Now I am by no means a Los Angeles resident or consider myself from Los Angeles. I moved here in December 2008 and have barely experienced the joys of surviving in Los Angeles. I thought I wouldn’t really learn much or experience many “new things” since I traveled here so frequently for work over the past few years. Well after being here a little over a month these are the things I have learned….these are the 10 Things I didn’t learn about Los Angeles until I actually moved to Los Angeles.
10. Los Angeles has amazing hamburgers and hamburger culture everywhere. The hamburger is my second favorite food item behind pizza and while putting forth great effort I have yet to eat at most of the amazing burger spots in Los Angeles. How I visited here for so long and remained unaware of this burger sensation in LA is beyond me to this moment! I will credit it with most of my friends being trendy “vegans” or into the lamest craze diet and unable to consume these products. If you really have doubts on the burger history of Los Angeles they made a movie about it called “Burgertown” which you can watch for free on Hulu so check it out.
9. People actually parallel park in Los Angeles. The only reason I kind of know how to do it or even what it is stems from the fact that to get my Georgia driver’s license I had to do it. In high school we talked about how stupid/funny it was that they made us do this because who in the world would parallel park? Once arriving in LA I figured I would just excuse myself from the task because I have a mid range semi luxury/performance car and surely that was a good enough reason to valet. That lasted about a week until I came to realize two very important things. I had spent $150 valet parking and watched one valet set off my car alarm and stall it twice driving it 500 feet to where I stood (not quite woth $150)! No one is above street parking here because you can find the likes of cars worth more than $250,000 wedged between cars everyday. Thankfully I have a backup camera!
8. Things like this photo above no longer shock me….if I saw someone dressed like above before living in Los Angeles I would either run away and hide or assume I missed the fact that today was Halloween. Now I just assume that someone is filming a movie or it’s Friday night.
7. How can we not talk about these tour buses…..Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed blocks from my current residence in Hollywood. No one really seems to find this a big deal EXCEPT every tourist from the midwest. These Hollywood Star buses are super annoying because they just stop randomly on the streets everywhere so these people can take pictures of places that look no different than any other block in Los Angeles. This boggles my mind.
6. Parking is virtually extortion anywhere in LA. It’s not like most major cities (Atlanta, Chicago, NYC) where the locals “know the spots to park.” These do not exist in LA, you are either going to pay $10 to valet, illegally park somewhere else, or stuff the meter and set your cell phone to go off 1 minute before it expires for a fill up. Most likely you will have several rolls of quarters in your glove box. If you actually take the time to read the 16 No Parking Signs or “Parking Rules” you won’t understand them anyway.
5. The years I wasted watching Saved by the Bell on TBS really taught me some useful things about California culture. Nobody likes the valley and anything over the hill is “uncool”, “gross”, and such “lower class” than everything in Los Angeles. Yet if you go to the valley nobody seems to be thrilled on Los Angeles. It’s just like the old Bayside/Valley High School wars I use to watch on TV. The secret here is 95% of the Los Angeles transplants all lived in the valley at some point before making it into actual Los Angeles County.
4. When your 2 miles away from someone that does not convert into 2 minutes. This was a habit I got into living on the east coast, it was simple math. Quickly I found that this is NEVER the case in Los Angeles. In fact, I found it a very hard habit to break and in turn was constantly late to appointments and meetings. In Los Angeles 2 miles is 20 minutes, it’s an easy formula, just move the decimal point. 1.5 miles is 15 minutes and 4 miles is just too far.
3. The only girls who actually WANT you to talk to them in LA are from the midwest. They are either aspiring movie stars/musicians/models but yet they all work in the food service Industry and YES they have a headshot/reel/demo tape. Please keep in mind they were the popular girls in high school (in case you were curious!)
2- People just don’t wear sunglasses to look cool in LA like the east coast. I have owned a nice pair of Electric Sunglasses for about a year that just sat in my door collecting dust. Once arriving in LA I have to use them at least once a day to avoid being blinded by the sunlight. Try driving down the 10 West an hour or two before sunset or really anywhere west in the evening and you will either put sunglasses on or crash.
1- No matter what anyone tells you, Los Angeles has HORRIBLE pizza everywhere. For a city so full of culture and delicious food (like the hamburgers mentioned in #10) you won’t see this one coming but as a diehard pizza fan I will tell you this has almost been the death of me. Luckily, I enlisted the advise of a former Philadelphia resident who pointed me to the only “acceptable” pizza joint in Los Angeles. It’s on Larchmont and called Village Pizzeria. Trust me on this, don’t let anyone else tell you about “amazing” pizza because it’s not true.
