I get asked on a fairly regular basis by people who have never and would never live in Southern California the following question: “What the hell is wrong with you people? Why don’t you just LEAVE?”

Okay, sometimes they’re more polite than that, but that’s the gist of the question. And it’s not an unreasonable one. Earthquakes. Wild fires. Landslides. Riots. Poverty. Ridiculous real estate costs. Terrible public schools. Traffic that would blow your mind. Rolling black-outs. The “Govern-ator.”

And it’s all true and more. A year and a half ago I wanted to move to Los Angeles about as much as I wanted exploding butt boils. But through a series of circumstances entirely beyond my control, here I was. Here and determined to hate it. And I did. For about a year. Then something happens. It happens slowly, and it’s hard to quantify to people who haven’t experienced it. It’s not one thing that does it. It’s a million little things, which is why it’s so hard to answer the question, “Why don’t you just leave?”

Because we love it. I love it.

So one thing this blog will be is my love letter to Los Angeles, an attempt to answer that question as completely as possible and in a way you can’t in just one conversation. I’ll try to show the little things that never make the news, that no one ever hears about but that make it all worth it. So to begin, reason number one is dim sum.

Last Sunday, Austin and I headed out to meet some friends in Arcadia for dim sum. For those who don’t know, dim sum is a kind of Chinese food served as little appetizers, mostly in dumpling form with no menu. You pick what you want off of roving carts and unless you speak fluent Chinese you don’t have any idea what you picked. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We set out on I-10, “the ten” to locals, and slid through early morning traffic headed north toward Pasadena. Just before downtown, there was a break in the tall buildings and palm trees and the Hollywood sign peeked through, glowing bright white against the green of the Hollywood hill it stands on. The sign is much like the Yeti. It appears and disappears through cracks in the landscape you never expect. I’d lived here nine months before I spotted it. It’s just there, suddenly, and gone just as quickly. I’ve come to think of a sign spotting as a good omen.

Then the hole closed up and the sign was gone again just in time for the downtown skyline to appear. The L.A. skyline is much different than New York, for example. It’s not all the sudden, but more of a gentle bell-curve of buildings that build gradually before exploding into the Bradbury Building, the convention center, the Staples Center and all the rest of it. Then it gently comes down a bit at a time spreading out until the usual houses, palm trees and strip malls take the landscape over again.

Arcadia is home to a large immigrant Chinese population, making it one of the best bets for good dim sum. (Chinatown, by comparison, is now mostly a tourist destination, and the food is so-so at best, although interesting for a number of other reasons. But that’s another post.)

This was my first non-Anglo-phied dim sum experience, and entirely different and more wonderful than any of the less-authentic experiences I’d had before. First, almost nothing is in English. Not the signs, not the specials menu by the front door. These people know their customer base, and their customer base prefers Chinese. The waiters don’t speak English. The dim sum girls don’t speak English. The customers aren’t speaking English either. Our group came prepared, bringing along two friends who are fluent, but they didn’t do much translating for the rest of us and all the better, I say. When you don’t understand the words, you listen to the cadence. The sing song voices of the dim sum girls as they push their metal carts between the absolutely packed tables. They’re calling out their wares like street vendors. Some have harsh voices, like they’re shouting out military orders. Some use sweet, high-pitched tones like they were calling children in for dinner – those were the girls I liked the best. And consequently, I liked their food the best as illogical as that is.

There are no forks here. None. Learn to use the chopsticks fast or starve. I learned. Up until then, chopsticks were a fun little toy at restaurants that I used to amuse myself until my order came and I pulled out the fork. Not here. I was awkward at first, but hunger is a marvelous motivator. Within half an hour, I was mildly proficient even if entirely ungraceful. There are also no menus. You eat what the carts have. And no drinks other than green tea. They don’t ask. It just comes. It comes in wonderful white ceramic teapots, short and round and not unlike a big Buddha belly. If you don’t pour for yourself, the person next to you will take up the task, filling your tiny little white cup with no handle. It’s loose tea and bits of it settle in the bottom of your cup, making you wish there was a fortune teller around to interpret them. And soon you get into the swing of things, pouring for your neighbors, too.

The food, which comes on little plates and is shared by everyone at the table, has wonderful flavors, often sweet and savory at the same time and wrapped in little wantons or rice paper, fried or steamed, but always beautiful. Each is like a little present, and you have no idea what’s inside until you take a bite. And even then I mostly still didn’t know. It’s a good thing. I have my list, like everyone does, of what I like and don’t like, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have tried half of what I did if I’d understood the dim sum girls. But I didn’t, so I tried just about everything. (Except the chicken feet. They actually look like chicken feet, and I’m just not down with that. Fortunately neither was anyone else at our table and our translators didn’t stop that cart.) I admit that while the flavors were almost universally wonderful, I did have some texture issues. I know now that if I can see through it, it’s probably not for me. But who knows? In the future my palate might get more sophisticated.

We all ate until we couldn’t possibly eat anymore. Then one of our translators called over a waiter and had him add up our stamps. Each table has a card and each dim sum girl a stamp, for each little plate she makes a stamp on your card. It’s ridiculously cheap. Eight of us ate until we could’ve just died for about forty dollars.

It wasn’t just a meal, it wasn’t just a good meal with wonderful friends, although it was that, too. It was a whole cultural experience that could be had for less than ten dollars and in less than an hour.

Reason number one why I love L.A.? Dim sum.