A Threefold 'Thank You' to Los Angeles
Canter's & Ice Cream Sandwich Could Live in Perfect Harmony
Dear Los Angeles: I'm Thankful For...
-thumb-110x110-213475.jpg)
A Photo Gallery of the Things I am Grateful for This Year
7 Reasons to Love L.A.
Twice this weekend I witnessed rather dramatic, inappropriate overreactions to people with unrealistic expectations of privacy in very public places, and it forced me to ponder why we in LA have so much difficulty playing well with others.
Is it the car culture? Spillover of road rage onto walkways and other (rare) public spots in LA? The Interwebs? Whatever is to blame, we strongly suggest this character switch to decaf, save the rage for when the crap REALLY gets serious and/or invests in a set of these.
Incident #1 involved an older Italian man doing sit-ups on the beach (not the private Malibu kind, mind you). While he was squeezing out his ab-work, a man was standing about 10 feet away, talking on his cell phone.
After several minutes, Sit-Up Man burst out in a tirade. "Thanks a lot for making me lose count! How is it you went to college and you're still a moron?"
The argument got so heated and ridiculous I felt sure that either they must be joking or I was being PUNK'D, but after multiple exchanges of "fuck you, moron!" followed by Cell Phone Guy's huffy exit, I realized they were completely serious. (Please note that half of Sit-Up Man's scrotum was hanging out of his shorts, his genitalia can sort of be seen on Malingering's blog - I do not want to dirty LAist with things like wrinkly old man parts).
Incident #2 occurred at Barnes and Noble on the Third Street Promenade. I was standing at the magazine rack, flipping through The Book of the AR-15: America's Rifle which is doing a feature story on Beating the Jihad at Night. This spot is, as most visitors are aware, one of the most bustling sections of the bookstore complete with magazine racks butting right up to the always packed Starbucks. This is the kind of the public "third space" that civilized folks crave to hear other humans, talk with them and generally get a dose of humanity as they disconnnect from the matrix of their isolated lives. Said area has ample foot traffic as well as the ambient noise filtering in through the open front door. There were two people talking at regular volume about a magazine article they'd just looked at about how pregnancy has become a marketing ploy for celebrities. All of the sudden a man, who was sitting in the magazine section reading a book (which he had brought into Barnes and Noble to read; he had not made a purchase nor was he planning to) says, "can you stop YELLING?" He then proceeds to start mumbling and grumbling and calls the people "morons" and mutters insults under his breath for the next 3 minutes.
What's wrong with a culture that has taken road rage to the next level - newsstand rage?! Once upon a time "towns" had "greens" and "commons" where even strangers could exchange pleasantries or at the very least, tolerate normal behavior from one another in public spaces. Now, paranoia and fringe behavior seem to have replaced those interactions, with strangers calling innocent bystanders "morons" and flipping them them off 30 minutes later. C'mon people, let's get a GRIP.
First off, why is the word "moron" so popular with these disgruntled malcontents? I must stop using it. Second, why waste the energy to fight a pointless battle with perfect strangers? Has it ever been productive? I blame this all on a lack of public transportation.
People are in their cars, alone, for hours on end. They live in isolated self-contained little bubbles which require little to no courtesy or interaction with other human life forms. When suddenly their egocentric bliss is punctured by the inevitable situation requiring them to tolerate another person, they blow up and for some unknown reason start calling people morons. (Honestly, moron would not be my insult of choice for someone who I felt was talking in my imagined personal space. Loud, arrogant, self-centered, annoying, obnoxious, asshole, fuckhead, maybe. But there is nothing moronic about speaking, regardless of volume.) Maybe if we were forced to interact with each other, people would actually learn how to put up with each other. Maybe. Either that or put Falling Down on an infinite loop and give up, take your ball home and leave the playground.
Then again, it is highly likely these people are entirely self-important and delusional and no form of desensitization program will cure their ails. Maybe Sit Up Man actually believes that talking is not allowed on the beach, and maybe he buys into the idea that he owns Santa Monica. Maybe Barnes and Noble Grump honestly thought he was in some sort of reading room with and enforceable noise volume law. This would explain his complete disinterest in actually shopping or purchasing anything from the store. Maybe he was off course -- after all, the library is right down the street and it even has free Wi-Fi.
