New York City 🍕 vs. Los Angeles 🌮 [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

Welcome to this month’s super special newsletter for paid subscribers only! Or, if you’re not a paid subscriber, welcome to the preview for this month’s super special newsletter before it cuts off and the paywall kicks in! 😈 Today I’m getting into the nitty gritty of the ultimate showdown: New York City vs. Los Angeles. I hope you stick around for it!

How are you? I hope you’re doing well! I am starting to write this on President’s Day in the U.S., which is a bullshit holiday, but I have to wonder, does the harm of honoring a bunch of terrible old white dudes outweigh the good of having a day off from work? I slept in past eleven today. And really, isn’t that the least those dusty old pricks could do to make up for their sins? I always feel conflicted about holidays like this, that purport to celebrate something in history that was actually awful, Thanksgiving being the prime example. I certainly don’t want to “celebrate” genocide or oppression, but like… please don’t take away the day(s) off, either, we have so few reprieves from the toils of capitalism!!! (Okay, fine, that’s an exaggeration, my “toils” are posting comedy videos all day.)

I’ve been playing a ton of Stardew Valley lately. The game first came out in 2016, but I’ve been playing since 2020, which was the perfect time to discover it, I think, since it is immersive and extremely soothing. On the surface, it’s a farming sim, but it’s actually a really well-rounded world full of rich characters and challenging quests. It also has fantastic music, which always amazes me when a game comes from a single game designer–you mean you programmed this whole world, wrote all the dialogue, AND composed the music? Dude. There’s also a whole combat element to the game if you choose to dive into it, by fighting monsters in the town’s mines. I surprised myself with how into that part of the game I got, since I don’t generally play games with combat (unless you consider thinking up creative ways to murder my Sims “combat”).

Right now I am trying to achieve “perfection” in the game to unlock whatever final, special thing happens, but it’s so hard! One part that is tripping me up is maxing out my social points with everyone in town. There’s this one little girl, Jas, who is such a brat and so hard to become friends with!! The two villager kids are the last people I built social points with, because why would I, a successful adult farmer, become friends with two random children?? That’s creepy.

One aspect of that game that is interesting to me is that you can date some of the villagers. I ended up dating all the eligible guys eventually just to see what would happen (they all have cut scenes when you get your social points high enough while dating them). I always think it’s interesting, though, who people choose to marry. My first boyfriend was Elliot, a writer with long dirty blonde hair who lives in a shack by the ocean and is working on his novel. I mean, duh, right? But I actually ended up marrying Shane, who is pretty much universally disliked on the Stardew subreddit. Shane is a beer-guzzling slacker who works at the Joja Mart (like a Wal-Mart, basically) and is downright hostile to you until you get his friendship level high enough. It takes forever for him to warm up to you, but then he’s really sweet. He also has a special relationship with chickens. He’s like a borderline alcoholic, depressed Gonzo, basically. Of course he had to be the father of my children! (Children which I eventually got rid of and turned into doves because they were too annoying. Oh, yeah, and then I got bored with Shane and divorced him, too, and he went back to being hostile. But now we’re cool again. The drama!!!)

At first glance, Shane is nothing like my actual, IRL husband, but then I thought about it some more. Ross isn’t hostile to new people, but when I first met him, he did very much have that “charming asshole” thing going on, although not in the way that some guys think they’re a charming asshole but they’re really just an asshole-asshole. Take two seconds to get to know Ross even a little and he is the sweetest person you’ve ever met, a veritable Library of Alexandria of cute animal videos, but he also has a very dry, dark sense of humor and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I think that is a Capricorn thing, although any Capricorn I know would say that astrology is all bullshit, of course.

Alright, let’s get to the heart of things, eh?

New York City vs. Los Angeles

There are certain Americans who act as though New York City and Los Angeles were the only two cities in the country; or, at least, certainly the only two cities worth spending time in. I remember watching the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and while Joan was doing stand-up somewhere in the Midwest she told the camera something like, “God, go outside of New York and L.A. and there’s just nothing.” I think about that moment all the time. Personally, I love getting to spend time in smaller cities and towns. Portland delivers every single time I go up there, New Orleans is a blast, Nashville is charming, Denver is beautiful, Palm Springs is delightful, Burlington, Vermont is lovely, Philly is super fun, and I love tiny hippie-dippy towns like New Hope, Pennsylvania and Ithaca, New York.

