Where Can You Do More – Los Angeles or Cleveland?
by David Budin

I recently spent five days in Los Angeles. I always talk about how great Cleveland is, but I’ll admit it, I love LA. I’ve been there eight times in the past 30 years and during those visits I’ve spent the equivalent of six months there. LA has everything anyone could want, and lots of it. And coming from this part of the country, I think everything there looks so exotic – the plant life seems otherworldly; you can see mountains right in the city.

LA is huge. Here’s how LA County compares to Cuyahoga County: LA is 6,700 square miles; Cuyahoga county is 460 square miles. LA County’s topography goes from nine feet below sea level to 10,000 feet above; Cuyahoga’s goes from 770 above sea level to 570 above sea level. LA County has 75 miles of Pacific Ocean coastland; Cuyahoga County has 30 miles of Lake Erie shoreline. LA County has a population of 10,225,000 people; Cuyahoga County has 1,335,000.

People in Cleveland complain that there’s not much nightlife in Cleveland, but in LA there’s not much nightlife. Wait. What? LA? Yeah, it’s true. It’s just as difficult to find, say, a restaurant that’s open past 11:00 p.m. in LA as it is in Cleveland. Come to think of it, when you get right down to it, it’s harder in LA, because even if you know of one or call around and find one, it might be an hour’s drive away.

That’s the thing about LA. It’s so big that … well, here’s an example. I was leaving a meeting at an office on Wilshire Boulevard. (Actually, the fact that it took place on Wilshire Boulevard has zero to do with the story. It just sounds cool to say. I mean, when I drive around Hollywood, all I can think of is those I Love Lucy episodes that took place there, and how enamored Lucy and Ethyl were of all those sites. I watch a lot of late-night TV, okay?)

Anyway, I’m leaving this meeting and someone asks where I’m going next. I tell her and she says, “Oh, great – that’s right here!”

I say, “You mean I can walk there?”

She laughs out loud and says, “No. It’s about a 20-minute cab ride.”

That’s what I mean: In Cleveland, a 20-minute cab ride is across town. In LA, a 20-minute cab ride is “right here.” A couple of weeks ago, I drove from Value World – the thrift store with cool clothes, that’s almost all the way to Cleveland’s western border – to the Beachland Ballroom, which is almost all the way to Cleveland’s eastern border, a trip that seemed like going out of town, and the whole thing took 20 minutes. And it was simple to find the way.

In LA, some people I was with wanted to eat at a vegetarian restaurant. That should be easy enough to find; this was LA. It was easy to find. I went on-line and found 60 vegetarian restaurants in the LA area. But every one of them would have involved a very long car ride – and that’s if you know how to get there. I live in Cleveland Heights. Without much thought I can come up with two vegetarian restaurants within 10 minutes of my house – Limbo on Larchmere and Tommy’s on Coventry.

I drove to someone’s house in Malibu. The drive – though an hour and a half from where I was staying – was unbelievably beautiful, through a canyon, then along the ocean. It would be great to live there. Except the houses cost millions of dollars. The one I was in, someone said, was worth about one and a half million, a relative bargain. Except that it looked literally like an Appalachian shack from the outside, and it was nothing special on the inside. Outside, though, was a different story, and I guess that’s what you pay for.

I drove from where I was staying in Encino – which really is a very nice area – to a vintage record store in Hollywood, Amoeba Records. It’s so big that it has it’s own large parking garage underneath. I’ve been there four times in three different years, on different days of the week and different times of the day. Every time, I’ve had to wait to get a place in the garage. And this is just a record store, not the Hollywood Bowl.

Speaking of the Hollywood Bowl, ask Angelinos how often they go there. Not often, if at all. Or most places. Some people go some place, occasionally. But most people do the same things that that you and I do here – school meetings, grocery shopping, religious services – even though they have all that other great stuff to do there. Everything is too far, and too expensive.

So, I really do think is LA is swell and I actually do love being there. But it’s a lot easier and cheaper to live here. And we can go to concerts, theater, museums, galleries and restaurants. And that’s what makes Cleveland cool.

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