Integatron
On the California to New York to California pipeline
The Middlebrow podcast posted something on IG the other day that had me squirming. Brian Park, who I think is hilarious, made a nutshell observation that isn’t new to people in Los Angeles—that their people are vapid. He doubles down, actually, by saying the people Angelenos claim to like the most are the erudite New Yorkers “who have ever read a book in their life.”
Now listen, I wasn’t squirming so much because I was offended. I might have been squirming a little because I wanted his take to be more novel. But I was really squirming because I’d had the same exact thought in this alternative way that I think might make more of the nonsensical insult that Californians are anything less than extraordinary. And that thought is:
Everyone in Los Angeles today somehow is also from New York now, and everyone’s angst about the dual identity is what’s making LA insufferable.
Friends, please don’t come for me. As I explain later, I was raised in LA and left. I feel extremely extremely “a way” about moving back for fear I’m bringing back the worst of this NY bullshit with me. Anyway, I wrote the following in my journal after making a trip to Joshua Tree with my family during the winter holiday, where I was disappointed in myself for falling into the same trap as every other hipster on earth—thinking we were the only ones who had the brilliant idea of going to a magical vortex in the earth to find ourselves because we’re overdoing it as city folk. It’s relevant to this question about LA v NY dichotomies.
1-12-26
Californians went to New York as if a rumspringa and came back with the worst it had to give them, infesting Los Angeles like cane toads in Australia. I include myself in this lot even if I’m petulantly resisting archetype by living in neither. Living in south philly, whatever that means.
The difference between “interesting” and “horrible” is the difference between a bookstore and a gift shop that carries books.
Joshua Tree. I thought it was a good idea to take family there (bookstore), but once in town, I realized everyone else who has “taste in music” was also there (gift shop).
It hurts me how LA has changed. I think of Robert Irwin’s [EDITORIAL ADDITION: I know he’s come up twice in a week now but I swear I namedrop other artists not just Irwin] missives on California—everyone got LA wrong when they assigned it the features of Hollywood at the exclusion of Boyle Heights, of Silver Lake. He wrote that in the 80s. A generation of artful tastemakers have made even those landmarks the central thesis of LA vapity. He was asked if he’d studied Zen Buddhism because of his whole approach to boredom. I loved his answer, which was basically: Studied? Of course not. I know as much about it as every other person who finds a crack in a bowl interesting.
I feel trapped in the east coast out of fealty to Los Angeles. My presence there would be no different from the white expat in Asia.
We bring our motives and our cultures, with a capital(ist) C. Whatever the direction of our travel as Americans. We can’t help it. Nothing is spared our insufferable learnings: not just the chintz on porcelain but the cupcake fetishism of labor rights, the service industry as penury for the influence of gatekeepers growing to an art form glorified by (illegible) and o, that holy rest we are entitled to. Exploding poppies, gallons of plant extracts, the pandemonium of ceremonial prayer bowls. Things meant to be served in minute portions as a reward for frankly annoying work in family, community and neighborhood, now emptied from plastic bladders into our mouths but not before they’re poured secretly into clay pots mass purchased through the back kitchen which always includes a servant’s entrance. Inclusion. People who used to DJ at car shows are all uber drivers now.
This loss of California Integrity is the Integatron©. Milk-shaped non-milk. The problem isn’t what’s inherent to Los Angeles. The problem is the narcotic effect of New York validation everyone brought back with them. Caesar’s thumb = the cane toad.
You can’t get bad Mexican food in New York anymore, but it will keep proving itself, and we still don’t want you here. You can wait in line for coffee served by an art handler. We’re going to get diet coke at the gas station. We have everything we need.
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In the IG post, and to be clear I haven’t listened to the podcast itself because I don’t listen to podcasts which I realize makes me an even more insufferable asshole in the vein of “I don’t own a television” which I also would partake in if I didn’t have a kid, which I also would have participated in as a movement if I had a different set of mental illnesses—so I don’t have all of the context of Brian’s diatribe, but in that IG post, comedian Jenny Yang comments: “i grew up here. yr hanging out with the wrong ppl.” I plus one’ed her comment. I love wonderful LA and it is literally only self-appointed New Yorkers who don’t. I love all of my Los Angeles—the people, the ick, girls in pristine Alo outfits who don’t realize they now look like they’re from Connecticut, the second hand smoke of fun times at thinly veiled orgies on the east side, the absurdity of LA’s diet culture on the west side, and the radicalism of all the fat positive agendered youth everywhere else—and I hope we learn to accept our New York superego for all it is, too. Or to quote the youth pastor from the Korean American megachurch in Buena Park (just outside of LA) whose charisma would have convinced all of us to migrate into the depths of Orange County: love the sinner, not the sin.
