We Love L.A.--but They’ll Never Understand

A new guide to Los Angeles comes out this week in observance of the Democratic National Convention. The topic: all that the readers and viewers of America should like--really like--about L.A. Because America will never really like L.A., 26 public relations experts were called in, like superheroes, to work on it from across the Southland. “The Official L.A. Convention 2000 Media Resource Book” is the title, but it could just as easily be “Los Angeles: Honest, Folks, It’s Not as Bad as They Say.”

This is marketing as no city in recent memory has bothered to market. The media book alone is 117 pages and 14 chapters long. At the last Democratic Convention, Chicago passed out a two- or three-page fact sheet on the charms of the world’s hog butcher, and that was pretty much it for municipal spinning. Philadelphia, which is hosting the Republican Convention, has been so laid-back that its commemorative visitors guide went out with a strip bar ad still in it. (“Club Risque,” the city winks to the party of the religious right. “Happy hour is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.”)

But Los Angeles is not Chicago or Philadelphia. Los Angeles, it appears, must elaborate. Hence, there are chapters on how the air is cleaner, the universities better and the economy more robust here than America realizes. Some are actually pretty interesting and some are, shall we say, airbrushed. Best upbeat factoid: In 1960, the smog apparently was so bad that free bottles of Visine were handed out to the press at that year’s Democratic National Convention. (No need for that this time.) Best spin in a chapter heading: “Los Angeles Police Department--Making Los Angeles the Safest It Has Been in a Generation.” (Wasn’t that what they said about the Singapore police?)

The pitch skims nimbly over the riots and manages to tour Northridge without mentioning its earthquake. But the subtext is the most interesting thing. From the first paragraph, it’s clear that someone decided to target the Easterners who so love to smirk at this coast. Much of the guide is aimed at updating East Coast misconceptions, from L.A.’s IQ to the state of its race relations. That, and schmoozing the critics away.

“At the turn of the 20th century, New York was the preeminent American city.” That’s the first sentence on an introductory page that mentions New York no less than 10 times, with another half-dozen references on the next page. The gist is that “New York’s history represents Los Angeles’ future,” though little ol’ L.A. “is still a work in progress.” Ah, the dulcet tones of the soft sell.

In fairness, there aren’t many alternatives in handling the silly contempt of a nation. You can ignore ‘em, persuade ‘em or co-opt ‘em, and that about covers it. Two-hundred and nineteen years have passed since the founding of the Pueblo of Los Angeles (see Page 91, “Los Angeles History”) and from rank boosterism to blithe oblivion to self-flagellation, nothing has made America like this sprawling city. Show ‘em the sunshine and they get envious. Show ‘em a quake victim and they finger-wag about living on fault lines. Show ‘em the high schools, where the prom queen might be an Asian American-Latina and her date a half-black Samoan and the class song a hip-hop anthem written in Compton and recorded in Westwood, and they’ll give you a discourse on race relations--in black and white.

The fact is, Los Angeles is a vast municipal alien life form and you have to live here to know why to like it. You have to experience the vertigo of living without a social hierarchy that pertains for more than a suburb or two. You have to experience the mindset that perceives distance, not in miles, but in minutes-at-rush-hour. You have to wake on a summer night to the fragrant surprise of chlorine and jasmine. Or go out on Christmas Day in search of take-out and stumble onto a wedding feast in a Little India storefront. You have to sit in a living room in the Valley watching late night TV when the Santa Anas roar down on you.

You have to pad out onto a predawn street after an earthquake as groggy strangers call, “You all right?” “Yes. You all right?” You have to see your kid learn to drive, not on back roads but on the Santa Monica Freeway. You have to spend a year in a cubicle next to a co-worker and then have him confide one day that he met his wife in an arranged marriage. You have to feel the hand of God Almighty rising up from the Pacific as you catch a wave.

But these don’t easily translate to the politically or journalistically ambitious, or convince America--or L.A.--that this land of bad raps is actually good. “Los Angeles: Try It, You’ll Eventually Like It” isn’t much of a pitch when the reality is more like “Come West--Be Misunderstood.”

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.