by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I love New York City. In my heart, I think I’m a New Yorker in all but location. Even though I will never have the opportunity to be “young in New York City” (I did get something close to that in Seoul) I really love the city and hope to get the opportunity live there before I drop dead.
And, yet.
At the same time, I often wonder if I’m not better suited for a life in LA. The reason why I say that is I’m an extreme extrovert and a storyteller and I sometimes wonder if I might find more success in LA than NYC. The Big Apple is a cold, harsh place where there are some very specific metrics for success. It’s far more difficult “fake it till you make it” in New York City. You have to prove your mettle from the beginning.
In LA, meanwhile, schmoozing is the lifeblood of the city. Everyone is on the make. Everyone is writing a screenplay. Everyone. It’s almost a requirement of living anywhere near LA that you have a screenplay tucked away that you hope to pitch to some Hollywood type given the opportunity.
But the issue for me is, I’m such an extrovert and have such a…unique personality…that I sometimes wonder what would happen if I spend a few weeks in LA just visiting. I know myself well enough to know that it’s at least possible that I might be invited to a cocktail party and, while there, get drunk and start having some really interesting conversations with the best looking woman I could find nearby.
I wonder if that, unto itself, would be enough to at least get my foot in the door of showbiz. I guess I wonder if LA is simply a huge version of the situation in Seoul way back when. I was something of a “star” in Seoul (I was DJing while being the publisher of ROKon Magazine) and I wonder if the same dynamic would be at work in LA as was in Seoul.
And, yet, I think I’m probably being rather delusional. This would not be the first time this has been the case. But I am honestly interested in visiting LA to put my theory to the test. Of course, I’m not as cute as I used to be and that would be a huge fucking obstacle to this vision becoming a reality, but one man’s delusion is another man’s dream.
