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Why San Francisco hates Los Angeles

By Josh Heller On February 9,
2012 · 38
Comments

Photo by 20
buckz.

I’ve never completely understood why San Franciscans talk
smack about Los
Angeles.

I’M FROM LOS ANGELES, and I love San Francisco. I’d never call it San
Fran or crowd the streetcars on my way to eat Ghiradelli chocolate and
Boudin bread bowls of clam chowder at Fisherman’s Wharf. We’re Californian too!
We respect your vibe man!

But many San Franciscans see it differently. You can be brutally attacked
(read: coyly judged) for merely mentioning that you’re from Los Angeles.

Last summer my girlfriend and I went to a cafe on Warschauer Straße in
Berlin. An American employee was excited to meet us because we could be audience
to her joke about how her boss looks like Screech from Saved By The Bell. She
was friendly when we told her we were from California, but when we explained we
were from the south, she spent six minutes talking shit. All we wanted was our
certified organic blueberry muffin and maybe to make another friend who spoke
our language, so we could tell them about how our landlord looks like the German
Mr. Belding. But no, she decided to stand by her NorCal values (NorCalVals) from
5,657 miles away.

Yet still, I hold no grudge. I love San Francisco. Last week I was delighted
to discover that all the credit card debt I’d accrued would come in handy: I now
had enough rewards points to fly to The Bay for about the cost of a German ATM
fee. I would travel to San Francisco in hopes of pacifying the haters and
finally unifying both So- and NorCals under the ideology of
PanCalifornianism!

When I touched down at SFO, I almost left my backpack on the gangway, because
I didn’t read the part of my ticket stub that said: Pick up your bag from the
gate…you idiot. I walked out to the terminal to look for rapid transit and asked
a man checking into his flight for assistance.

“You know where BART is?”

I even omitted the “the” that we Southern Californians are obsessed with
putting before our modes of transportation.

“A bar? Nah. What? I dunno.”

San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit goes directly from the airport to the
downtown, like in every other legitimate city besides Los Angeles. It was eight
bucks to take BART into the city. I sat in a train car with dudes who looked
like they were commuting from Silicon Valley to a website launch party in SoMa.
They either ran a start-up or took their fashion cues from Fast Company: so many
blazers, they may have actually been the brothers Brooks themselves.

The BART conductor was pretty chatty. She reminded everyone on board to
report any unattended baggage and to keep an eye on your own bags. I remembered
overhearing a rumor that thieves try to pickpocket your electronics while you’re
sitting on the train. I wondered if that’s why San Franciscans think of their
city as “European.” I disembarked at UN-Civic Center and took a cab to an old
friend’s apartment.

He’d recently moved from New York and was just discovering it all. We had a
quiet evening of drinking IPAs, watching crime dramas, criticizing design
choices on HGTV. The next morning dressed in khakis and a button up shirt, he
made me a cup of drip coffee. I said that he looked dapper. He said that he felt
underdressed. If he was still in New York City he’d be wearing a suit and tie.
The only people wearing suits and ties in San Francisco are out-of-town
businessmen and lawyers, but only if they have to go to court.

Even though my friend is a native Angeleno, he said he hates LA for its
fakeness.

“It’s a city built on the business of deception. If you run into your enemy,
he will pretend to make plans with you. In New York, your enemy will tell you to
fuck off.”

I found a cafe well regarded by the Internet at the corner of Divisadero and
Turk. They served Intelligentsia instead of Blue Bottle Coffee. I was surprised
to discover a Los Angeles roaster in San Francisco. That’s like a Blood hanging
out in Crip territory. (Well, technically it’s more of a Sureño/Norteño prison
gang rivalry thing, but I thought that the Bloods/Crips analogy would make more
sense to a wider audience. Because obviously the Crips would prefer Blue
Bottle.)

I checked my email, sent dumb tweets, and searched for more highly reviewed
nearby destinations.

I ate a delicious sandwich while fighting off dogs in the park, and then,
still entirely caffeinated, met a former colleague at a bicycle shop serving
coffee in pint glasses. We’d previously seen each other in Berlin and Austin. We
talked about how every neighborhood in San Francisco and Berlin and Austin were
like different scenes from Portlandia. I walked from the bike messenger sketch
through the feminist bookstore routine to the depths of the hipster
hide-and-go-seek bit.

I passed a man in a wheelchair smoking a joint and commended his leashed cat
for being such a good boy. I walked further into The Mission and was struck by
how sketchy-as-fuck the 16th and Mission BART station was. It reminded me of the
addicts and crazy people in front of the MacArthur Park Metro stop in LA, but in
SF members of the creative class waltz by the penniless wielding iPads and
decidedly not making eye contact with meth-heads.

