Da Big Complainers : Ex-New Yorkers Form Club to Belittle L.A. Life Style

They complain about our weather, our food and our night life. What we consider rude, they consider “having an edge.” What we consider laid back, they consider lethargic.

What are they? What else but disgruntled ex-New Yorkers now living in California.

And what else would a bunch of ex-New Yorkers living near the beach in a pleasant area like the Westside do but organize a group so that they could complain together about how they have been “forced” to leave their beloved Gotham for God-forsaken Los Angeles? Misery loves company.

They call their group DENY, for Disgruntled Ex-New Yorkers, and have about 50 members.

“The only way an ex-New Yorker can survive here is to either deny that there’s anything wrong or deny that they ever left New York,” said Babette Wieland, who formed the group in November with her husband, Bill Brown.

The group is based in Venice. “Venice is the closest thing to the (Greenwich) Village,” said Brown, who lives in the eclectic beach community and would say only that he works “in the entertainment industry.”

Brown moved to California in May, 1987, but Wieland did not make the transcontinental trek from their home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx until last June. “She wasn’t dying to come out here,” Brown said.

The group first met in November, and since then has met monthly at such places as the Jamaica West Restaurant for a “New York language and mannerisms rehabilitation session.”

“After awl, the world should know you’re from New Yawk by da way you tawk,” said Wieland, an administrator at a psychiatric clinic.

For Christmas, the group met at the Stage Deli of New York in Century City and sang Christmas carols rewritten with lyrics only a New Yorker could love. Among the inspirational tunes were “Oh Little Town of Hollywood,” “We Three Girls From UCLA,” “Away in the Valley” and “We Wish We Were in Manhattan.”

One particularly thrilling song was “Silent Night, Every Night”:

Silent night, every night,

Stores are locked,

You can’t shop.

Restaurants serving only till ten,

Parking lots that are shut before

then.

Everything is closed, everything

is closed.

Silent night, every night,

Bars are dark,

Dancing stops.

Streets are cleared, the lights are

out,

No one ‘round to hear you shout,

Everything is closed! Everything

is closed!

Last month, the group gathered to watch the movie “New York Stories” in Century City (lots of tall buildings), and then went to Tom Bergin’s Irish Restaurant & Pub to tell each other their own New York stories.

Last week, the group met at the Mar Vista Bowling Lanes for the “revered New York tradition of pizza, beer and bowling.” Long Island won in team play against Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, with an average score of 121.

A favorite complaint of ex-New Yorkers is L.A. pizza. Wieland and Brown claim to have found New York-style pizza at Aunt Chovy’s Pizza in Mar Vista. They describe New York-style pizza as having a “thin and crispy crust.”

Dave Peppel, who is from Philadelphia and is one of the owners of Aunt Chovy’s, said he takes the recommendation as a compliment. “I think so, anyway,” Peppel said. “It can’t hurt.”

At the bowlathon, at least one ex-New Yorker was not impressed with the pizza.

“The grease doesn’t run down your arm when you bite into it,” said Don Feldstein, formerly of the upper West Side in Manhattan. He said he has been in Los Angeles for “7 years, 6 months, 4 days, 18 hours and 22 minutes.”

Next month the group is meeting at Vertigo--”At last, New York nightclub excitement in Los Angeles,” Wieland said. For those members who can’t make the monthly gatherings, there is a monthly newsletter. (To join, write to P.O. Box 926, Venice 90294, or call (213) 281-9600.)

Exponents of N.Y. Post

One of the highlights is a featured headline from the New York Post, one of the Big Apple’s finest journalistic voices. A recent example screamed, “Pistol Packin’ Peewee; 5-Year-Old Brings Gun to School; Teacher Nabs Kindergarten Student With Loaded .25-Cal.”

DENY members got excited when they heard that the Herald Examiner is thinking of going tabloid. “It’s the closest thing we got to the Post out here,” Wieland said.

As a “public service,” the group has devised a test to aid members in early detection of “Beach Brains Syndrome.” “This insidious disease develops over time, and is the result of overexposure, not merely to the sun, but to freeways, smog, surf and native Californians,” the instructions say.

Among the questions asked are the following: How often do you call people “dude”? Do you refer to people, places, relationships or outfits as “awesome” or “intense”? Do you find fading awareness and eventual lack of concern for world events, national issues and anything that does not have to do with your tan or your Jacuzzi?

But perhaps the best advice DENY gives ex-New Yorkers is an answer to the question they are most often asked: If you like New York better why don’t you move back?

The answer: “Tell them: 1. Complaining is your prerogative (that’ll keep ‘em quiet for a minute); 2. You’ll be happy to go if the ‘Send ‘Em Back’ telethon raises $10,000 per New Yorker to cover costs and, 3. How are they gonna get enough natives off the beach and into clothes and shoes to work every day to take our places?”