LOS ANGELES—“We’re waiting for the nacho man.” That’s what I distinctly heard the cashier say as the Dodgers-Cubs game was about to commence, and all things mercantile came to a grinding halt before the cashier could ring up my Dodger dog. For good measure I mouthed, “We’re waiting for the nacho man,” even though I wasn’t having any nachos. I also didn’t know why we were waiting for the Nacho Man, or why the cashier was thrown into arms-akimbo inertia. Then it dawned on me that a contralto deep in the stadium was doing vocal gymnastics to Francis Scott Key’s syllable-stretching tune, “Oh oh, saaaaay cann you seeeee!”

Aha! We were waiting for the national anthem—not the Nacho Man. Only a musical and patriotic moment so glorious could make the cash registers stop ringing in Dodger Stadium. Like when the electric lights went off after the death of Thomas Edison or when people were bid to utter “Love and Peace,” on Ringo Starr’s birthday. In a flash it occurred that Nostalgic Ned in his doomed, three-month career as a New York transplant had been deprived of yet another L.A. essential: the pre-game jostle in Dodger Stadium as a head-spinning assortment of humanity vied for condiments.

Yes, Dodger Stadium certainly belonged on my list of Ten Los Angeles Essentials. The list, recently found moldering in a pocket notebook, was made upon learning that a New Yorker—who had come out here a few months earlier and never ceased to torment himself and any listener he could buttonhole about how Los Angeles fell short against New York—was pulling up stakes and going back to Brooklyn. The list was a work in progress, like the city itself. Put down one, and three more places suggested themselves. The list was started in a naïve hope that Nostalgic Ned could visit a couple of these places, and thus the most incorrigible Knickerbocker would be cured of a New York-centric view of the universe.

What do you mean you’ve never been to the Getty? Positive proof that there’s some public benefit derived from the extraction of hydrocarbon ooze from the earth. What do you mean you haven’t glimpsed Griffith Park at sunset on the night of a full moon? The moonrise perfectly counterpoised to the tumbling sun setting ablaze the Pacific, and then behold the velvety caress of the starry matrix of night-lit streets spread out below the observatory.

The provisional list of Ten Los Angeles Essentials included the Getty and Griffith Park, of course. It included Canter’s, the Watts Towers, Farmers Market (Third and Fairfax), the Hollywood Bowl, East L.A.—all places Nostalgic Ned had never visited.

Homeboy was a person of superior intellect, yet addicted to this idiocy of observing Los Angeles’ shortcomings. I was a victim of my own idiocy: a sunny optimism that people can be educated and enlightened. The list was drawn up with the vain notion of getting Ned to shut up about Brooklyn by being struck with awe and splendor of Santa Monica pier or Canter’s at midnight. But he was simply too attached and boastful about his torment, and, in his favor, this Nostalgic Ned had the integrity to really move back to Brooklyn, where for all I know he gives interlocutors an earful about how wonderful Los Angeles is and how much he misses it.

I have known Nostalgic Neds who “come out to the coast” for 20 or 30 years. They will complain that Canter’s pastrami will never compare to Zabar’s pastrami. Who cares about the pastrami? What about the mesmerizing lighted ceiling over the main dining area. Neither Rockefeller Center nor the cathedrals of Europe can hold a candle to that hallucinatory fascination. My neighbor, a terminal Nostalgic Ned, finally went back to the Big Apple after a record four-decade run—his ashes at least. Good riddance, chum, we could use the parking space.