My former Bushwick roommate and I headed for Mexican food, veering around
several people making broad-daylight drug deals. This was the third time I’d
seen my former roommate over regional Mexican cuisine. We’d had Jalisciense
birria in East LA, poblano mole in Bushwick, and now Yucateco salbutes de pavo
in The Mission. Anyway, the Oaxacan restaurant was shut, so we went to
Yucatasia around the corner. We thought it was Asian fusion cuisine, but it just
turned out that these emigres from Quintana Roo really liked that Disney movie
where Mickey Mouse wears a wizard hat.

I asked the East Coast native for some insight into the LA-SF rivalry. He
said he really likes San Francisco, but you can’t beat the weather or the fact
that people are actually doing things in Los Angeles.

We went back to my friend’s apartment and watched Kojak and The Rockford
Files on KOFY. The network only broadcasts commercials for AARP or Colonial Penn
Life Insurance. Elderly lunch ladies earnestly talk about the recent deaths of
their husbands, and about Alex Trebek’s handsomeness. I wonder what commercials
will look like when our ironic generation finally needs life insurance in a few
decades: keyboard cats, Facebook albums filled with only pictures of food, the
Old Spice guy.

I got a call from another former colleague and walked to his studio at the
residential edge of The Mission. We drank White Russians and shot a weird video
in front of a green screen. I held a chihuahua and he gave me a haircut while
dressed as a fox. It will be the fourth in a series of barbershop videos that
I’ve made. In the first video I got a reggaeton haircut. This video will be a
haircut in outer space.

We finished early. I was pretty drunk, and my tummy kind of hurt from mixing
dairy with alcohol. I took a cab to meet another friend from high school at a
bar in the Lower Haight. I ate a slice of four-cheese pizza and waited in line
for the bar. A lesbian walked by and told the bouncer that the party was not as
queer as she would have hoped. He said “come back tomorrow, or any other night.”

After being made to pour out a water bottle, I walked in and found my high
school friend in the back. The DJ played house music and disco edits. I danced
around for a while, before clowning on the maestro for using zip disks on his
drum machine from ’98. I ordered more shots that I didn’t need and after the
club closed we walked back to my high school friend’s high-ceilinged apartment
and I crashed on his couch.

The next morning, the native Angeleno friend concisely explained why San
Francisco hates LA: “They just don’t get it, and they’re kind of jealous.” On
his way to work, he stopped for a coffee at a cafe that wasn’t a chain, picked
up a newspaper from a non-corporate bookstore, and bought a gluten-free
raspberry scone at an independent bakery. I was kind of jealous that San
Franciscans can get so many things from indie retailers so easily. I said
goodbye at his bus stop, and wandered the city attempting to wait out my
hangover.

I bumped into two people that I knew from various coasts walking down Market
towards the bay. I sat next to toddlers and watched the boats go by. I walked
into the Ferry Building and noticed a huge crowd of people waiting for drip
coffee. I hadn’t seen this many dummies waiting in line for a cup of coffee
since I walked by Intelligentsia on Sunset a few weeks ago.

I walked back through Chinatown toward Hayes Valley to meet up with a series
of old friends. I ran between three separate happy hours, talked about the
profitability of new-new media, chatted about the Tiki-themed bar trend,
promptly ran to one, drank a hot buttered rum, ran to the next happy hour, got
chewed out by the bar maid at Toronado, ate a burrito, drank a shot of whiskey,
took a cab to the depths of The Mission, danced the Twist, returned to my
friend’s house, broke a lamp, fell asleep, vaguely awoke to the sounds of
lesbian sex.

I fell back asleep after counting drunk people walking past the thin walls,
woke up early, sliced my finger trying to fix the lamp, put on a band-aid, drank
more fancy coffee, watched people freeze their compost, ate a frittata, bought
porcelain repair adhesive, walked to Dolores Park, hung with a friend I hadn’t
seen in a while, remembered I’d once given her a business card for a clown that
I’d written my information on, and then met up with friends I’d only known from
the internet.

After all that I felt pretty hungry. I found a taco spot somewhere along
Valencia. At the taqueria a customer wearing a Chivas jersey was jabbing the
taquero about being an América fan. Guadalajara has the same qualms with Mexico
City that the Bay Area has with Los Angeles. Namely being a large city that
matters locally, but not as much on a global scale.

