Bjørn Giesenbauer via Flickr

The big crapple.

New York and Los Angeles, the nation's two largest cities, are notoriously filthy in their own special ways. New York packs its residents in extra tight for that one-of-a-kind human-density stench, but L.A. does the same with its cars; New York's streets ooze with nasty brown slush in the winter-spring months, but L.A.'s smoggy skyline doesn't look much better in summer.

Readers of Travel + Leisure magazine, however, have deemed our spread-out air filth as the lesser of two evils in 2012:

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@lindsaylohan

So after years of run-ins with the po-po in Los Angeles, including two drunk-driving convictions, hit-and-run allegations and a jewelry-theft conviction, Lindsay Lohan decided to hightail it to New York City.

There she could make a fresh start away from the paparazzi and, theoretically, at least, get around without having to use those pesky cars.

Oops. Guess not. This morning Lohan was arrested:

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@lindsaylohan

See also:
*Chateau Marmont to Lindsay Lohan: Be Out by Noon, Never Come Back.

Two years ago when Lindsay Lohan threatened to leave Los Angeles, she was already in a world of hurt following two DUI arrests.

In the two years since she's hardly remade herself, getting in hot water for allegedly stealing a necklace from a jewelry store and/or partying on probation.

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@stephaniepratt

L.A.'s Stephanie Pratt.

New Yorkers say L.A. is the home of the shallow, vacant, star-struck millionaire. Well, Manhattan is starting to look a lot like Beverly Hills.

Over the weekend the boyfriend of The Hills star Stephanie Pratt was videotaped making a douche fool of himself as he ran over the foot of a New York City cop.

And it was all caught on tape:

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Best Coast bed bugs.

Looks like we might have to stop making fun of New York Shitty for its bed-bug problem.

According to a new report from giant pest-control company Orkin -- based on the number of treatments it conducted in each major U.S. city last year -- L.A. experienced somewhat of an embarrassing bed-bug renaissance in 2011.

The numbers are staggering:

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Facebook

Cleo Berry: alive and two-legged.

It's one thing to wake up to a heroic graphic design of your face on the cover of TIME, a la Sarah Mason of Occupy L.A.

It's another to wake up to an unflattering (and even more unflatteringly manipulated) photo of yourself on a New York City billboard, and all over the Internet, posing as a fat guy who ate so much junk food that he had to get his leg amputated.

Welcome to L.A. actor/director Cleo Berry's Friday night:

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Kerry Tribe

Welcome to the future, New York.

The Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard is running a nice 2011-ending series on what the next year will look like for journalism, by an esteemed fleet of think-piecers who've braved this rocky field for the last few.

You've got plenty of your usual fare: Social media is everything! Commenter is king! Down with the paywalls! Apps! Apps! Apps!

But one prediction in particular is crazy uncharacteristic of that crowd. University of Washington-bred media man Rex Sorgatz, now a full-fledged New Yorker, is biting the bullet and giving some pre-emptive kudos to Los Angeles, which he has dubbed "the future" of new media.

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Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times

Will OWS thaw its toes out west?

Update: And while they're here, they might as well "Occupy the Rose Parade," right?

SoCal's famously bland winter weather is looking mighty appealing to the frozen campers at Occupy Wall Street right about now.

The roughly 200 tents occupying New York's Zuccotti Park are facing a long season of snowstorms and freezing temperatures. "Is it time to Occupy Miami Beach?" one camper wondered aloud to a Los Angeles Times reporter last month.

But today, USC zine Neon Tommy reports that L.A. might be the next best thing. David DeGraw, a head organizer for OWS, "told a crowded tent at Occupy L.A. on Sunday night" ...

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From Ed Ruscha's "Standard Editions."

Dude. New York can't stand to see us happy! Here we were, totally lit on our 1960s selves, museum-hopping in our California sundresses whilst trying to forget the "hopping" part took 30 minutes in traffic, and the East Coast's Times of record has to jump in all misinformed and catty to remind us we're not NYC.

Well, good -- 'cause we don't wanna be.

Just as the Wall Street Journal completely missed the point, earlier this year, in assuming the tacky (yet quarantined) influx of moneyed developments into the L.A. Live area somehow signaled a wannabe "Manhattanization" downtown (WTF)...

