On slow-cookers and other problems I have with the westside

No one really knows where the east and west sides of LA start and stop. Brentwood and Santa Monica, anything along the coast, obviously westside. Silverlake, Echo Park, Boyle Heights, east. But it’s more complicated than locating all of the yuppies on the left, hipsters and gangsters on the right. And some parts of the city just don’t clearly belong to either side. No one’s rushing to claim Pico-Robertson or Fox Hills. Beverly Hills, though miles from the ocean and on the other side of the 405, doesn’t exactly scream Eastside Por Vida! Hancock Park, with its deep manicured lawns and actual street parking, may be a westsider inadvertently flung too far inland. Some neighborhoods are even split internally, like in West Hollywood where the gays pose as westsiders but the Russian Jews carry eastside swagger and pocket knives.

My theory is, to understand a real westsider, you’ve gotta look at their kitchen. Look for a slow-cooker. Look for a full matching set of Le Creuset pots and pans, not the one weird skillet in teal or yellow left on clearance at Marshalls. There will be a catalog for Restoration Hardware or Design Within Reach artfully displayed on a granite countertop or kitchen island. There will be desserts hidden in the back of the pantry, behind the holy trio of flax, hemp, and chia seeds. Though the true westsider does not eat gluten or sugar or dairy in public, keep your eye on the sheetcake after their kid’s birthday party because that shit is going down lion-to-zebra, Animal Planet style behind the closed doors of every coastal household.

An eastsider can eat a piece of cake on a streetcorner in broad daylight.

Look twice at the slow-cooker. Linger there. The slow-cooker will tell you everything you need to know about your westsider because it is the Prius of kitchen appliances, broadcasting the kind of person its owner wants to be. Every Prius is an all-caps memo etched in asphalt—I’M GREEN! I CARE ABOUT THE PLANET! SHAME, SHAME, AUDI DRIVERS. THINK OF THE CHILDREN! THINK OF THE OZONE AND RAINFORESTS! Meanwhile, the average Prius driver’s coffee is imported from some denuded Brazilian village and consumed in single-use cups.

Unlike the Prius, the slow-cooker’s memo is first transcribed in private. The slow-cooker goes on in the pre-dawn light of the working parent’s home and by the time work is over, presto chango, abracadabra, there’s pot roast. The slow-cooker says, Career AND children, no problem—I closed three deals in Tokyo and still put a homecooked meal on the table.

I have never owned a slow-cooker. That’s partly geography—my mid-city street straddles everyone’s versions of west and east sides—and partly a lack of children. I am left to sear my single skinless boneless chicken breast after work in a single 8-inch pan in 8 minutes. Or eat cottage cheese straight from the container in 8 seconds.

That doesn’t mean I don’t see what the slow-cookers are up to. The fruits of a slow-cooker’s loins rarely stay private for long. Invariably, they wind up on Pinterest, a.k.a. boring people’s substitute for porn. Brisket, turkey chili, 3-bean minestrone, overnight oatmeal, all make the obligatory journey from slow-cooker to iPhone to technicolor internet bulletin board. I would ask why westsiders are taking pictures of their 12-hour oatmeal instead of microwaving that shit and sleeping in or fucking their spouses, but like religion or politics, this is a subject that requires a light hand. Westsiders can be defensive about their oatmeal. Maybe because they pay so much for it. The oats themselves are cheap but the organic blueberries and pecans or heirloom apples on top aren’t, nor is the small-batch vanilla or the stick cinnamon from the farmer’s market that they grated themselves over hand-shaped microplanes supporting free-trade enterprises in Indonesia.

So it’s the economy, stupid, what it always comes down to. The slow-cooker oatmeal is the Cadillac of breakfast cereals and no one hides a Caddy in the garage. Slow-cooker oatmeal is made to be seen, to take a ride around town. How else to explain the phenomenon of grown adults snapping and swapping photos of porridge? #becauseitsthewestside