. . . where everybody knows your name.

In a relatively short period of time, I’ve become a regular at a number of places in Los Angeles.

It’s weird. I’m pretty sure that my life has no particular pattern. Yoga and Jamba Juice one day, a walk on the beach at Santa Monica, the next. Many of my friends don’t want to live in cities because they find them impersonal, callous, cold. No small town mayor to greet you as you walk down main street. The shopkeepers knowing your name.

But, lo and behold, there must be some pattern to my wanderings, because my face is becoming recognizable to folks in L.A. Just in the last month, I bought a coffee at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for the first time in months — c’mon, I was trying to lay off the caffiene — and the clerk called me by name. That one was a little weird — in the back of my mind, though, I think she may share my first name. What’s even weirder is I went to a furniture store where I had purchased a buffet over a year ago, and the proprietor, Max, not only remembered my, but my house as well.

There are folks you expect to recognize you . . . the regular yoga instructor (even when you’re not so regular), your neighbors (even though they see you in your pajamas), and the folks at the dry cleaners (because they are handling your dirty clothes). Other folks remember you as well . . . some very unlikely — the guy at Jamba Juice who can get your Orange Dream Machine ready when you walk in the door, the bank guard who hands you a deposit envelope even before you get to the ATM, and the guy at Trader Joe’s who knows to put the case of water in your cart before you even ask . . . .

I’ve found this big, sprawled out, city without a center, to be one heck of a friendly place. Everyday is like the opening scene from Cheers.

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