I grew up in northern New Jersey, where we all referred to Manhattan simply as “The City.” If someone was “going into the city,” there was no question which city. My aunt’s family lived on the Upper East Side, and growing up, I would go visit them on holidays, and go on field trips to museums in the city with school. After college, I moved to Brooklyn, and lived there from 2010-2015, after which point I moved to Los Angeles. So, while technically I’ve lived in Los Angeles two years longer than I lived in Brooklyn, both New York City and Los Angeles feel like home to me. I love both cities very, very much, and I wish they weren’t so far away from each other, because I hate flying.

Here are my thoughts on the great coastal divide, inspired by Lizzie Logan’s wonderful piece on the subject:

- New York is a fun place to visit, but a hard place to live. L.A. is a hard place to visit, but a fun place to live.

- When L.A. gets cold, it feels colder than New York. Let me explain what I mean by that. Now, obviously, New York drops into lower temperatures, but if you live in the city, you’re equipped to handle it. My apartments in New York always had the most insane steam heat systems that often led to me cracking open a window in the middle of winter to get some relief. Apartments in Los Angeles have, like, one weird heater in the living room that barely works. Also: New York has humidity. People say that L.A. has a dry heat in the summer; well, it has a dry cold in the winter, too. Fifty-five degrees in L.A. is so different from fifty-five degrees in New York! In New York, I could be in a t-shirt, while in L.A., I’d be in a sweater.

- In my experience, L.A. is more liberal than New York. People think of New York as this crazy liberal enclave, but there are a lot of different types of people who live there, including plenty of Trump fans. Angelenos are firstly Californians, which means they are softer, and believe in sunshine and rainbows for everyone. In New York, lots of people are Republicans because they just have too much money and don’t want to share any of it, and that’s somehow socially acceptable; in L.A., even a lot of the rich people are Democrats, at least on paper. Look at the recent mayoral race: it was technically Democrat vs. Democrat, even though Rick Caruso is an anti-choice piece of shit who was a Republican five minutes ago, but he knew he couldn’t win with that label (he didn’t win anyway, thank God. Take that, Gwyneth Paltrow!). You have to go to Orange County to find the real, shameless Republicans.

- New York is an angry city much of the time. It’s too fucking cold and too fucking expensive and everyone is in a hurry because their jobs work them too hard. Los Angeles has numbed their anger with sunshine and meditation and weed, and their impatience only comes out in traffic.

- But also: New Yorkers are always rushing because in a city packed with so many people, being quick is how you show consideration to the other people around you. It’s actually a politeness thing. That said, there is very little grace afforded to anyone who does not get this, which is where the time-tested tradition of yelling at tourists for blocking the sidewalk comes from.

- My experience of working full-time in both cities was that I worked much harder in New York. People in L.A. will think they work really hard and then you’ll find out that they went and took a nap mid-day or got a massage at lunch or some bullshit. We also don’t really have the finance industry here as it exists in New York, which, in my opinion, drives a lot of the toxic productivity culture there.

- So, this topic actually turned out to be rather timely, because apparently there was much hub-bub on Twitter recently because someone said that L.A. doesn’t have good food (or so I’ve heard–I quit Twitter in November 😎). People say that a lot, and every time, I really have to wonder where they are eating, because I think the food out here is bangin’. Sometimes I think these detractors must only be eating “white people food,” but then, no, we have pretty amazing brunch and fast food and New American options, too. Maybe they are only eating at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurants? That was definitely the most disappointing food I’ve had in L.A. But in general, I feel like the food scene in L.A. is made up of people quietly working very hard and making amazing food that somehow flies under the radar of national attention, maybe because so many of them are people of color, and, you know: racism exists. San Francisco and Portland are usually more seen as the west coast food cities, but ask yourself why that is. Is the answer “white people?” I think it might be.

This is a sizzling hot take, but I actually think L.A. has better food than New York. I know! I know. Don’t get me wrong, New York has incredible food, it’s a tight race. For me, it just comes down to the availability of fresh ingredients. Produce in New York can be a bit depressing. And look, every summer I definitely long for the east coast tomatoes we used to get from our local farmstand when I was growing up in New Jersey. But I’ll never forget the first time I came out here and had a fresh California orange. Or a salad! Salads out here actually taste like something!

