The New York Times has an article about the increasing migration of “creatives” from New York to Los Angeles. The article appears in the paper’s style section, so it’s light on economic and demographic analysis, and heavy on talk of fashion, galleries, and the “food scene.” Brace yourself:
In an era when it has become fashionable for New Yorkers to grumble that their own city is becoming a sterile playland for the global-money set (Dubai with blizzards, basically), Los Angeles is enjoying a renaissance with a burgeoning art, fashion and food scene that has become irresistible to the culturally attuned.
As a result, the old New York-Los Angeles rivalry is changing, at least on the East Coast side of the equation. No longer do in-the-know New Yorkers reflexively parrot sneers like the old Woody Allen line, that the only cultural advantage of Los Angeles is the right turn on red.
In some quarters, the scorn that New Yorkers once piled on Los Angeles is now sounding like envy.
Indeed, Los Angeles has seemingly become the flight fantasy of choice for the likes of Ms. Turner, who insists that anything good she was giving up in overpriced, overstressed Brooklyn is already in place on the booming east side of Los Angeles: the in-season Zambian coffee outposts, the galleries, the vintage clothing boutiques.
With that area’s scruffy bohemian spirit and laid-back mood, she thinks she had found the best of her New York life without the migraines. “It’s like grown-up version of Williamsburg,” Ms. Turner said, “without the gray cloud.”