Nobody Walks in Newsweek's L.A.

Newsweek dusts off a few ancient cliches about Los Angeles, via this week's story about cop dramas in L.A. vs. the ones set in New York.

Writer Joshua Alston isn't so subtle in using tired old descriptions of our city:

New York people, as a rule, are not Los Angeles people, or vice versa. For instance, no one in the history of L.A. has ever yelled "I'm walking here!" while navigating a busy intersection (because no one in L.A. has ever actually walked across an intersection.. Los Angeles is, admittedly, a tough town to know—sprawling; disparate; consumed by gaudy, showbiz culture. A New Yorker would call it soulless, as if the whole city had gotten Botox. But its cop shows don't all have to turn into stiffs. The Shield was the best L.A. cop drama in years, probably because it used the LAPD's own renegade Rampart Division as its source. It just goes to show: even in Hollywood, you can't fake true grit."