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Rip Rense is feeling so down on L.A. these days that today he ripped off a second Riposte column for the week. He calls it "This Town is Toast." His timing was off on that first complaint:
It almost never rains anymore. The much ballyhooed L.A. sunshine is a party guest that never, ever leaves. After a while, you feel like if you just confess, they'll turn the light out and leave you alone. Even if you didn't stick up the 7-11. Vin Scully is getting old. Chick Hearn is gone. The Apple Pan and Musso & Frank's can't possibly last. Philippe's is often messy and the sandwiches are smaller. Chinatown is Vietnamesetown...Only about five people in all of L.A. take this place seriously as a community. One of them is the superbly prepared and poised host of KPCC's "Air Talk," Larry Mantle. Another is cornpone Huell Howser of KCET. You want to kind of whisper in their ears, "psst---nobody cares." The local paper puts local news in section two.
Hope he's feeling cheerier now that it's pouring.
Rip almost never feels cheerier, unless he's actually at Philippe's...
Posted by: Cathy Seipp at November 1, 2003 10:03 AMRip Rense comes close to expressing my feelings about inordinately incessant glaring clear skies. It's obscene. Even Honolulu has the common sense and decency to have rain every afternoon.
Posted by: Relevant or Irrelevant? at November 1, 2003 01:54 PMThe Apple Pan and Musso and Frank's are here to stay.
Posted by: Tiffany at November 1, 2003 06:28 PMSpeaking as one who has always liked parts of LA but never really warmed to the place as a whole, I must say that I'm just as ambivalent about it as I ever was.
I do, however, love Southern California as much as ever, endless boring sunshine, boring disgruntled writers, firestorms, and all.
Laurie K.
Posted by: Laurie K. at November 2, 2003 12:29 AMI was utterly shocked by the rain, and was just starting to cheer up a little. . .when it ended.
Posted by: Rip at November 2, 2003 10:32 AMLove it here and I love Huell, but I think Larry must be sacrifing goats to have that gig. He has the 2nd most annoying voice in radio. His preparation is great but who cares? His insights are ehh.
Posted by: rachel at November 2, 2003 11:02 AMRe Chandler Pavilion and Disney Hall...love 'em both! The best of the nouveau (with great sound too!!), the best of 1960s-chandelier-with-columns traditionalism. They're like the old-fashioned mother and up-and-coming son sitting side by side.
Thanks to both Welton Becket and Frank Gehry.
Posted by: Kallie at November 2, 2003 11:41 AMComing to Los Angeles when you can't stand constant sunshine is like going to Casablanca for the waters. Didn't you read the brochure?
Posted by: Robert Fiore at November 2, 2003 05:10 PMFifty years ago, when I slipped into this world via Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, and took up residence in Chavez Ravine, I couldn't read. Incidentally, it was also raining.
Posted by: Rip at November 3, 2003 10:39 AMPiece is right on the money. It couldn't be more true. Having worked here in the local sports media for 5 years and also spent a goodly amount of time in bars around SoCal for SbB, I've seen the laissez-faire attitude up close.
I've also worked in the media in 11 other cities and none of those places compare to the general nonchalance of Angelenos. Althought to be fair, the folks in the surrounding regions (Pasadena, Valley, South Bay, LBC, etc.) seem to care a helluva lot more about their town than Westsiders.
Posted by: Brooks at November 3, 2003 01:02 PML.A. is like the Diogenes Club in the Sherlock Holmes stories -- a place for people who want all the amenities of a city while having as little to do with their fellow citizens as possible.
If the idea was that L.A. was supposed to be like every other city in the country then we blew that one a long time ago . . .
Posted by: Robert Fiore at November 3, 2003 04:08 PMthe westside is full of do gooders who love to put on a show of touchy feeliness, but god help them if they have to drive over to some trashy neighborhood in LA that's full of poor folk from the third world.
Posted by: Dave at November 3, 2003 05:19 PMDave,
And that "trashy neighborhood" would be Culver City! Laf.
Posted by: Brooks at November 4, 2003 04:18 PM
of LA Observed
What a lot of people don't understand about Raymond Chandler is that his disenchantment is not that of the disdainful outsider but of one who came to L.A. when it was one thing and then watched it become something else. This is a nearly universal experience if you stay long enough; if you don't leave L.A., L.A. will leave you. Of course, the L.A. that disenchanted Chandler is the one that James Ellroy and Robert Towne pine for. I have to admit that I liked the L.A. I came to 25 years ago more than the one I'm living in now (one thing I didn't realize in 1978 was that white flight hadn't happened yet). Nevertheless, for my own part I don't see anywhere that's any more like L.A. used to be than L.A.
Regarding Rip Rense, you have to wonder about the taste of someone who thinks Disney Hall is vulgar and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion isn't.
Posted by: Robert Fiore at November 1, 2003 05:08 AM