My second favorite city

I'm not sure which city is my favorite. I've lived in New York for 16 of the last 22 years, so perhaps that speaks for itself. But I also really loved living in and visiting San Francisco, Miami, San Diego, New Orleans, Nashville, Vancouver, and Hong Kong. But while I'm undecided on #1, then #2 is certainly is Los Angeles.

My mother and brother moved to LA in 1983 while I was a student at Stanford and for the next 3 years it was my home whenever I wasn't at school. In 1992 I moved to LA myself and over the next 6 years found some of the most important things in my current life. I found a job in The Disney Channel's on-air promotion department which united me with my childhood goal of making commercials for movies. I found my wife in the LA suburb of Glendale. I found our two Lhasa Apsos at the pet store in the Arcadia Shopping Center.

We left LA in 1998, but thanks to work I've been back about 40 times since then. Each time I go back I drive by "points of prior interest" I like to call them, like my first LA apartment, the restaurant where my wife and I got engaged, etc. One of the nice things about getting older is that for every year you lose from your remaining lifespan, you gain another year of great memories.

When I was 20 I spent most of my time thinking about the future and almost no time looking back. Now at 44 I spend equal amounts of time on each.

One my most cherished memories is dining on Orange Chicken at the Grandview Palace restaurant on Fair Oaks Blvd in Pasadena. It was the first place I recall eating out with mother after she moved to LA in 1983. I had dinner with my brother there in 2003 just after he started dating the mother of my yet to be born nephew. I ordered take out (Orange Chicken as usual)during my trip to LA this past February.

During a LA trip last year, I drove back to my old 1850 North Whitley apartment in Hollywood where I lived from 1992 to 1996. The good news is that I lived in a top floor penthouse with a spectacular view of the city.

The bad news is that it was long before the current regentrification of Hollywood. It was seedy time of dive bars, street people, and tattoo parlors. But it was all pretty exciting for a 29 year old wanna-be entertainment biz hotshot.





One very special silver lining was living within walking distance of the famed music and supp club the Cinegrill. My most memorable visit was seeing my all-time favorite jazz singer Shirley Horn perform live in 1996. Shirley passed in 2005, but the Cinegrill lives on, looking pretty seductive during my 2007 visit.