After a beautiful week in Seattle and Portland, visiting friends and participating in the PNWA writers’ conference (so many manuscripts! so little time!), I’ve started having day-dreams about moving west. One week isn’t much to base an opinion on, but everything out there seemed so much happier, and calmer and more peaceful than New York. Perhaps I have a case of mountain-envy. I wanna live out there!
This week, after a buddy of mine relocated to Los Angeles, I’ve really started to think about it. (He’s been filling my head with how awesome LA is, cheaper and friendlier with lots more going on. Really.) Perhaps LA is where it’s at these days. Perhaps the grass is greener on the other coast. And now this Art Brut song is stuck in my head:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OIzJQyq3WA&hl=en&fs=1
A big reason for my friend’s departure, in his words, was that he found it much harder to make new friends in New York than he has anywhere else. People in LA are much more open to meeting people, he said. Is that really true? My friend in Portland (who’s lived there for about a year) said her main complaint about her new city was how hard it is to make friends there. She left a ton of friends behind in NYC. So which coast is really friendlier? Obviously Portland is very different from LA, and New York is its own planet altogether. I’ve always thought the difficulty I encountered meeting people in New York had more to do with the post-college reality that everyone experiences (we’re not all living in a big happy dormitory anymore) than the vibe of the city itself. But maybe I’m wrong?
What do you all think? I’m sure the east coast vs. west coast debate can go on forever. New York can be exhausting and exhilarating all at once… and as a book person, I never thought I’d live anywhere else. But California… seems so awesome. Perhaps I’ve gotten sick of crowds — even really fun crowds. Or maybe I’m sick of all the hipster-bashing and general snark about my neighborhood (case in point: the comments on the NYTimes McCarren Pool article today).
Or maybe I’m just ready to flee…