The East Side?

Here is a little anecdote to explain why I intend never to live in Los Angeles ever again if I can help it.

Tonight I met a woman who currently resides in LA. In the course of our conversation, she mentioned how she hardly ever sees a friend of hers anymore "since I moved to the East Side."

"That's too bad," I said. "Where exactly on the East Side do you live?"

"West Hollywood," she replied.

I was dumbfounded. I probably should've ended the conversation right then and walked away. But that is apparently not, so to speak, how I roll. "So... you consider WeHo to be the East Side? What exactly do you suppose it to be 'east' of?"

"Well," she replied, "it's east of the 405."

Now... if you are from LA or have drunk the LA Kool-Aid, this rationale might almost make sense to you. Otherwise it is COMPLETELY F#@%ING BANANAS. For those unfamiliar with LA's layout, here is a helpful color-coded map:

West Hollywood is factually NOT on the East Side.

"Hmm," says I, "I guess it's technically true of just about anywhere that it is east of somewhere and west of someplace else. But in the case of 'West Hollywood,' it even has the word 'West' in the name."

And so on. I won’t bore you with the rest of the absurd conversation. The point is, LA is the kind of place where (for some people, apparently) it can be easy to forget that there's a Downtown "somewhere that-a way," with many of millions of people living on the (actual) East Side of it. But that is LA for you -- an insane, disjointed, sprawling cancer of a city, where there is no up, no down, no east nor west, only a never-ending traffic snarl, no doubt attributable at least in part to those who (either through mindless ignorance, selfishness, or sheer vapid foolishness) would flagrantly disregard even the most basic axioms of geography.