I met up with friends from the dorms. I drank more beers than I could have
handled a decade ago and told them to come visit me in Los Angeles. They
declined. “Ugh, LA? So much traffic, so many assholes, why don’t you come up
here more often?” I agreed to visit more frequently, but right now, in typical
LA dickhead fashion, I had to roll to another party.

I walked a few miles to meet up with more college friends at a designer bar
with craft cocktails, maybe the one that those Silicon Valley guys from earlier
were on their way to. I told my college buddies about my favorite scenes from
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Not specifically because I’m a pervert who
remembers that scene where Judge Reinhold imagines Phoebe Cates topless, but
because that scene was playing on the big screen.

At the bar I ran into some old study abroad friends. I told them I was in San
Francisco for travel writing, which was somewhat true, but I only said that so
they wouldn’t think I was a total weirdo for wearing a huge backpack inside of a
blazer bar. I told them I had to jet in a hurry, because I wanted to see
everyone I’d made plans with that night. San Francisco is great because you can
actually cover most of the city on foot. In LA it’s a huge night if you hit two
separate parties.

I walked to a birthday party at a soon-to-be-discovered dive bar with high
ceilings and low prices. I was supposed to go to a fiesta in The Mission, but I
didn’t know if I could travel with the dozen amigos I was already drinking with.
I texted the party purveyor:

Yo is it fun? I think Imma roll through. How big is it? I’m with various
depths of peeps.

fun! big! bring every1!

We got to the hella crowded party and made it hella more crowded. It felt
like a cross between a Williamsburg warehouse dance party and somebody’s hippie
parents’ basement yoga studio.

We formed circles around our friends and pushed them into the middle. We
chanted their names as they did fun dance moves. A buddy allegedly challenged me
to a rap battle, which he claims to have won, but it was so loud in there I
thought we were still chanting our friends’ names.

Drunk, sweaty, temporarily deaf, and with a plane to catch in six hours, I
found a cab and headed back to my friend’s spot. The Bangladeshi cab driver
asked where I was from, and for the whole ride talked about how he fucking loves
Los Angeles. When he lived there, he’d make so much money driving drunk idiots
back-and-forth from downtown to the Westside — “Tonight I’m only making $14 off
of you drunk idiots.”

San Francisco has the best cab drivers in the world. A taxi driver once told
me that he was the understudy for the Phantom of the Opera and sang the titular
song to prove his point. Another time I got in a shouting match with a cab
driver. We weren’t yelling at each other, we were just seeing who could shout
crazier things. He won. I’ve never had a memorable cab ride in Los Angeles.

We got back to the townhouse overlooking the southern hills of San Francisco.
We ate quesadillas while his roommate’s dogs ate compost. I passed out quickly.
I woke up a few hours later to a buff pit bull licking my face and guys telling
me that I should find somewhere else to sleep because they had to watch last
night’s Australian Open match. I took a shower and then my friend drove me to
the airport.

He is a Bay Area native and has lived in The City for five years, but he’s
also one of the most well-traveled people I know. As a San Franciscan he hates
Los Angeles for its artificiality, lack of rapid transit, divorce from nature,
and haphazard design. I told him he should come visit, that I’d show him a good
time. He said that he was totally down. Travelers kinda get that there’s more to
a place than the stereotypes about it.

He dropped me off at Terminal 1. I scowled at new TSA security measures (“put
your hands over your head and cough three times”). Then I bought a Boudin
sourdough loaf to remember San Francisco by. I felt like shit. I wished I was
staying longer. In part to recover from the previous evening, but also because I
had such a great time. San Francisco is somewhere I could live for a while — or
at least sublet for a few months.

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About The Author

Josh Heller

Josh is a writer from Los
Angeles. He has lived in Mexico City, New York, and Berlin with extensive jaunts
to Latin America and Europe.

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view all → Josh Heller

http://www.travellingfamily.ca/ Travelling
Family

Despite the opening claim, this reads more like “Why Josh Hates San
Francisco.”

Josh2z

When I visited SF, our first cab driver was great, he gave us a great tour
of the city but was hesitant to tell my friends where to buy weed being that
he had just got out of jail for cocaine trafficking.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1181723202 Lauren
Quinn

As a native Bay Area girl, I reeeeally got a kick out of this. And for the
record, I’ve got mad love for LA.

ac

I know that white russian swilling hair stylist. Sorry I missed you.
Especially since you had practically nothing to do while you were
here.

http://passportsandplaces.tumblr.com/ Emily
McManus

As a CenCal native (hell yes!) that has spent a good chunk of time living
in LA, I really appreciated this piece. I absolutely love San Francisco and
also have fond memories from down south. Any way you slice it, you’re an
amazing writer – thanks for the laughs.

