The Put Downs

I was at lawn party Saturday (can you just imagine me and the Gatsbys?!), trying my darndest to blend, without axes to grind, when it started.

The put-downs.

Overheard: 'L.A. is such a transient city'.

"It's an attractive, international destination", I countered, "full of dynamic people. Certainly more 'transient'--whatever that means, and perhaps what it means is good--than Akron, Ohio or Birmingham, Alabama, but no more transient than New York or Washington D.C., other peer American cities".






Later, I googled 'transient cities'. Little hard data sadly with which to make my points, but references aplenty to cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas (nuevo sun belt), New York and San Francisco (mondo expensive), D.C. (political cycles), Miami (growing internationalism), Seattle (fast changing), Atlanta (emerging regional hub) and Boston (college mecca). Kyoto, Melbourne, Milan, Dongguan, Rome, pretty much anywhere you'd want to live has been labeled transient.

Strikes me as an upper middle class perception, 'cause I doubt anybody living in Nickerson Gardens, the William Mead Homes, or Aliso Village, thinks of L.A. as
transient.




A bit faster moving than Kansas City I concede, or wherever it is mom and dad hibernate, especially if compared to the West L.A. youth ghettos. Still, I live on a block with 44 houses, and in six years only four have changed ownership.

What I wouldn't give for a little more transience!