Nothing on Homeless? Skid row? Hollywood aka Pedowood "holier-then thou" losers?
The article seemed more geared toward the upsides.
Notes on Living in Los Angeles
11–20 of 76 posts
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#12At the end of the day, this is an outlook of someone who enjoys the city, and I can get behind that. But there is not much in this article that wouldn't still hold true if you replaced Los Angeles with 'X well known metropolis in the world'. I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago and had a negative mindset going into the move given my circumstances at the time...and you know what, I had a bad attitude that le…
I don't think many other places have the geography or the sprawl but I agree many cities are under appreciated.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#13I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
Of course thesausageking is hyping Chicago ;) I think that’s a tough one to rank as not all great food cities are going to be great at all kinds of food. I’m not familiar with Tokyo for example, but I suspect the Mexican food scene there isn’t as impressive as in LA? Proximity to fresh seafood and fresh produce as well as the strong immigrant communities mentioned in the blog do generally combine to make LA an excell…
I live in Tokyo, if you judge it on cultural variety it's a definite loser (although there is quite a bit of variety, just not comparable to a place like NYC or LA). The reason why I prefer the cuisine there has little to do with that, though. Rather, I've come to love the "taste" of the city, as in the general criteria by which people judge things as "delicious" is very different than what the average New Yorker or San Franciscan would land on.
The Japanese palette tends to favor much lighter flavors, less oily and rich foods than the American palette. People typically value the natural flavors of the ingredients, whereas when eating out in the USA you tend to get really sweet or fatty sauces that mask the flavor of the base ingredients, even at nice restaurants.
It's not that it's better or worse, it's just a different definition of what "delicious" is, and I happen to prefer the Japanese ideal.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#14I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
Of course thesausageking is hyping Chicago ;) I think that’s a tough one to rank as not all great food cities are going to be great at all kinds of food. I’m not familiar with Tokyo for example, but I suspect the Mexican food scene there isn’t as impressive as in LA? Proximity to fresh seafood and fresh produce as well as the strong immigrant communities mentioned in the blog do generally combine to make LA an excell…
That's my point. A lot of cities have great food scenes, so saying "LA is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" says more about the author than LA.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#15I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
As a Bay Area transplant to LA I would say that Los Angeles has a large and diverse food scene. There are lots of places to get good food, and because there are so many places it never felt that hard to get reservations. Even a place as famous as Bestia I was able to get same day reservations twice.
Contrast that with lines around the block to get good, but not life changing Ramen (Orenchi, South Bay Area). Or a near-mandatory hour wait for great Ramen (Ramen Shop, Oakland). Or giving up and never going because bots took all the reservations* (State Bird Provisions, SF).
* this is not fully accurate. A friends bot once went haywire and got too many reservations. I was able to attend on a spare reservation.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#16I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
Some of this depends on what you eat. I’m vegetarian, and yes I know Catalan food is supposed to be excellent, but I would just never personally put Barcelona in my top-10 for food.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#17> My impression is that Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close. I have a galaxy-brained theory about why this is. Restaurants decline when they sell prestige, rather than food. (This is why Manhattan is often not a good place to eat.)
Stops reading and closes the window. Seriously, what the hell. LA is a great place to eat, but for the love of G... Paris? Tokyo? NYC also kicks LA's ass to the ground regarding food. I know my food, LA's great, but come on.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#18> The average walking experience is poor, but the peak walking experience is marvelous.
I feel this applies to almost everything about Los Angeles - the average anything probably sucks, but the peak is probably ether than you’re gonna find almost anywhere. What makes LA so great for me is that you can get those peak experiences in so many different areas of life.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#19I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
For some weighting of variety and quality it probably does very well. But yeah, this is best read as a love letter, where some qualities of the beloved are overlooked. Similarly, "if you wake up at dawn in Los Angeles, and you have good time management skills, you can go for a walk on the beach, then go skiing in the afternoon, then fall asleep in the high desert at night" is probably true, but you'd better like the…
Where I grew up, we would make a big deal out of the one-time-a-year we did ANY of those three things on an annual vacation. So while doing them in one day seems impractical, being able to do them without it being a fairly big trip is something decidedly different than north Texas or similar swathes of the middle of the country. It's nice that the author still appreciates the access to nature.
Re: Notes on Living in Los Angeles
#20I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
Manhattan is also better by the way. The sole fact that they have the way more interesting wine lists everywhere is already half of the battle won.