Timothy

Well, this is really more about why San Franciscans might not like
L.A.–there’s a lot more to Northern California than S.F.

But that aside, the whole San Fransisco attitude may derive from the fact
that San Francisco’s pretty much the only big city, urban environment in
California.   Yet it’s still no NYC, so they might be trying a little too
hard sometimes to defend their urbanite status–to themselves and to
others.

Jeff

Intelligentsia is from Chicago, and started by a former San
Franciscan.

Kyleheise

okay, maybe one of the best articles of matador i have ever seen. as a dude
from the “Yay”, you hit the exact points as to why I don’t ever want to reside
down there. No respect to nature…

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XVG4ECPGAVFM3SBMPOM6BD7GAQ
Kilo

I grew up in Oakland, and live in Hawaii. Given a choice, I would live in
OC, or the San Fernando Valley!

MSN

FU LA. Think back. 2 Major Earthquakes. 1 hits NoCal,  1 hits SoCal.
So which one do you think got all their roads and bridges fixed even though
their Earthquake was several years after the first? Thats right LA LA
Land.

Remember those terrible droughts in the 80s and 90s? Remember being given a
ticket for washing your car? remember not flushing your toilet if you only
pissed in it?

No? Oh you must be from LA!

Nefastvs

Umm… the drought measures were practiced in LA as well. Also. We’ve got
plenty of roads and bridges that never got retrofitting after the Northridge
quake. Your bitterness is unfounded, and you’ve clearly never been to nor
talked to anyone fom LA out of some bizarre regional
bigotry.

brightlights

But you have to admit it’s pretty naive to think that you’re better for
living somewhere else. Some cities may be more efficient, but it’s really
childish to put down the citizens of an area for being from there. I like
what Nefastvs said – “regional bigotry” lol. Sounds ridiculous, right?
That’s because it is ridiculous.

http://twitter.com/onceatraveler Turner
Wright

I thought this was pretty funny. Local San Francisco boy
here.

Bebe

The only salient point is that Angelenos hardly ever dis San Francisco
(except, perhaps, for the chilly summer wind when we quote Mark Twain).
We simply don’t care enough to do so: it’s all good ’cause it’s
California.

brightlights

Amen. Why hate? People need to get over their false sense of
‘pride’. You can be proud of an accomplishment, but you can’t take credit
for living in a city that you had no hand in developing. You can be glad you
live in a certain place and be proud of how it runs, but you can’t seriously
believe you’re superior than others for living there.

http://profile.yahoo.com/FKCBOOWKPA2HLMAPKRMFALIUZQ Sean

Check out Sandow Birk’s 1990s art series about the animosity between the
two cities…
http://sandowbirk.com/paintings/the-great-war-of-the-californias/

Jgillett24

As an Angeleno I dont understand these “disconnect from nature” comments.
If you want to hike you can hit up Griffith Park, the Malibu Hills, or any
number of trails in Angeles National Forrest. For parks there is the soon to
be reopened Echo Park, Exposition Park, Lincoln Park, MacArthur Park and
any number of other smaller regional greenspaces. I know many people who
are urban gardening and organic food is obviously very ”in”. I feel that
folks in SF hate on LA because most of the people living in the
former have never actually spent time in the later…Come down and check it
out…

ChrisLoos

Right? We only have a 10,000 ft. high mountain range bisecting Los
Angeles county.  If you live in LA and don’t at
least occasionally partake in the world class hiking at our
doorstep, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

Sam Crow

at its core SF hatred of LA (and really NorCal hatred of SoCal) is at least
90% about water thievery

Jgillett24

Are they pissed about LA stealing water from the folks in the Owens
Valley? San Francisco gets its water from a large dam near Yosemite called
Hetch Hetchy. Muir believed this valley was a mirror (read: equal in beauty)
to the Yosemite valley but unfortunately lost the battle to prevent it from
becoming dammed up and turned into a reservoir…

Doc

Josh is sure a narcissistic  little snark, ain’t
he.

http://tinyurl.com/affiliate-ressurection Janet
Johnson

Publish this if you dare. Get them in to have major brain surgery to fix
their inability to take responsibility for Why San Francisco hates Los
Angeles. Wishful thinking: doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results each time.

someonefromOakland

yeah, better titled “Super long ramblings about this one time I went to San
Francisco and tried to find out more about why San Franciscans hate L.A. even
though it’s total BS and I just wanted everyone to know about all the things I
do when I’m not in LA…” etc.

brightlights

Bitter bear

Skeptical in SF

This story was unbearable to read.  Seems like this guy randomly ran
into people he had known, worked with, went to school with, or slept with at
various times in the past a bit more frequently than would ever occur in the
real world, no?