Don't get me wrong. I hate most people, and most of them are morons. I just have a hard time shouting at complete strangers for merely existing. Maybe I'm just a wuss.
P.S. I (Malingering) managed to singlehandedly piss off a third person this weekend, this random woman on the Promenade asking me to donate money to homeless starving children or some cliche charitable organization. So I gave my usual response, "no thank you, I don't like children" which generally confuses the solicitors enough for me to make a clean getaway. But this sarcasm-deficient woman starts screeching, "YOU ARE SO RUDE! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!" and then uses this to appeal to the 8 tourists standing in the general vicinity with the "do you know what she just said?" to share my offense with anyone who would listen. Get over yourself, lady. You're a glorified pan-handler and I doubt you give two shits about starving children, otherwise you would actually be doing something productive rather than collecting spare pennies from people as they exit McDonalds.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Boy, I was with you all the way until your little PS at the end. Hard to take all of your "let's coexist" talk too seriously when you wrap things up by calling people asking for donations "a glorified panhandler" who doesn't "give two shits" about starving children. It's so ironic, in some ways you may have proved your own point.
Let's clear one thing up, you blame it on an imagined lack of public transportation. But other than that, I would agree, hell when I used to have a car and drove in this city I was really pissed and hated everyone. But for the last 3 years I've been docile as a hindu cow.
i think it's the internet's fault. people are so used to fighting for no reason online that they forget they're not anonymous irl and thus act like indignant trolls.
(i know, the irony is that i have not yet signed up for a username here, but tony, it's not cos i'm a c-word...just cos i'm lazy)
is there a difference?
If I took public transportation to work, it would take me 3 hours each way, to go less than 20 miles. I call that a lack of efficient public transportation, at least.
When I talk about co-existence I don't mean peace, love, harmony and everyone holding hands and singing campfire songs, because that IS moronic. I just mean without screeching as if the world is coming to an end just for the sake of staking ownership over something that is not theirs.
Perhaps "moron" has grown into a term of endearment as a way of embracing the devolution of our culture to a point where it's not uncommon to encounter -- as Wikipedia has it: "...a person with a mental age between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale."
Some attribute the escalation in the use of the term "moron" to American sentiment circa late 2004, where a few people voted for president, many of whom can still be heard today muttering "I can't believing I voted for that f*ckin moron!"
On the other hand, perhaps it's time to start up a Venice Beach-based rag devoted to such headlines as "Tourist With Exposed Scrotum Cries 'Moron'"
...don't say it...
How much less than 20 miles? It takes 17 minutes to go 3 miles from NYU to Central Park in NYC via the best public transit system in the world.
Being a fairly recent transplant to LA from NYC, at some point in the past three and a half years I came to the realization that people here don't understand the concept of sharing the public sphere.
This can be witnessed everywhere. It's a curious kind of ignorance to observe, at times highly entertaining and at other times downright infuriating.
In NYC, if people on the sidewalks behaved like people here do when they are in their cars, they would be beaten to bloody pulps and thrown in the river.
Sigh, I miss NYC.
I always feel that way when I'm in Santa Monica.
I've only been here for about 3 years, so I still have some semblance of the good values and social mores instilled in me by a Midwest upbringing. I like being polite...and it surprises people here, which in turn, surprises me. Are most Angelinos really that inconsiderate? What's even more interesting, when dating, if you go out of your way to be nice, say, cook a meal for a girl, it's like you just pulled off the Houdini-est of magic tricks.
Anyway, I've pretty much decided that by sheer volume, we encounter a good number crazies here in LA...and they will say anything to anyone at anytime. But there are plenty of folks that just don't care...and you know what? Eff that.
So, I'm at a Costco gas station the other day and witnessed a perfect example of this...
