Lazy L.A. Bylinezzzz

It must be something in the job description: Out-of-town correspondents have a habit of zeroing in on those old Los Angeles cliches in covering our city. Actually, many of those cliches are actually specific to the world of Hollywood -- yet they're applied in one large brush to the entire region -- as if that has any relation to most of the city.

A slew of these cliches hit print this week thanks to the Academy Awards -- and LAVoice's Mack Reed has had enough:

To the New York Times, which wrote in this morning's fawning piece about Oscar parties:

In the hierarchy of place here, there is no more exalted locus than the Chateau Marmont. The hotel high above Sunset Boulevard has launched a thousand clichéd magazine profiles, is legendary for bad behavior by its inmates, and is the place where business is not so much done as memorialized ...

Were I less civil, I'd be tempted to bray, "SHUUUUUT UUUUP!!!"

Instead, please let me just suggest - a bit more genteelly - Oh, please.

Hyperbole is what's left when you have no facts to report. The Chateau Marmont is as much the most-exalted building as the Scientology Celebrity Centre. I'd put Griffith Observatory, City Hall, the Coliseum (back in the day), the Dome, Santa Monica Pier and Staples Center far above the Marmont in terms of places important to real Angelenos.

Mack also takes on pieces by the Times of London's Chris Ayres, London Free Press reporter Bruce Kirkland, and another by the New York Times, penned by Alex Kuczynski:

To the New York Times - which promotes its ongoing L.A. sneerfest once more with an article proclaiming that the whole city somehow hits Fred Segal en masse for hundred-dollar T-shirts whenever its feeling the need to primp - and which published this fatuous nonsense by Alex Kuczynski in same:

LOS ANGELES is a place where people live in a world of fantasies, and earn their livings by promoting fantasies, and so all the world — even the popular local clothing boutique — becomes a place to satisfy the needs for props and equipment.

At Ron Herman Fred Segal on Melrose Avenue, you can practice your Attitude.

In Los Angeles, Fred Segal is the outfitter of those Hollywood fantasies, selling uniforms of expensive shirts and impossibly overthought bluejeans and kitten heels to the city's well-to-do inhabitants and celebrities. And the impulse to dress as part of a grand and cohesive Hollywood team comes most strongly the week before the Oscars.

Oh, puh-leeeeeze.

Fred Segal is for the one-percenters: the spoiled teens from 2.5-acre estates; the 7-Series-driving adrenaline junkies whose kids see more of their nannies than their parents; the graceless fashion-plates whose agents run every aspect of their lives including their wardrobe; and the pampered few whose personal organizers know exactly which part of the closet they use to hide their stash.

That store - and that culture - is for those few Angelenos with whom you seem preternaturally obsessed. The rest of us mortals buy clothes at malls, chain stores, tienditas de ropa thrift stores and cool little boutiques we only tell our best friends about.

Alla ya: If you can't be bothered to understand the city beyond parroting back the rest of the world's tired cliches to your otherwise (and still) uninformed readers, then stop making generalizations about Los Angeles.

Mack's advice to the out-of-town journos: "Go do your clothes shopping on Broadway just once. Eat lunch at the Grand Central Market. Spend time at the LAPL. Ride a bus to the beach and fish off the pier. Take Metrolink out to the Valley - any station - and then get off and walk around until you've actually experienced the place. Eat the food and talk to the locals about what's important to them. Frequent a taqueria, hit a Koreatown barbecue joint, ride a bike to and from work, read all the L.A. blogs and newspapers - Christ, listen to some banda, find an open-mike night or go to the Zoo or something, you're missing this place entirely."