Thursday, December 22, 2005

Mary Anne asks about my comment that LA has no seasons. Er, okay, it does. Fire, flood, riot and quake.

Okay, let's try that again. It really does have two seasons: green and wet and slightly chilly, and brown, hot, dry and smoggy.

The first one lasts two months. The other one lasts the rest of the year.

Winter is frigid because no one $%^*#@ insulates their house. Unlike in Montreal, where we keep toasty warm all winter behind double glazed windows and multiple doors. (Except when we have to walk the dog.) And, I suppose, unlike in New York, where everyone has steam heat but no one can turn it off, so you have to open the window and let the cold air in or you stifle.

K, you asked. Ask Bill Cunningham why it's wonderful. He seems to like it.

9:11 PM

3 Comments:

I simply remember when I was growing up in the midwest and having to walk miles uphill (both ways) to get to school in below zero weather. My father moved us all to the "sunny south" (SC) to escape snow tires, road salt, chains, shoveling the drive, etc... only to discover that there IS snow in SC, and the pine trees are too weak to handle any sort of ice.

Now in LA, I can walk outside my house in the early morning in shorts and bare feet and not get a chill. Women wear their wonderful short and low cut summer dresses for longer. I can go to the beach and surf, anytime. If I miss the snow, I drive an hour and a half and go snowboarding.

But yes, we don't have seasons - we have brush fires, mudslides and earthquakes. Not to mention traffic jams, riots and an occasional helicopter hovering over the Silverlake reservoir.

It all evens out.

;)

By  Bill Cunningham, at 9:32 PM  

You know when people sound the stupidest? When they say things like, "I'm so tired of every day being perfect."

Shut. Up.

If you live in L.A. for any length of time, you'll inevitably hear that complaint from some disgruntled ex-New Yorker who equates frostbite, wind chill, and black ice with the rosy-cheeked snow days of their enchanted childhood.

I have news for you, folks. Weather sucks. I grew up in New Jersey, and went to college at Cornell in Ithaca, NY. Ithaca has one season: GRAY. It may be gray and cold. It may be gray and cool. But it is always, always gray.

I moved to L.A. right after college and soaked up the sun for 7 years. Then my wife decided it was a good idea to move back to New York.

Date we moved to New York: January 1st, 2005.

Temperature when we left L.A.: 79 degrees.

Temperature when we landed in New York: 7 degrees.

Date we moved BACK to L.A. because New York sucks even more now than it did 7 years ago: October 1st, 2005.

It's two days before Christmas, and today I was walking my dog wearing shorts and a t-shirt (me, not the dog). It was 79 degrees without a cloud in the sky.

I don't care if my lungs turn into black, shriveled, smog-corroded walnuts while I get buried in a mudslide triggered by an earthquake. L.A. weather cannot be beat (except maybe by San Diego).

By  Warren Benedetto, at 5:51 AM  

"Winter is frigid because no one $%^*#@ insulates their house."

Ho ho .. just like my TEFL days in Southern China, windowless and open balcony concepts. Bake in summer never get warm in winter.. no place to go to warmup.

By  max, at 7:24 AM  

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