Doesn't Know Us From Adam
Adam Nagourney in The New York Times starts a recent piece thus:
LOS ANGELES — When Stephen Turner pulled his silver Mercedes into the Mobil station on a gritty stretch of Hollywood near Vine Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, he did not immediately recognize the gigantic man with Windex who ambled over and offered to wash his windows for a tip.
Hey, this is where I live. That's my Mobil station. So Nagourney thinks it's gritty? It may not be Brentwood, but gritty? I wouldn't say that.
If Adam wants me to drive him around Los Angeles a little, I'll show him gritty.
P.S. The caption to the main photo reads "Lewis Brown spends much of his days at a Mobil station, washing drivers' windows." Perhaps, but the photo shows him in front of the local 7-Eleven.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:17 AM
2 Comments:
Little details like that in press pieces offer unwelcome views of how others casually view our personal circumstances.
About 10-15 years ago, the local paper referred to a multi-billion dollar state finance authority with 500+ projects as an "obscure state agency" in a political story on other things.
Like you,the offended and seemingly important officials of the authority wanted to correct the reporter, but a letter to the editor that "we are not obscure" was deemed too pathetic.
Like it or not, that politico-reporter thinks finance is obscure & that NYT guy thinks your neighborhood is gritty
I live in a nice residential area of Queens. Nice enough that e.g. I've twice forgotten to put the top up on my convertible overnight out on the street, with no ill effects. If anything it's gentrifying, with immigrants tearing down perfectly good little single family homes to fill the lots to capacity with McMansions. Anyway, my uncle was thinking of staying with his wife and kids in a motel a few blocks away, over on the main commercial street, and asked me to check that it wasn't a no-tell-motel kind of joint. I read the reviews online and called him back. I said they were all very positive about the place, but one warned that the neighborhood is "a little sketchy," which gave us a good laugh.
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