I go to parts of LA that are ‘not my scene’ — here’s why

On a Friday night in Los Angeles, I ask my friend who lives in Silver Lake to come to a bar in West Hollywood. Except I know what she is going to say.

“That’s not really my scene.”

Los Angeles has a way of turning neighborhoods into identities. But when we only go places that reflect ours back at us, we reduce this richly layered city into something much smaller.

And we do the same thing to ourselves. 

We all know the drill. Silver Lake says hipster intellectual. Santa Monica says corporate wellness. West Hollywood says something involving a reservation and very good lighting.

We sort ourselves into Eastsiders and Westsiders, then regard crossing La Brea as an invitation to be lobotomized.

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To be fair, some of this resistance is logistical. In a city with minimal public transit, straying too far from your neighborhood can be an activity in itself. 

But traffic is not the only thing keeping us in our lanes. We like places that confirm our idea of ourselves.

I should know. I’m a central LA girl with a long Eastside past. A former English teacher who goes to gallery openings for fun and distrusts any neighborhood with an Erewhon. I know exactly what my scene should be. Still, I have a PSA.

Go, young buck. And wander.

There is pleasure in playing outside our sandbox.

Which brings me back to West Hollywood. Specifically, the lobby bar at the Edition Hotel, a place that would send some of my Eastside intellectual friends into anaphylactic shock.

This is a place where you’ll see sunglasses at midnight, rappers wearing enormous silver chains and women whose heels could be used as murder weapons.

One night I met four men who dealt in exotic cars, each wearing a watch larger than the last. Their shirts were unbuttoned to varying degrees of optimism. They had the sort of hair that could survive a hurricane.

Yes, they were “not my scene.” 

A fact I did not mention when I let them buy me a drink.

Within minutes I was folded into the group, trading outrageous stories and laughing as they roasted each other with the tenderness of old friends.

Their friendship was infectious. Amid endless talk of a male loneliness epidemic, here were four grown men loudly affectionate and plainly delighted by each other.

They were also effortlessly fun to flirt with. The type who could approach women without first holding a committee meeting in their heads. Honestly, my nerd friends on the Eastside could really stand to learn some of that swagger. 

I left wanting to organize an exchange program.

For years, I mostly stayed on the Eastside and spent time around people like me: writers, artists and people who own a suspicious number of New Yorker tote bags.

Now I can spend Friday night with Ferrari dealers in West Hollywood and Saturday at a literary event in Los Feliz. I don’t need the Ferrari dealers to develop strong opinions about the future of independent bookselling. I don’t need the poets to start playing golf.

I like different things about both.

There is comfort in finding your people. The mistake is expecting them to be all the people you need.

And maybe we make the same mistake with ourselves.

At some point, knowing exactly who you are starts to limit who else you can be.

The longer I live in Los Angeles, the less interested I am in being culturally consistent. I discovered I like sceney hotel bars and Koreatown dives. I became a regular at academic lectures and poetry readings. I became a bodybuilder. I bought a lot of books and I bought fake boobs.

The latter has not made me like ‘New Yorker’ tote bags any less. 

Los Angeles is more like a nation-state than a city, made up of disparate places that together are very hard to categorize.

When we stay in our neighborhoods, it becomes merely a mirror. Ourselves reflected back at us wherever we go.

I prefer the funhouse version.

Shift your angle, and a different self comes into view. 

That, to me, is the point of living in a city this big: to complicate the world, not simplify it. To become harder, not easier, to summarize.

And if you’re worried that venturing west of La Brea is a slippery slope toward a spray tan and a boob job, fear not. The danger really starts around Newport Beach.

The next time someone tells me a place isn’t their scene, I know exactly what I want to say.

It’s not mine either.

That’s the whole point.

Mary Dahm is a writer and medical technology publicist based in Los Angeles.