A New York Times article is claiming the unthinkable: that California bagels are better than their counterparts in the five boroughs. The headline – The Best Bagels Are in California (Sorry, New York), was an affront to the newspaper’s own home town, and sparked an east coast-west coast flame war the San Francisco Chronicle called “the perfect storm of internet drama”. “Yeah, absolutely not,” wrote New York’s mayor, Bill De Blasio, on Twitter. Brooklyn’s borough president called the claim “madness”. The owner of one of the California shops in question, Berkeley’s Boichik Bagels, told NBC Bay Area she “basically fell over” when she heard the news.
As an east coast transplant to the west, I feel it’s my duty to add more fuel to the fire. Here are five other things California does better than New York:
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Pizza. New York pizza is amazing. But California-style pizza is borderline gourmet stuff, good enough to spawn a stunningly mediocre national chain. There’s a reason it’s called California Pizza Kitchen and not New York Slice Shack. California pizza is a thin-crusted delicacy that features bread, cheese, and literally anything else in the kitchen thrown on top, whether it’s tortilla chips and ranch dressing, barbecue chicken, or shrimp scampi – none of this snowflake “Oh, it has to taste good” nonsense you get on the east coast. And you can have it on a cauliflower crust, since even looking at gluten was recently classified as a felony in the state.
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Monuments. Sure, the Statue of Liberty may be America’s most recognizable symbol. But it doesn’t hold a candle – or a torch – to the Golden Gate Bridge. After all, what does a statue actually do? Yes, she’s got a good, pro-immigration message: “Give me your tired, your poor.” But like so many Upper West Side limousine liberals, she’s all talk and no action. While the statue welcomes people to her city, the bridge actually offers them a way in.
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Fast food. This is so obvious I shouldn’t even have to write it, but when it comes to a quick meal, there is nowhere better than In-N-Out. Eating the fries always feels like an epiphany, and not just because of the Bible verse lovingly inscribed under the grease at the bottom of the cardboard tray. Normally such proselytizing would make me uncomfortable, but there is no doubt that this is God’s favorite drive-through establishment.
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Insufferable egomaniacs. Yes, New York is the birthplace of America’s high priest of malevolent narcissism, but when it comes to sheer numbers, California wins. We have two entire industries built on megalomania. LA, of course, is home to more celebrities per square foot than anywhere else in the world. Their need for global worship is rivaled only by the rulers of Silicon Valley in the north, who, when they’re not promoting fad diets and appropriated religious practices, spend most of their time destroying democracy.
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Self-importance. This one is close. It’s true that New Yorkers believe they live in the center of the world; they refer to their home simply as “the city” even when they’re hundreds of miles away. There are countless songs about it, countless films, countless books. But New Yorkers also love to complain about New York. Californians’ obsession with their home, on the other hand, is the subject of almost religious fervor. Case in point: I could not tell you what a New York flag looks like. But walk down the street in California and you’ll see the hulking image of a bear and a red star everywhere you look. From the Beach Boys to Tupac, we have developed a self-regard, a sense of legendary consequence – call it “statetriotism” – nowhere else in this country, or perhaps the world, can match.