Here’s what the talk of the town REALLY is!
Hi. My name is Sam, and I moved from the East Coast to L.A. a little over a year ago. That's a big move!
Distance-wise, for one, it's over 3,000 miles! But the culture of SoCal is so different from the East Coast and the Midwest (where I went to college) too. Meeting people, not sounding like an outsider, and just holding down a conversation can be a daunting task if you don't know what you're talking about!
But most of all, you'll need to master the art of the #humblebrag, a sort of passive-aggressive way of casually asserting authority in a conversation. L.A. is a weird place where it's competitive, but you also have to act like you don't care at the same time! So making small talk — AND holding your own — can be challenging for newbies!
First of all...
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Sports (unless someone is winning).
Unless a certain team is winning, you really don't care about sports (this is a common thing for EVERYTHING in L.A., everyone just has a general sense of blasé).
Let's be real, this isn't Philly or Boston — no one lives or dies by the Dodgers or Kings. When they're winning, then yeah, talk about them! They're ~trendy~ and ~hip~. Otherwise, sports teams in L.A. are like potholes: You'd rather just pretend they're not there.
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New York.
People in New York love to crap in L.A. — "I would never live there, there's too much traffic and I would miss the seasons," — but people out here just don't really feel the same way. That's because we're too busy working on our tans and enjoying In-N-Out to care what other cities think about us. Stay pressed, New York!
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