24 hours without the Internet or Email

[Major Tom]

And you have no idea how much moving from lost angeles is the answer. Everyone here is on broadcast/performance mode talking about their script, their play, their pilot, etc., etc., ad infinity (and all I wanted to do is read my book in a formerly quiet coffee house). It's the entertainment culture: vapid, pathological, imbalanced, unhealthy.

I lived in Los Angeles for 20 years, in several different areas - Highland Park, Pasadena, Hollywood (central as well as the east end) and Mount Washington.
While the element you describe does most certainly exist, it doesn't apply to the entire population by a long chalk. I knew people from all walks of life, with many different characters and temperaments.

My theory about cities is that the transplants often gravitate towards them for specific reasons. People who want to work in the entertainment industries go to SoCal, people who are more tech-oriented, or who are more hippie/liberal/politically active types to the Bay Area. These are both broad generalizations, but you get the idea. When they get there, because they are new, they try particularly hard to "fit in" by emulating the characteristics they think they ought to have in order to become "model citizens" of their newly-chosen domicile. A similar argument is that different cities draw different, and particular character types.

However, in any city, the natives represent a more normal cross-section of types. IMO, by and large, natives from LA are about the same as natives from anywhere else, minor regional cultural differences notwithstanding.

Which coffee shops are you hanging out in anyway? I'm guessing not ones in Montebello, Eagle Rock, Downey or South Pasadena, to pick a few examples.