People say that you can’t get good Mexican food in New York or good Italian food in L.A., but they’re ignorant and wrong. Here’s the thing: great Mexican food is everywhere in L.A., at all price points, from the taco stand on your corner to the fancy all-vegan place in WeHo (I know it has haters, but I like Gracias Madre!). You might have to look a little harder or go to Queens to get it in New York, but it’s certainly there. It’s the same for Italian food: you can get a great piece of pizza at any random slice shop in New York, while you have to look harder for it in L.A. I tend to think that the upscale Italian food in L.A. is quite good, but it is very hard to find the homey, cheese-covered aluminum take-out trays of my youth. And good luck finding a penne vodka anywhere, it weirdly doesn’t exist out here.

L.A. has decent Chinese food that rises to greatness if you venture out to the San Gabriel Valley, but New York Chinese food is its own incomparable thing. Taiwanese food is more popular in Los Angeles, I think–Din Tai Fung and Pine & Crane are both pretty iconic. Korean food is great in both cities. Sushi and Thai food are better in L.A. The spicy tuna rolls are actually spicy out here! Food is just spicier in general in Los Angeles than in New York.

I miss New York bagels so much that at least once a year when a New Yorker comes to visit me, they’ll bring me a dozen in their suitcase. Then I freeze them and portion them out like little treasures, which they are. I actually live near a great bagel place (by L.A. standards), but they wouldn’t hold up against a New York bagel, that’s for sure.

Drunk food in New York is eating pizza on the street. Drunk food in L.A. is either a taco truck parked at a gas station or fast food.

- Public transit is the great equalizer in New York, because everyone takes the subway. People are very snobby about public transit in Los Angeles; “who even takes that?” Um, almost a million people a day? I used to live near a red line subway stop in L.A. and would regularly take it into Hollywood to go the old iO West theater (RIP) or downtown to protest things at City Hall. My husband has used the subway for years as part of his commute to work.

I have met people who proudly don’t have cars in Los Angeles, and while that’s a noble move, they always end up either showing up late because public transit is unpredictable or bumming a ride, which gets old. People who have cars in New York are always complaining about something like alternate side parking or whatever that nobody cares about because nobody else has a car.

- People in the service industry in New York are allowed to be surly. People in the service industry in Los Angeles are some of the best looking people alive. 

- San Francisco hates Los Angeles, while Los Angeles thinks SF is pretty chill. Boston hates New York, while New York doesn’t think about Boston at all.

- If we’re talking about sense of style, it’s not even close. New Yorkers are some of the most stylish people in the world. People in Los Angeles wear gym clothes everywhere because they’re always working out. It’s very frustrating to me how casual everyone is, as someone who likes to put little outfits together. I can’t tell you how many times in L.A. I’ve been the only person in a room wearing eyeshadow, or a dress, or heels. 

- I have been broke and unemployed in both cities. New York is expensive, but there was definitely something romantic about being young and broke there in my 20s, finding the cheap Chinese lunch specials and the pay-what-you-will yoga classes and the bar that will give you a whole pizza for every beer you buy. It was fun, but it got old once I got into my late 20s. Being broke in L.A. is much more pleasant, because the weather often feels like vacation, and the beach is free. Plus, lots of people work weird schedules or have periods of unemployment, so if you’re not working, you have plenty of company.

- Here is my list comparing the two cities from 2015, after I had just visited L.A. for the first time. I still stand by most of this, except where noted:

LA: ScientologyNY: Hasidic Jews

LA: A guy on a skateboard being pulled around by his pitbullNY: A guy on a unicycle walking his (embarrassed) dog 

LA: HillsNY: Bridges

LA: Working outNY: Cigarettes

LA: Medical marijuana*NY: Delivery service*

*Both cities now have recreational cannabis.

LA: Having to make small talk with your Lyft driverNY: Having to trick your cab into taking you to Brooklyn

LA: Burritos**NY: Pizza

**After further research, I would say we’re really more of a taco town.

LA: SushiNY: Chinese food

LA: BurgersNY: Bagels

LA: Avocado on everythingNY: Bacon on everything

LA: People pushing pugs in baby strollersNY: People pushing pugs in baby strollers

LA: SmogNY: Garbage

LA: Sitting in trafficNY: Getting squooshed on the subway

LA: Palm treesNY: Brownstones

LA: California Don DraperNY: New York Don Draper

Alright, folks, that’s enough out of me!

Don’t forget to like or comment on this newsletter if you’d care to–you can use the buttons at the bottom or the top.

Until next time—enjoy your city.

Love,

Liz

XOXO