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I read this and LOL! 
I put it in the Debate section just in case it offends anyone.
I am not an LA fan for anything else other than a vacation but some of the sentiment here definitely hits home!!!
LA Knows You
By David Anderson
Is LA's disdain for the Midwest rooted in anything more than snobbery? Yep.
To the Los Angeleno, Minneapolis and St. Paul are a frigid tundra inhabited by Fargo - speaking meathead men - who perversely enjoy fishing on frozen water - and round, Velveeta -eating Pollyanna women who soak even their vitamins in lard and speak with the lilt of rejected beauty queens.
That is if they have an opinion about the Twin Cities at all. In the eyes of we Angelenos, the land between us and New York is a vast expanse of red states, homophobes, Applebee's gun owners, type 2 diabetes, and Neilsen-rating families who keep reality programming on the air. Although I hate to break it to you, the Twin Cities falls into this abyss.
And to those Los Angelenos with some geographical and Midwestern knowledge, the Guthrie, Mondale electoral votes, and 3M innovations are lost to visions of Jesse the Body, Wobegon simpletons buried in tenfoot snow drifts, The Indy 500 (Indianapolis and Minneapolis confusion is rampant), and a state wrestling program with herpes. Sorry to rehash, but LA friends still chide me about this national story.
The Twin Cities oblivion is further hampered by the fact that it's not a tidy, easily understood, metropolitan structure. "You mean St. Paul isn't a suburb?" is a question I've been asked more than once. With "Why is the capital, Duluth, so far from Minneapolis?" often the follow-up.
Leave it to the drug-trade to give Minnesota a good name. LA addicts who get sober in the "Sota" are by far the best champions of the Twin Cities virtues. On more than one occasion a friend working the program has shared with me his or her reverence for the lake culture, cosmopolitan people and Culber's ButterBurgers.
The stigma of the Twin cities and the Midwest is deeper than weather. Unzip the parka and treading quietly beneath "progressive" Midwestern burbs is a social conservatism that Angelenos are well aware of, and makes them uncomfortable. Sure, LA has its celebrity-centric baggage and image obsessions, but it has no illusions of maintaining an allegiance to Catholic or Protestant forefathers. There is a freedom in a lack of history, a lack of religious judgment, that allows LA to thrive on chaos, discovery and irreverence. It's invigorating, but Father Hennepin would be none too pleased.
It's true that Los Angeles was founded as a Catholic mission, but that doesn't drive social mores today. One of LA's most popular film events is the summer film series that screens at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Sipping wine and eating Brie above the corpses of Bugsy Siegel and Johnny Ramone, LA residents faithfully turn out for weekly screenings of such films as Harold and Maude, The Player, and Chinatown -- the creaking of the cemetery's palms, mixed with drunken laughter or a projected sex scene at once sacrilegious and divine.
Could such an experience exist in the Midwest? Doubtful -- and Los Angelenos know it. Like New Yorkers who wear their hardened life like a badge of honor, Los Angelenos wear their sauciness and impertinence like "flair" on a T.G.I.Friday's server. They've created a place where the absurd can happen, and for better or worse, the consequences can be dealt with in the morning. I love it, I must admit. It's intoxicating, liberating and it feeds my creativity, at least for the moment.
So I am challenged when asked, "Will you ever move back to the Twin Cities?" Do I want the cold, the talk of walleyes bitin', and the rise in my cholesterol? I can live with them. I just don't want to lose my freedom.
I put it in the Debate section just in case it offends anyone.
I am not an LA fan for anything else other than a vacation but some of the sentiment here definitely hits home!!!
LA Knows You
By David Anderson
Is LA's disdain for the Midwest rooted in anything more than snobbery? Yep.
To the Los Angeleno, Minneapolis and St. Paul are a frigid tundra inhabited by Fargo - speaking meathead men - who perversely enjoy fishing on frozen water - and round, Velveeta -eating Pollyanna women who soak even their vitamins in lard and speak with the lilt of rejected beauty queens.
That is if they have an opinion about the Twin Cities at all. In the eyes of we Angelenos, the land between us and New York is a vast expanse of red states, homophobes, Applebee's gun owners, type 2 diabetes, and Neilsen-rating families who keep reality programming on the air. Although I hate to break it to you, the Twin Cities falls into this abyss.
And to those Los Angelenos with some geographical and Midwestern knowledge, the Guthrie, Mondale electoral votes, and 3M innovations are lost to visions of Jesse the Body, Wobegon simpletons buried in tenfoot snow drifts, The Indy 500 (Indianapolis and Minneapolis confusion is rampant), and a state wrestling program with herpes. Sorry to rehash, but LA friends still chide me about this national story.
The Twin Cities oblivion is further hampered by the fact that it's not a tidy, easily understood, metropolitan structure. "You mean St. Paul isn't a suburb?" is a question I've been asked more than once. With "Why is the capital, Duluth, so far from Minneapolis?" often the follow-up.
Leave it to the drug-trade to give Minnesota a good name. LA addicts who get sober in the "Sota" are by far the best champions of the Twin Cities virtues. On more than one occasion a friend working the program has shared with me his or her reverence for the lake culture, cosmopolitan people and Culber's ButterBurgers.
The stigma of the Twin cities and the Midwest is deeper than weather. Unzip the parka and treading quietly beneath "progressive" Midwestern burbs is a social conservatism that Angelenos are well aware of, and makes them uncomfortable. Sure, LA has its celebrity-centric baggage and image obsessions, but it has no illusions of maintaining an allegiance to Catholic or Protestant forefathers. There is a freedom in a lack of history, a lack of religious judgment, that allows LA to thrive on chaos, discovery and irreverence. It's invigorating, but Father Hennepin would be none too pleased.
It's true that Los Angeles was founded as a Catholic mission, but that doesn't drive social mores today. One of LA's most popular film events is the summer film series that screens at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Sipping wine and eating Brie above the corpses of Bugsy Siegel and Johnny Ramone, LA residents faithfully turn out for weekly screenings of such films as Harold and Maude, The Player, and Chinatown -- the creaking of the cemetery's palms, mixed with drunken laughter or a projected sex scene at once sacrilegious and divine.
Could such an experience exist in the Midwest? Doubtful -- and Los Angelenos know it. Like New Yorkers who wear their hardened life like a badge of honor, Los Angelenos wear their sauciness and impertinence like "flair" on a T.G.I.Friday's server. They've created a place where the absurd can happen, and for better or worse, the consequences can be dealt with in the morning. I love it, I must admit. It's intoxicating, liberating and it feeds my creativity, at least for the moment.
So I am challenged when asked, "Will you ever move back to the Twin Cities?" Do I want the cold, the talk of walleyes bitin', and the rise in my cholesterol? I can live with them. I just don't want to lose my freedom.
Most of the "hip/yummy places" in Minneapolis are less than ten years old. I LIKE Minneapolis. I do. I think it's a fun city without too much traffic and it has theatre and music to boot. 
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