Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Time I Flew 3000 Miles Away From New York

Posted by Greg in food, Golf, greg white, Los Angeles, New York

Editor’s Note: Greg has been contributing to the site for a little while now, building up to the day when he would emerge as a beautiful butterfly…err… columnist. He will be balancing out Chris by providing us with insight as to what it is like to be young and broke in Los Angeles (apparently it is not like Entourage). That is why his first column is about New York. It will all make sense in time.

When you’re raised in and around the east coast, specifically the tri-state area (which in all fairness should be referred to as the bi-state area because Connecticut is just…), you tend to develop a very love-hate sort of relationship with your surroundings. Take, for example, the first city I ever knew, the city that I still refer to as “the city” even when I’m 3,000 miles away from it, the first place I had ever traveled to outside of New Jersey: New York.

New York, imbued as it is with nostalgia and history and excitement, is an easy place to love. It is also a very easy place to hate. Abhor. Despise. For every spine-tingling panorama in this city of cities, there is a whiff of urine on a hot summer day; for every quirky local shop owner, a shouting vagrant rubbing himself in public. And yet something unmistakable exists in New York, a powerful draw that keeps you constantly in its orbit, refusing to let go. Maybe its the soul of the place, or maybe its just its dearth of late night buses running to my town in Jersey. Love. Hate. I can recall falling asleep on the bus while commuting to and from the city and always, for whatever reason, waking up just before we reached the Lincoln Tunnel. As the bus descended down into the smoggy underground, I would think to myself that this was definitely going to be the day the terrorists got smart and tried to blow the thing up. Just my luck. And always, to my surprise we would emerge safely, victoriously. As we passed the signs pointing to midtown, I would thank whatever Jewish/Muslim/Christian god it was that kept us out of harm’s way. I was relieved.

However, once in the city, I would immediately begin hating again as I exited the idling bus, gave a weary look of solidarity to the Ralph Cramdon statue outside of the Port Authority, trudged through Times Square, past the scum selling their flimsy wares to hordes of slow moving grain fed Midwestern cattle. Why would anyone vacation here? Don’t you have polluted, crowded streets at home? I would go to work at the New York fixture I (somewhat misleadingly) called my office, somehow feel refreshed by the city and its inhabitants while in the bubble of the Ed Sullivan Theater, trudge back through Times Square, my brotherly love slowly diminishing, wait in the squalid Port Authority, curse midtown, inhale some exhaust fumes (you know, for giggles), and board the bus, beaten and exhausted and hung-over from all the hate. But then, sure enough, as we exited the Lincoln Tunnel on the Jersey side, the city’s western skyline would emerge and I would feel the same tinge of nostalgia for a place I hadn’t left but ten minutes earlier. It’s the psychological equivalent to the episode of The Simpsons where the family goes to New York. As the family S drives back home in their smashed up, boot on the tire, windshield-less car, the kids bop around in the back seat, enamored with the magic of the place, while Homer navigates over a bridge, debris from a garbage truck smacking his face. They ask: Dad, when can we come back? To which Homer grumbles, Maybe next year… It’s kind of like that. Minus the humor.

So there you have it. It’s an east coast thing I guess, and one that is ultimately rooted, I suppose, in some sort of Woody Allen psychoanalysis self-love, self-hate deal. We love our city because we identify with it, and we hate it for the same reason. Confused though our fondness may be, there is one thing all who call themselves New Yorkers (I consider myself a card carrying member) can agree on: we hate Los Angeles. Who do they think they are with their freeways and highways and sunshine? Haven’t they ever heard of good, old-fashioned heel-toeing to work? Or what about snow? They think they’re above the seasons? And so on. Something about the place, with its high quality of life and happiness and warmth just seems fundamentally…wrong. How are you supposed to complain about life if you’re always smiling?

And so it was with all of these things knocking around my head, after living just miles away from New York City for 24 years (not including my lovely four years in my other city of cities, Boston), I left it without so much as a moment’s notice to move to the dreaded Los Angeles.

Now to be fair, I wasn’t completely blind sided by the move. As a writer and one who aspires to use his writing so that major networks and cable companies can sell ad time, LA was always in the back of my head. Yet, whenever the thought would pop up, I’d say to myself, What? And leave New York? (As a piece of garbage smacks me in the teeth.) Still though, the more I tried to fight it and make an honest go of it in New York, the more I realized that maybe it was time to give the other side a try. Still, I soldiered on. Until one day a college friend from LA called up to tell me that one of his roommates was moving out and did I want to move in? Hm, said I. And so I scheduled a week of meetings and general orientation. A few weeks later I was on a plane to LAX.

My initial reaction of LA was not, in fact, of LA at all, but rather the the aerial view of the Rocky Mountains and the Utah desert. I was awe-struck. I was somewhere very new and very alien. It wasn’t as though I had never seen unique landscapes. I had traveled to other countries, seen some things, done some stuffs. But this was different: I was traveling, I wasn’t a tourist. This was my country we’re talking about. Right?

