Yet More Not-Terribly-Original Advice

I've just eaten 16 Milk Duds. They were delicious, but that is Too Many Milk Duds. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself just I'm finishing Milk Dud 3 or 4, or even 11. Now my taste buds are numbed out from the sugar/confectionery wax combo and I have 200 worthless calories rattling around inside me.

From the little-discussed-downsides of Too Many Milk Duds, let's transition to the little-discussed-downsides of Los Angeles -- things that every newcomer will discover in time, but by the time you see the pattern, you'll be so over it that you never mention it when people ask you what Los Angeles is like.

1. Terrible desserts. This town does not get sugar at all. A handful of places get it right -- Vanilla Bakery, thank God, and Mozza -- but most of the time, you're going to be confronted with some kind of roasted fruit tart and/or too-dry cake-type item. And forget about ever eating a decent tiramisu or cannoli again. Outside of one or two small Italian-American community, neither can be found for love or money.

2. Inadequate Clothing Inventories. Cute non-chain stores don't seem to carry anything above a 6. Thinking through this logically, I suspect that, in fact, boutiques order clothing in the larger sizes, but these sell out faster than the 2s and 4s, which is why it seems like there's never anything else in stock.

2a. Also, clothing for the non-19-year-old is generally thin on the ground. Around the corner at the Third Street Promenade, there's not a single clothing store for the Rational Adult Man or Woman until you get to Macy's at the end of the block. It's half a mile of PacSun and Pink Ice and the like.

3. Second-Class Status Dining. In our two-year-and-counting, the stories of places with Great Service for Celebrities, Terrible Service for Ordinary People just keep racking up. I can't think how this is a viable business model -- there can't be more than 1000 A-, B-, C- and D-List celebrities in all of Los Angeles, and they can't be everywhere at once. Surely you have to build word of mouth among the regular folks. And yet from Chowhound to Citysearch to Yelp to, sadly, our own experience at Melisse, the disappointments keep coming.

3a. Also, way too many restaurants are straight up terrible, and yet continue to survive on buzz and/or location. Nowhere is this condition worse than in our own Santa Monica, which supports both Boa, maybe the most worthless steak house in existence, and Ivy at the Shore, which is basically Sarabeth's with insane prices.

4. Many, many, many aspiring actors. I wish them all the best and hope for good things for all of them, but it wears you out after a while.

5. Insufficient stock of condominiums. Santa Monica is especially hamstrung because any building with enough charm to survive a conversion to condominiums will also have enough rent-controlled-tenants that no such conversion could ever go through. (That's the case in our building, for example.) Since rent control does not apply to new construction, I can see the attraction of putting up whole buildings worth of units that can rent for thousands of dollars a month. But at the same time, all of Los Angeles seems fiercely attached to the dream of owning a single family home -- surely the least efficient use of the area's scarce land and scarcer resources. And I'm not just saying that because I want to buy a condo.

6. Hard-to-Find Everything. After years of listening to my parents rattle off Chicago addresses in accordance with that city's carved-in-stone numerical grid, I admit: Los Angeles street-level geography is a nightmare. People who've lived here for 15 years still end up using a GPS unit to find their way around. In truth, I think there is some kind of grid, but since the numbers are not clearly marked on either buildings or street signs, it's almost impossible to track.

6b. Many, many stores like to create a significant street presence by building right up to the sidewalk, and then tucking the parking behind or underneath. I agree, that probably makes for a better streetscape, but the first three or four times I visit any major retailer, I inevitably end up driving in half-mile-circuits, trying to locate the tastefully concealed entrance to the garage. I only figured out how to park at Walgreen's this October. No, really.

6c. God help you if you have any kind of claustrophobia issues and you've parked in an underground garage. When they work well, they're the perfect solution to L.A.'s abundance of cars -- and I'm always happy to pay for parking. But if something goes wrong or traffic spikes, it's hell three stories under ground. See also: Whole Foods on New Year's Eve; Beverly Hills Municipal Parking at lunchtime.

7. Isolation. The obvious solution is to have friends already living out here, but that's not always so easy to arrange. A good second choice would be some kind of pre-existing job or school. USC picked up the slack for me, and then some, in a way that made the ridiculous tuition almost worthwhile. Since I started working, my various internships have gone a long way to fleshing out the rest of my social life in a very promising fashion. Meanwhile, MG has picked up some like-minded individuals (hi, Dirk!) and he's got various old friends here and a short phone call away. But if we didn't have these support structures in place, I don't know if we could have lasted a month, much less a year.