Every weekend around this time, we ask ourselves, "why are we here?" Then we crack open the Times and learn about places that remind us "at least you aren't there." Take Los Angeles, featured in tomorrow's Arts section. Not only does the town seem to lack necessities like zoning laws and a newspaper, the ocean's garbled vomit by the shore also leaves rather anemic the lifeblood of any respectable post-industrial metropolis: i.e., art-school grads! Yet, reports Edward Wyatt:

JOHN BALDESSARI, the conceptual artist who has long made his home here, for years gave his college art students one piece of advice when they graduated: Go to New York, the capital of the art world. Now, however, Mr. Baldessari has a different view.... In recent years more than two artists have moved to this city for every one that moved away, a net rate of gain that is higher than in any metropolitan area in the country, according to an analysis of Census Bureau statistics by Ann Markusen, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

Needless to say, such statistics strike us as dubious. Are they double-counting Paris as performance art and installation art?

In fact, much of Wyatt's story carries the whiff of epistemological defamiliarization not seen in these parts since Cindy Sherman first became a plagiarist.

Yet the city is still struggling to attract cultural tourists. While New York, London and Paris each attract 10 million to 15 million such visitors per year, Los Angeles draws only about 2.5 million, according to a 2004 study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.... Whereas 40 percent of visitors to New York and London take part in some sort of cultural activity — a museum visit, a theatrical performance or the like — and 85 percent of visitors to Paris do so, only about 1 in 10 tourists to Los Angeles visit a cultural site.

What, pray tell, is a not cultural site? Are there wild life parks in the L. A.? Geysers? Or are the "visitors" involved just little girls with Big Porn dreams and effete young men hoping some Barack Obama supporter is looking to take a boy? Only the Census Bureau knows for sure.

Oh yeah, about the artists. How difficult are they to find in a place sans culture? Try not to pay attention to the semantic content of the following, just focus on the performative aspects:

As a career art seems more realistic to graduate art students than ever before, said Patrick Painter, who owns a gallery in Santa Monica. "Students graduate here with a feeling they can live in L.A. and make a living in LA.," he said. "L.A. will never be more important than New York, but it will be equal."

Patrick Painter? Are California telephone books all arranged in the Summer Cummings/William Wordsworth model? Pity poor Samantha Situationist.

The Art's Here. Where's the Crowd? [NYT]