I land, pick up my rental car, plug my GPS device in and punch in my friend and future roommate’s address. After a moment the GPS device, my love in life, tells me my trip will take 48 hours and would I like to avoid highways? After a brief moment of terror I realized it had yet to obtain a satellite signal. A less terrifying moment later, we were off. I drive down the legendary 405, hit Santa Monica Boulevard (hey, like the song!), and enter the apartment. It’s nice. A balcony. Sun light. Big.

During the course of the week I go on meetings with various alumni. Studio execs, development people, producers, writers. I obtain drive-on passes to studio lots. It is neat. I think, this is California? This is…kind of nice. I am almost hit in the head by a falling palm frond. I look up: a fifty foot palm tree. Outside my apartment. Cliches? You bet. But they were feeling more and more like my cliches.

I return home and am picked up at JFK, a place that has always been the gatekeeper after an extended trip away from home. It’s a normally comforting sight, but on this particular night it is 20 degrees with a wind chill and a vengeful wind at that. I return home. I have dinner, wine, and sit by the fire. Or at least that’s how I remember it. Am I going to move back there? I ask myself.

While on my trip I had handed my roommate a check for the first month’s rent. A few weeks after Christmas, I am back on a plane out to LA. Only this time a strike’s afoot. Terror. Panic. “Oh, it’ll be over eventually” I am told by industry types. “Don’t worry.” I spend my days going on more meetings. I buy (am given) a car. It is a giant, metal baby. A nuisance. My first car. Do you know you need to put gas it these things to make them go? Did you know that Native Americans are hoarding all the oil? Our oil? (Did I mention we use public transportation back east?) If I am not “taking meetings” (as the cool kids and insecure adults say), I am in my new apartment writing. Or cooking. Or pretending there is actually a plan in place. At night I discover the glory of taco carts. I go on runs. Outdoors. In the middle of winter. I stare dumbly at the Pacific Ocean, just three miles west of my new home. I go on hikes. I even drive to the valley, through mountains–hills really, but still, mountains!–north on the 405. More drive-ons, more meetings, more encouragement. I think to myself, it’s a shame that networking doesn’t count as a job, because if it did, hoo-boy, I’d have some job, boy. I do not have a job. I could have been running a wine store right now. I could have been drinking wine right now. Hey, I could drink wine right now! I’m drinking wine right now. Sigh.

Ultimately there are two events that seal it for me.

A) One night my roommates take me to a nearby Italian specialty store. In it I am pleased to see the rushed, familiar faces of the guys working behind the counter making sandwiches. They aren’t strolling, they aren’t languid. They are frantic, violent, and angry. I am reminded of the innumerable Italian delis at home: no small talk, no second guessing. Granted, the people they are serving are long-haired men with fancy looking toenails, but still, the routine remains the same. You shout your order, trying to be heard over the din of voices and activity, they slap it together, throw it at you, and overcharge you. It’s a comforting exchange that happens every Sunday at home. I eat stuffed peppers, Italian bread, and cured meat. I am pleased.

B) One afternoon one of my roommates and I go to a nearby golf course to use its driving range. As I wait for a stall, I am unaware of the protocol that dictates you are to place your bucket of balls on the red dot behind the stall you are waiting for. No balls, no place in line. The woman in the stall I am waiting for packs up to leave, a guy who is not me takes her spot. I tell him I had been waiting for over 30 minutes. He says, too bad, the rules are the rules. He hits balls. I wait. This exchange, not quite aggressive, but certainly not hippy-dippy-cool-man-no-worries somehow comforts me. Or maybe it was the fact that I was on a golf course in the dead of winter. Or maybe it was just the fact that the guy had no game to speak of. As I sat there re-waiting my turn, a large, older black man joined me. He informed me he was one of the best golf instructors in the state, if not the country. Then we openly discussed the man’s swing faults. It was catty, but it was the sort of thing we would do back at the men’s club at my beloved home golf course.

While these may seem superficial, they did help reinforce a notion that I first grasped after my last trip to Spain in March 2007. While in Madrid I stayed with my sister’s señora and her señora’s two daughters. The apartment became my home base in Spain. A home base in a very smelly, tiny apartment. Every morning I would get up, see my sister off to school, and then spend the next hour or two conversing in extremely strained Spanish with whoever had the misfortune to stroll into the kitchen during my early morning boredom. Upon returning home to New Jersey, I found it almost comical how easy it was to be somewhere one day, and then somewhere drastically different the next. And while there was never any real homesickness of which to speak, these two minor anecdotes proved that the real change never comes from your surroundings, but in you. Me, that is. Technically you as well as me. But, you know, whatever.

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