Angeles Topics

Prejudices are useless. Call Los angeles any dirty name you like—Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything—but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there.
—Clive James (b. 1939)

New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington blink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)