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Sat 13 Sep, 2008 11:58 am
Are there any weird or unique customs that you feel are specific to your town, city, or region?
I got thinking about this recently because just last week, on one of the first days in my new (though temporary) hometown, Los Angeles, I walked into a café and found that a good two-thirds of the customers were busy typing away at their laptops. There's nothing unique or unusual about this, of course; having spent plenty of time in college towns, I'm accustomed to seeing students setting up shop in cafés. But as I gradually noticed in this particular café, no one had any notebooks or textbooks by their side, and though I didn't sit close enough to anyone to see what they were typing, I noticed that everyone's screen was open to a Word document that took this general shape:
BLAH BLAH BLAH: blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
BLAH BLAH BLAH: blah blah
BLAH BLAH BLAH: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
It occurred to me that no one was actually doing schoolwork. They were all working on their screenplays. I'm sure this is not exclusive to L.A., but my first thought was: only in L.A.!
@Shapeless,
I seem to remember that there is a cafe in the LA area that is fostered as a hangout of writers; I'm thinking it might be in Glendale or Pasadena. There was an article about it in the LA times, probably a couple of years ago.
But, of course, with a huge percentage of the population knowing about screenplay writing or thinking of their lives in terms of screenplays, I can also see cafe screenwriting as a general phenomenon.)
(I'm LA born and bred, though I live in New Mexico. Had been married to a.. yes.. screenwriter./playwright.)
@ossobuco,
I also used to live in the very north of California in the area of an old seaport town. They had what they used to call the Eureka stop. That is, at a 4-way stop intersection, no one would go for seconds, or perhaps minutes, at a time, politely waiting for another person to go first, thus some kind of stasis of stopping.
@Shapeless,
Only in Santa Fe, the capital of wierd among other things, in a large field of mayoral candidates, could you find one who claimed to be channeling the spirit of a dead artist and, if elected, the artist would be the one who governed.
And she got votes.
It's true people. "They" are out there, and they vote.
@ossobuco,
Funny!
Speaking of northern California: a few months ago, while I was still living in my previous home region--the San Francisco/Bay Area--I chanced upon an animal clinic that offered acupuncture. Yes, you read correctly: acupuncture for your pets. Again, I'm sure places like this exist elsewhere, but my first thought was: only in San Francisco!
@Shapeless,
A friend called Arcata the "last gasp of the counterculture".
I used to be an acupuncture scoffer, but I think it has a place in pain treatment. Haven't tried it myself.
Only in Raleigh do we have a big bronze statue of Andy and Opie
I have to say: Only in San Diego is it possible for a corrupt city government
to get even more corrupt with every year.
@Shapeless,
Only in New Jersey will you meet people who believe that New Jersey's most reputable university is Rutgers.
@Thomas,
Not unique, but unusual among large American cities:
In Seattle I went to vote, and there were five parties with candidates for our congressional seat -- and none of them were Republican...
@Shapeless,
I'm sure this is not exclusive to L.A., but my first thought was: only in L.A.!
You are not wrong.
Everywhere around the globe the chatterboxes are making much ado about nothing.
I am not a journalist or an intellectual.
In Köln( Germany) where i live I always face those noise-polluters.
But when the people are fed up with the system they are entitled to make vociferous noises.
Voice is not noise.
Some San Francisco friends once invited me and the missus to what they said was their favorite "biker bar" in the city. These friends are big fans of dressing up in crazy costumes and outfits, so we assumed they wanted us to ham it up and come decked out in leather jackets and spandex. Fortunately we refrained because we found out that the bar (the famous Gestalt Haus in the Mission) caters to Lance Armstrong-types... lots of Schwinns but no Harley Davidsons.
Only in San Francisco does "biker bar" mean cyclists rather than motorcyclists.
@Shapeless,
Reminds me of a scene from Super Troopers..
There is a bar near Omaha (Mineola, Iowa) That gets a ton of cyclists every week. There is a pretty popular 'Taco Ride' where a bunch of people ride 10 miles on a trail to a nothing town, and get drunk and eat tacos. Then They all ride back in the dark, drunk, when only about half the people have lights (and there are no lights on the trail). I've done it a few times, its great fun.
As you can see from these pics, the town really isn't meant to support a crowd like this:
While finding these pictures, I found a website that says its America's longest-running weekly bike ride. I had no idea!
http://tacoride.com/
Only in Hungary ... or maybe Russia, Bulgaria, Romania - OK, anywhere in these here transition countries: remnants of the post-1989 "Wild East".
Quote:
Privatisation meltdown
Budapest Times
8 September 2008
2,000 wagons melted for scrap, police say
[..] In the early hours of last Tuesday police detained [Hungarian State Railway] MÁV Cargo CEO Imre Kovács, who has since been replaced, as well as two former MÁV chiefs, Balázs Orosz and Gusztáv Lékai on suspicion of embezzling some HUF 1 billion (EUR 4.15 million).
The three MÁV suspects are accused of a HUF 1 billion fraud, by selling wagons that were in working order or only in need of minor repairs from the MÁV stock below even their value as scrap between 2002 and 2003. The buyers of the scrapped wagons are thought to be various Hungarian and foreign steelworks, news agency MTI reported. The department for economy protection at Budapest Police is in charge of the investigations. [..]
Public prosecutor
Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) MP Béla Szép got the ball rolling again when he informed the public prosecutor on 14 May, 2007 that the wagons had been sold illegally. As a result the police launched an inquiry. Unlike the many earlier investigators, the police sleuths came to the conclusion that 2,000 wagons had been scrapped and then sold without valid reason. The damage caused was estimated by the investigators at over HUF 1 billion. The three suspects were detained last Tuesday on the basis of these findings.
Wagons ‘worth’ 1 forint
The State Audit Office also provided grounds for suspicion. Their report released two months ago looks at the MÁV Cargo assets list used for the privatisation process. In this 2,326 of a total of 13,701 cargo wagons appear with a book value of one forint each. The 2,000 wagons in question could be concealed behind these.
Once tens of thousands
The cargo wagons melted for scrap five years ago may just be the tip of the iceberg: at the time of the change of regime, according to the information of insiders, MÁV had an impressive stock of some 50,000 cargo wagons.
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