Dear People from Minnesota

Dear People From Minnesota:

Los Angeles is a city of people from other places - often other places where car insurance costs significantly less than it does here. Ergo, it's not common to, in traffic, frequently notice license plates from out of state; newly-minted denizens here to live the Hollywood dream, but refusing to pay a California registration fee. There are the plates that make sense; Arizona (where every U-Haul is registered), Nevada (where many rental cars also seem to be), New Jersey and Florida (frequent exporters of its citizens, for obvious reasons), and even Illinois. But for whatever reason, here in Los Angeles, Minnesotans, you are ubiquitous; I cannot go a single day without seeing at least one car with a Minnesota license plate.

Old pieces of crap, souped-up BMWs, a Mercedes behind a gate on a dead end high in the Hollywood Hills. It's not just the volume of cars from Minnesota, it's how many of them seem unlikely candidates for having ever even been there; and it makes me wonder if it's either a Minnesotan conspiracy that's exporting so many of its citizens (and vehicles) to LA, or perhaps it, as a state, just has perversely low car insurance rates, and all of these cars are registered either to people who own a cabin somewhere on Lake Superior but live in Brentwood, or who have cleverly gamed the system, and convinced the MN DMV their mailing address is in fact a P.O. Box in West LA.

Regardless of the ubiquity of Minnesota plates in LA, there are a fair share of those from the New England states as well, and they never fail to elicit a pang within me; a potential sense of recognition, real or imagined, and the possibility of, if not a shared common experience. I have without a doubt sped up to sit next to the Jetta from Connecticut at the stoplight, or the Corolla purchased at Ira Toyota in Danvers; I've even lingered by the Outback with the Vermont plates frequently parked on my street hoping its owner might appear so I can strike up a conversation that might just make my day, and smack of rambling stone walls, church steeples and maple syrup.

But Minnesota, for whatever reason, takes the cake for most uncommonly common. Perhaps it's the the toe-numbing winters that send people here, or a fatigue of everyone being so nice all the time. Or perhaps its the powerful, magnetic draw of the Coen brothers' success, hometown heroes making good, sending vibes of creativity to the Midwet; their legacy a siren of artistic promise summoning its young denizens to the City of Angels to seek their fortunes and ply their trade in entertainment, doncha know?

I believe, however, the Coens both live in New York. So, Minnesotans, pay the high insurance premiums like the rest of us. We're all in this together.