By Sarah Pye
Living Editor
Today’s Important Lesson that anyone more intelligent than dryer lint needs to know is: All places are not like Los Angeles.
Now, a week ago, I would have assumed that this lesson might go without saying, and I could instead devote this week’s column to an issue of more worth and substance, such as nuclear arms agreements, or the latest antics of the Hilton sisters.
However, after a recent trip to Dallas with a group of Pepperdine students, I have come to the conclusion that many of you out there have simply lived in L.A. a little too long and are beginning to lose touch with reality.
I base this discovery on the fact that it appears many people fail to grasp the concept of a “downtown” area. Now, for those living in Los Angeles, I understand the confusion. “Downtown Los Angeles” is difficult to locate, without the aid of a good map and access to government spy satellites.
In fact, there has been some speculation in recent years by city planning experts that L.A.’s downtown area was in reality completely destroyed in 1982 by rioting “Dukes of Hazzard” fans, irate that Tom Wopat (“Luke Duke”) was forced from the show in a dispute over script-writing.
However, the fact that no one has actually seen downtown since the early 1980s is commonly attributed to slowdowns on the 110 freeway.
But whatever the actual status of the alleged L.A. downtown area, Southland residents just don’t seem to know very much about what goes on in normal city business districts.
The most frequent phrase that I heard uttered during the Dallas trip was: “Why aren’t there any people around here?”
Okay folks, Lesson Number One: When you’re walking around downtown after about 6 p.m. on weekdays, or at any point on the weekends, there WON’T BE ANY PEOPLE! Downtown is a place for work – people go home in the evenings! They have lives! They have families! They are not going to sit in their cars clogging major roadways just so visiting L.A. residents can feel at home!
Insensitive of them? Perhaps. But it is just one of those realities of life that we’re all going to have to accept.
Another such reality is that, in some parts of the world, people eat alligator.
And these parts of the world are not just those that exist on television “reality” shows, where people have also been known to ingest truly disgusting things like live cockroaches or tuna casserole in order to win fabulous cash prizes.
No, in Texas, alligator is just one of your garden-variety meats, like chicken in California, steak in Nebraska, or cat in Mexico.
Of course, hoping to blend in with our local surroundings, possibly exacerbated by the fact that we’d spent the last roughly seven hours traveling, with only stale airline pretzels to tide us over, we decided to sample the gator. The group consensus seemed to be that it tasted “like chicken, but with less flavor.”
My personal analysis of the gator’s many subtle and diverse flavor intonations was that it tasted, to the highly trained and complex palate, like an eraser, but chewier.
Of course, what do we California residents know about real Southern cooking – or about life in one of the South’s biggest cities, for that matter? Tragically little.
Maybe we should go ask Tom Wopat.
November 13, 2003