A lady, wearing a big foam boot on her apparently broken foot is taking a bit of time to get out of her car at the pump. The guy behind her yells at her to hurry her ass up. Another guy then says "Hey moron, can't you see she's got a broken foot?!", followed by "who are you calling a moron?!", etc. The subsequent scrum (in the middle of the gas pump area) resulted in the 2nd guy getting knifed in the leg. He went to the hospital and the first guy went to jail.
It's gotten to the point that you don't dare talk back to anyone...
I just wanted to defend Malingering's P.S. I did some research into those people on the Santa Monica Promenade asking for money and all the guys I checked on lot were not actually with any organization. They take papers from legit collectors in other parts of the city and use them in Santa Monica -- which doesn't even have its own system for monitoring panhandlers. Check out the Santa Monica Daily Press from November 29, 2006 at www.smdp.com.
Co-existence, in my mind and in a hypothetical example, doesn't mean I have to love all of you. It just means that I have to put up with all of you in a polite way. Just as long as you're not infringing on my health, safety and personal rights, I don't care what you do. So I'm with you there, Mal.
I also don't understand why people feel that it's necessary to be so pissed off with everyone to the point that they have to tell them. If you're pissed at someone for not giving you money, why not just shut the hell up and think "wow, what an asshole!" rather than actually say it? I question this trend of announcing your exact thoughts and opinions out loud, verbally, for everyone to hear. Did we do this twenty or thirty years ago?
Is it the Internet, where many of us rely on its anonymity that we forget that the anonymity is gone when we step away from the computer? Or do people really, truly just not give a shit anymore?
In response to Mal's PS, I only wish that I could be quick enough to think of a response like that to some of the panhandlers I run across. And I can vouch that Mal does actually like some children. My 21 month old son thinks she's awesome. :-)
Thanks for a very good thought (and comment) provoking post, Mal. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the non-troll comments on this.
This happened on the Westside, where all the superficial, self-absorbed people are. I'm not surprised.
Thunderbolt - I *wish* I had lived in your NYC. I think I got yelled at on the street an average of twice a day during the five years I lived there. Not to mention flipped off, whistled at, hustled, begged for money, food, beer, sexual favors and a myriad other public displays of bad behavior. I have to say - a nice quiet or radio-accompanied drive in my car is a welcome respite from the general nastiness that seems to be a matter of course in New York.
I remember one Christmas walking up to 5th avenue to look at the windows and a woman who bumped into me yelled at me when *I* apologized to *her*. What did she say? "You are WAY too chipper for this time of year!!"
I miss NYC as well. Even if I got yelled at there, it seemed different for some reason, but I'm not sure why.
I knew a guy who would panhandle for money with a sign and clipboard and stuff that said "stop alcohol abuse" and he had an organization name and everything. At the end of the day he would collect all of his change and go buy booze for himself. Most of those people are scam artists, I thought everyone knew that.
Children suck.
Ug, I should have looked at the photo before clicking on that link--I was hoping for skinny old man baggy scrotum, not barrel-shaped old man baggy scrotum! Too bad they didn't both fly into aggressive rages and get arrested for assaulting each other.
You buy into the idea that efficient public transportation would match the best route you have to take to get to your particular destination? That's a little unrealistic. L.A. actually has plenty of public transportation, it just wasn't planned like a Paris and isn't confined to a rock like Manhattan.
Also, I agree with the poster from NYC that people there have a much better inherent sense of how to be in and deal with the public realm. What's more, they're aren't generally afraid to remind others when they step over the bounds. In the instances you mention (except for the one at the end when you're just snide and should have kept your mouth closed) someone else (myself) in the Big Apple might have immediately shut the offender down by reminding them of where they are and where they can take themselves.
I think what happens in L.A. is that where supposed to go around feeling so good about ourselves and our Hollywood headliners and glorious weather that we honestly don't know how to deal with having to deal with disruptions. In the movies the obnoxious movie star will say, "Do you know who I am?!" but here too many try and pull off the same thing; my question is, how'd we get so spoiled?
PS: There's no defending a snide remark. How someone else spends their time shouldn't illicit commentary from someone trying to dismiss them as unworthy of attention. You don't need to feel bad about it, Mal, just doesn't mean that it's okay either.
