Fran Lebowitz action figure.

As a lifelong New Yorker, I probably should feel guilty for saying in recent years that I think Los Angeles has become more interesting than NYC, but how can I be when even Fran Lebowitz, who was born on the jumpseat of a checker cab in Greenwich Village, has shifted her feelings on the rival metropolises?

A lot of the more creative, interesting people were driven out of New York by cost-of-living increases (particularly rents), and a lot of those who remain sit around and binge-watch TV on their iPads like everyone in every other place in the country. Sure, NYC is still more interesting than Cleveland, but was that really the goal?

From Alex Williams at T Magazine:

No less a New York mascot than Fran Lebowitz, whose jaded, cigarette-sucking visage may as well be inscribed on the city seal, also confessed to a change of heart about Los Angeles.

“L.A. is better than it used to be, New York is worse than it used to be,” Ms. Lebowitz said at a recent Vanity Fair party for the Tribeca Film Festival. The quality-of-life campaigns under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg swept away so much that was gritty, quirky or exceptional about the city, she said, and as a result, “New York has become vastly more suburban,” while “L.A. has become slightly less suburban.”

This is not a trivial point. Los Angeles is widely acknowledged to have become strikingly more cosmopolitan in recent years.•