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'Aftershock: Earthquake in New York'

Among the things our New York rivals suck at -- driving, Thai food, surfing in winter -- responding to a moderate earthquake has to top the list.

Don't get us wrong, a 5.8 is the real deal. But it's nothing to panic about. Remember, the epicenter was 316 miles away from New York.

That's more than the driving distance between L.A. and Las Vegas (and trust us, if a 5.8 hit Vegas we wouldn't be evacuating buildings here). It's even more than ...

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Greenwich Village.

In the few years we spent "back east" we heard many a disparaging thing about our native California, not the least of which was its propensity for natural and man-made calamities, from earthquakes and flooding to wildfires and riots.

You can just hear your aunt saying she'd never, ever settle down in SoCal.

But this summer is giving the East Coast a little taste of its own medicine.

After all ...

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NYC wannabe?

Well! This is insulting. And so very in line with New York media's ridiculous attempts to pin down Los Angeles after spending one night in a downtown hotel with a notepad and a smog mask.

TIME Magazine runs a big out-of-touch feature today on the alleged "Manhattanization" of downtown L.A., which has allegedly gone from the tumbleweedy "laughingstock" of West Coast party people to a "happening city center" where your average TIME reporter is likely to come across "apparently inebriated clubgoers" climbing atop Denny's signs and waving their arms for an "off-balance picture."

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TimeOut

Are New Yorkers cooler than people from L.A. You know the answer to that question. After all, we didn't invent the bridge-and-tunnel crowd.

And nobody here is going to tell you to forget about it.

The website Correlated is running an online poll today asking that very question.

And guess what?

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Our kinda girl.

What is it about Google+ that's so much more attractive to Californians than New Yorkers?

Yes, the famed Googleplex is located in our nerdy nothern region (another reason not to secede, you freaks), with a chic southern satellite right here in Venice, and yes, we're all a bunch of social-media-binging fame whores, but according to "Find People on Plus," we have twice as many users as New York, at 22,000 [via LAist].

Seems like a disproportionately huge gap, if you ask us. Population could account for some of it:

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New York Daily News

In our ongoing series of posts called "New York Shitty" we've repeatedly documented the superiority of Los Angeles over the Big Apple.

But none of our jabs could make the point as well as this story: A cop in New York actually stopped a short-skirt wearing tourist who was riding a bike to inform her she was showing off to much below the waist.

We can almost guarantee you that ...

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sea turtle via Flickr

Next time, try more Xtreme measures

A tree did not grow in Brooklyn early yesterday morning (har har) when a troupe of bicycle thieves -- dead set on jacking a bike tied to a sidewalk ginkgo -- chopped down the innocent tree in cold blood. [Spotted at Flying Pigeon LA.]

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unclebumpy

Code red.

As if New York isn't pleasant enough, with it's subway rats, bed bugs and generally shiny, happy people, a couple of hotels there have taken it upon themselves to equip their maids with panic buttons.

You know, to prevent the likes of former International Monetary Fund honcho Dominique Strauss-Kahn from getting his (alleged) rape on.

We can't be too judgmental, though. One of our own, Charlie Sheen, probably did his part to inspire the warning system too, since he went apeshit in a hotel room there late last year (though we're not sure a panic button would have helped, unless it could have summoned the nearest coke dealer).

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Car, meet Robot.

The suave, sophisticated WeHo aesthetic is about to get even sillier -- with a $2.6 million Unitronics parking garage. According to City News Service, it uses "computer-controlled lifts and conveyors to move vehicles into parking spaces."

Yay for robots! Mayor John Duran is already hopelessly in love with his new toy, beaming in a city statement today:

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Everything's sexier in Vegas!

Even New York's world-famous Statue of Liberty, apparently. Her likeness stands over the Las Vegas strip, torch raised...

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The Others shall walk among us

Yeah, yeah, we know. There's really no better place in the world to study filmmaking than the glamorous studio sprawl of Los Angeles -- or, as that golden-oldies station puts it, the Entertainment Capital of the World.

Better still, all that studying has the potential to evolve into some actual doing in L.A., as the next movie or commercial set is never more than a stone's throw away.

Two separate East Coast schools are giving into their coastal inferiority in 2011. Syracuse University and Emerson College will both be offering more spots in their cross-country "study abroad"-type programs...

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