Best places to live in california if you're a weird artist?

[MisterDuke]

Downtown Pomona is an artist colony. Lots of old buildings. A lot of college art students and people who just graduated. Cal Poly and the Claremont Colleges are nearby. The Glass House, which is a concert venue is in the middle of it. No corporate entities like Starbucks are allowed. Really cool. I was really tempted to sign a lease there 2 years ago.

I had a choice of a couple different lofts, all very affordable. One was a 2nd floor loft in a building that was a brothel in the 1800s. The rent was only $650 for 1100 sqft, which is insanely cheap for around here. The agent said it was cheap because they had a hard time keeping tenants on that floor because it was haunted.

Then there was another unit that was $1 a square foot. It was a 1920s warehouse with a 30 foot ceiling and an elevator for cars. Didn't have much use for that, but it would be a funny conversation piece. And there were two storefronts across the street, that were the ground floors of old department stores. They were hanging on to those for people who wanted to create galleries or art oriented retail.

Lots of people doing interesting things. Weird things. The complete opposite of places like Laguna and Carmel.

[nighthouse66]

Originally Posted by Mvn2nc

Carmel would be my pick

I lived there for 6 months, and I was very disappointed with Carmel. The people are ok, its very quaint, but its dull as dishwater. Lots of flower paintings, regular housewife stuff. No offense to housewives, but unless that housewife is Yoko Ono, its not what I would call "weird art". Also it is hella expensive. Same with Venice, where I live now. Tho it definitely has its share of weird, though not neccesarily in artist form all the time!

[jaynetarzana]

My vote would be for Santa Cruz or Mt. Shasta, but like many people here have already said, there are so many places in California where a weird artist would blend in with no problem. Ocean Beach in San Diego county would work as well as Venice, maybe Ojai, San Luis Obispo area, Berkeley, Davis, Sebastopol, Humboldt, some pockets in the Palm Springs area and east San Diego county in Jamul. I could probably come up with a bunch more, but those are the most obvious ones.

nighthouse66: I was hoping that you might be able to give me some insight on Carmel. DH and I are tree hugging, liberal, fashionable, ethical vegetarians and parents of two little girls in our mid 30's. We grew up in Detroit, moved to San Diego after our wedding where we lived for 10 years and then moved to Santa Cruz for 3 years. This past summer we moved to Chicago for DH's job, and even though we moved to Evanston, the most liberal part of Chicago and most like California, we're completely miserable. We miss California something terrible, especially Northern California because it is so lush and green with the Redwoods etc. We are planning to move back in March. DH will be working in Salinas and we're not sure about Santa Cruz. The gang activity was getting worse, downtown is full of junkies, the boardwalk was scary, the public schools aren't great and the people were almost too hippie for us. So we have been thinking about Carmel and reading all of the posts we can find about it. I'd love to hear about your experiences. Feel free to DM me if you'd rather not talk about it in a public forum. Thanks!

[bellalunatic]

Petaluma
Sebastopol
Valley Ford
Bloomfield
Fairfax.

[sheri257]

My pick would be Carmel ... tons of galleries where lots of millionaires buy art there. And they sell weird art too. There's a gallery with nothing but weird dog paintings, for example.

[sheri257]

Originally Posted by jaynetarzana

So we have been thinking about Carmel and reading all of the posts we can find about it. I'd love to hear about your experiences. Feel free to DM me if you'd rather not talk about it in a public forum. Thanks!

Don't live in Carmel but we love it, visiting every weekend. It doesn't get any better than that ... especially Carmel Beach. Of course, it's mega expensive but they are experiencing a real estate recession like everywhere else.

Carmel | Pebble Beach CA Real Estate and Community Information

And I notice a lot more empty storefronts than usual because tourism is down. Pebble Beach, for example, had to lay off 30 people.

If it wasn't so far from my work ... I would live there in a heartbeat but, we're going to buy further down the pennisula on the 68 where the lanes widen up to two instead of just one.

If you're going to be commuting to Salinas or whereever, traffic does get backed up once it gets down to one lane but ... if you're going against traffic it should be fine.

The only other thing to keep in mind about Carmel (at least from what people tell me) is that it gets very foggy there. There are sunnier parts of the penninsula but, Carmel isn't one of them.

It's also a major retirement community. Basically the whole Penninsula has tons of retirements communities so ... just FYI.

[MR.MPG3]

What towns in ca. R good for raising a family with modest salary?

[jaynetarzana]

What do you mean by modest? Everyone's definition is different.

[americandream99]

Venice beach.