train that was being held by the dispatcher between stations. It was magnificent and repulsive. Now please stop talking to me while I wait for Ramon, my Uber driver/chillwave d.j./improv student, to arrive.
Move back to New York? Come on. I’m from New York. I’m not going back there.