LNJ

Think of it as Northern Pride. Way-Far-North-Of-SF Californians (aka….true
Nor Californian’s) hate everything south of the Lost Coast; even though you
pay 10 times more for gas, have to do all your shopping online, and everything
closes at 6:00.

http://3d.about.com JustinSlick

Surprised by some of the negative feedback in the comments.  Even as
someone completely detached from the SF LA debate, I thought this was one of
the funniest articles I’ve ever read on Matador. Laughed out loud several
times, in fact.

BoneFaceHammer

Intelligentsia is from Chicago, not LA.

picklepuss1

Interesting article, but a few odd errors.  Personally I live in LA…
there is more opportunity as a writer over multiple mediums. And nature… what?
LA has BETTER nature than SF… Beaches which are actually warm enough to walk
out in shorts and not a hoody, beaches you can actually get in the water in
the summer… And 10,000+ foot mountain ranges and ample skiing. SF has neither
of these. Sure it’s more “green” and there are more wooded areas, but it isn’t
more impressive. Plus LA has better year round weather, SF winters are pretty
rainy and depressing. I wanted to get away with that living up north. Now, SF
wins in being a better designed city, I much prefer it aesthetically. But it
stops there.

Amis

I feel a loss for having read that…. wow. This article exemplified my
general dislike, not for LA, but the dwellers within. Your whimsical rambling,
shows no “love” for SF. So, where in this rambling was a
point?

Mark Sharp

Good stuff. Don’t feel too bad Angelenos, San Franciscans pretty much hate
anywhere that’s not on their short list: S.F., Berkeley (never, ever Oakland),
Marin, the redwood, wine country, and of course, ‘The Lake.’ They honesty do
not understand why anyone in their right mind would prefer LA to San
Francisco. I don’t believe Angelenos when they say (and they always do) that
they don’t care enough about SF to hate it -because they are the only one’s
who do care if they are liked. San Franciscans just assume everybody loves
them and if not, well then they are exceedingly unsophisticated rubes. The
truth is most San Franciscans don’t hate LA as much as Angelenos want them
to.

Charles Nicholas Dizon

where’s san fran again?

Michele L Appel

I love it, Josh. I’m from Idaho, but spent the most important 7 years of
my youngish life (I’m nearly 30) living in LA. I’ll always feel like it’s
home, in some way. I live in the Bay Area now and frankly, I’ll agree with
your friend and say, they just don’t get it. Also, NY, Berlin, and Mexico
City are three of my other favorite places. We might really get each other

Hasta, take care, dude.

Margaret Kizior

break it down for me gurl….cause I needs to know. Why they
hatin?!

Kelley Dane

I’ve traveled the globe and broken bread with every kind of people. I’ve
lived near LA in the Rodney King era. I love California weather along the
full length of her coast but LA wasn’t a city I could make a single authentic
friend. Not ONE in 3yrs residence, a dubious distinction unique to your city
relative to every other place I’ve lived. I cannot say the same of San Fran
and San D, which I never did reside for more than a week at a clip. LA folks
were like the vacuous stare of porn with me. Too self absorbed. Too
indifferent. Too willing to lie right to your face. People don’t really talk
to one another. They’re selling each other something and waiting for the
other guy to quit talking. Sorry Josh Heller, but my New England
sensibilities just weren’t in any slight way compatible with the flake factor
I regularly found myself surrounded by. Enjoy LA, for whatever you’re getting
out of it that so eluded me. San Fran and San D’s cultural/ people character
has more heft to it. Enduring friendships there. LA, not.

Larry Ely

What a confessional!

Kelley Dane

@[558739086:2048:Larry Ely] I think it’s important to recognize regional
differences/ cultural sensibilities that do tend to divide us on certain
issues. I have the attitude that it’s mostly just subjective tastes- dozens
of flavors of ice cream, and none should be abolished for the sake of
monoculture standards unless it’s destructive or there’s a constitutional
basis to do so. Just because I failed to appreciate anything about LA
shouldn’t mean anyone is compelled to hate it or vice versa. LA is still
‘kin’. For x% of Americans based purely on subjective criteria, LA natives
are the ‘difficult’ relative. I say this with full conviction knowing that
“I” am also a ‘difficult’ relative to various % of Americans. In honoring
our differences, there is unity there too. Counterintuitive as that may
sound.

Kristina Leano

Josh Heller – this was a hilarious article (i’m a San Diego native, living
in LA currently, but wishing i was living in SF) and i hope you write more of
this stuff!

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