Thoughts on California Cities

Overheard:
"San Francisco is a place you go to fit in.
Los Angeles is a place you go to stand out."

"Where are you from?"
"Los Angeles."
"Oh, I'm sorry."

David Byrne on the La Brea Tar Pits:
"Somehow, the sight of giant beasts stuck in tar pits amidst the backdrop of LA’s extreme luxury and urban sprawl seems a too perfect metaphor: big lumbering creatures lured to their demise by what they think is a lovely sparkling fresh water pond…or something like that."

From Urban Cartography:
"Few American cities have been so worthy of both love and hate as Los Angeles - not New York with its single-minded focus on being the biggest, tallest, deepest and most extreme example of everything a city can be, not Chicago with its roots firmly planted in the midwestern work ethic and philosophy of the Prairie, not cities that are so single-mindedly tied to their history as Boston or San Francisco. Los Angeles is a singular example of possibility, a model of how emptiness offers redemption and corruption, and how the two may be inextricable at this frontier."

Dorothy Parker:

“Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city”

Quentin Crisp:
“Los Angeles is just New York lying down”

Frank Lloyd Wright:
“Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”

Andy Warhol:
“I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

Jean Baudrillard:

“Cities are distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake.”

Moshie Safdie:
“I prefer San Francisco to Los Angeles. I prefer New York to Philadelphia. Why? The kind of concentration that is achieved in them creates certain choices, an openness of society that is not possible in the lower-density environments.”

Oscar Wilde:
“It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”

Mark Twain:
“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
Of Los Angeles:
"It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there."

From Stuff White People Like:
Though they live in a world class city, San Franciscans have a crippling inferiority complex about New York and even hinting at that will make them very sad or very defensive. Fortunately, there is a fool-proof method for quickly returning the conversation to a positive, trust-building tone. No matter how much you have offended someone from San Francisco, you can always make them feel better by asking them how they feel about Southern California. They will instantly talk of how it is filled with crime, pollution, hegemonic culture, and the wrong kind of white people: “I swear California is like two separate countries, and I am so thankful that I live in the cultural center of the West Coast.” This will allow them to reassert their superiority and leave the conversation with a positive feeling about themselves and about you.

"The San Francisco artists tended to be anti-intellectual and uptight. A lot of energy went into hating New York and Los Angeles." —Bruce Nauman Calvin Tomkins' New Yorker article titled Western Disturbances