I’d never been to Los Angeles, or California at all, before last week. Now the West Coast suddenly seems real to me—even if the NEA/Annenberg program I went there to attend seems like a wonderful dream from which I never wish to wake.

This week’s Entertainment Weekly mentions that a scene from the upcoming season of true blood was filmed at “the famed Biltmore Hotel.” To think I was just at the same famed place, attending the Theatre communications group conference.

On the other hand, the whole time I was in downtown L.A. I couldn’t stop humming songs from a quintessential New York show, Guys & Dolls. Not just because there was a seminar with Broadway producer Jack Viertel (of the Lincoln Center Encore! Series), but because of places like Biltmore and Roxie scattered throughout downtown L.A. Just a couple miles from Hollywood, all those sunglass-and-shiny-skin stereotypes fade, and downtown L.A. struck me as startlingly similar to any number of other big cities I’ve been in.