*full disclosure: regarding "shutting the offender down" - I'm a 6'3" male with a pretty loud, deep voice. I don't consider myself to be all that intimidating but I don't generally get dismissed. I'm not suggesting that everyone would try it or that it's not unsafe - I was really trying to say that there is more often someone around or enough someones around to shame the offender into retreating.
...and sorry about the typos.
About the PS:
I work with and know a lot of people who work for various organizations that stand on the street, talking to people about whatever issue their org. works on. While there are a lot of scammers out there, there are some legit organizations doing good work, with passionate, dedicated people who deal with a ton of negativity, rejection, and snide remarks all day long because they believe in what they are doing. Most of these people really want to break people's bubbles and stop and talk about something real for a few minutes. If you don't want to give them money or sign up or whatever the group is doing, cool, everyone knows that not every person is going to get involved, but I think you'd be surprised at the passion and knowledge a lot of these folks have. Of course there are going to be those odd balls who freak out because the stress got to them and that one remark sent them over the edge, but overall you're seeing a lot of goodhearted people wanting to make a change in the world.
However, if someone's an asshole to you while you're passing by and say some inappropriate shit, by all means, call them out.
I thought that the response the sarcasm deficient woman gave would have pretty much told me that I wouldn't have wanted to donate to her cause (or "cause").
Just because one person fails to understand sarcasm or how to really interact with other people in a positive and sensible way doesn't mean the entire cause or "cause" is not worth a damn. We all act like assholes sometimes no matter what values we hold. Doesn't excuse her for representing poorly, though.
It seems the more physically crowded the area, the more psychological "space" is required. That's why people in large cities like Tokyo and New York don't make eye contact and try to ignore each other (or people on an elevator) whereas in Mayberry, everyone is shouting hello to each other.
Maybe Los Angeles is in transition. As we become more and more overcrowded, we need to start ignoring each other and giving each other more space, while still sharing public spaces and commodities.
It seems like most of these arguments are a matter of fighting over two things that are scarce in our rushed, overcrowded megalopolis: quiet and time. People freak out when someone is making what they think is annoying noise (exacerbated by cell phones), or doing something that is using up their precious time (being slow at the gas pump). Both are results of overcrowding.
Rats in a cage.
You buy into the idea that efficient public transportation would match the best route you have to take to get to your particular destination? That's a little unrealistic. L.A. actually has plenty of public transportation, it just wasn't planned like a Paris and isn't confined to a rock like Manhattan.
re: my public transportation problem
Say you are going from the 405 at Santa Monica Blvd to the 405 at Vermont Blvd. As in STRAIGHT DOWN THE 405 with no detours whatsoever. I assume this is a popular route since the 405 is packed every day. This (according to metro.net) will take you 120 minutes because there is NO public transport along the 405, one of our most congested freeways. None. Even if we're not Paris, we have very very frequently traveled freeways and buses don't even go on them. WTF.
My similar story is from Easter of this year:
I'm riding my bike to the grocery store via the sidewalk and hit a crosswalk and press the button and wait for the white man to tell me to walk. I notice there is a nice car parked blocking the crosswalk with a late twenties/early thirties guy texting on his cell phone (he was also in a fire zone as well). I can obviously handle going over the curb and not the smooth ramp, but the many elderly in the neighborhood cannot on their wheel chairs.
I tap on his car lightly and ask if he can move back 3 or 4 feet.
So he gets out of his car and immediately comes over to me and into my face "are you fucking kidding me? you have a bike and can't get over the curb?" like he's trying to get me to throw a punch or something.
I'm just blown away, I can't even fathom trying to explain to him if a person in a wheelchair enters the crosswalk from the otherside, they are doomed because he will not notice them [too engaged in texting] until they are stuck in a green light (also, his car was turned off). He was just that insane and probably angry I touched his nice little sports car.
Happy Easter!
@Andy: Can we PLEASE avoide the word "onion" in the title if possible? In Venice, it'd have to be all orgnganic and stuff...
To csharp7:
Those things happened to me too on occasion in NYC but they never really bothered me. But then again I have a really thick skin, which in LA is called a car.