Hello, Info on LA Suburbs Please (Los Angeles, San Diego: best city, public school, gated)

[DC15]

Where is Fastfilms neighborhood again?, Also does anyone here ever go into East LA regularly, I still wonder if there are any white families that are still living there happily.

[wildgift]

I sympathize with fastfilm too, but, I look at the situation in hoods like Belvedere Park up in East LA, and you got to figure that they're doing something right there. It used to be a Japanese neighborhood, but it's mixed and probably mostly Mexican now. It's still extremely clean and attractive. It's also adjacent to the Maravilla projects, and is pretty much in what people consider the ghetto. It stays okay because people keep the place up.

If you have the money, you can afford to pay someone else to worry about your streets for you, but for most people, it's up to the residents to keep the street up. The problem with LA is that you have a lot people thinking like the former, and not enough behaving like the latter. People are always looking to move away quickly, and not willing to put in some work. They aren't willing to talk to the people getting all trashy, to tell them to take it inside.

[fastfilm]

Due to my work and longevity in L.A., I've able to traverse rather a huge amount of it. I used to use a darkroom facility in Monterey Park, I took Euro friends to see the Watts Towers, tried to get a design job with the lovely Cockatoo Inn in Inglewood (watch film "Jackie Brown" which highlights it) as well as numerous photojournalism jobs which took me all over the basin. I used to pay gangmembers to "look after" (meaning not rob) my parked car when that was my only option at certain jobs.

But I've also travelled to quite a few other places in the United States, and I believe my points of comparison are perchance a tad more valid than those of really young people who've spent their whole lives in L.A. and think that everything here is "normal" and how it is elsewhere. It isn't. Please read so many other posters assessments of the decline in quality of life here if you choose not to heed mine.

It is not normal for middle class neighborhoods in the U.S. to have: debris, trash, and never removed graffiti; loose pitbulls; 18 people living in tiny houses, many of them in garages, or in my case, in the garden shed behind me!; to have stadium-worthy sound systems blasting party music all night long and into the early morn with no police intervention because they're out after the gangsters; and hardly anyone where one lives speaking any English whatsoever, and gangs, gangs, gangs. Not surly little teens, but multi-generational, hardcore haters of everyone who's not them. Gangs are like Taliban with Glocks: they really, really hate with all their might.

So that I wouldn't be limited to being a complainer, I've worked very hard in neighborhood activism here for the last ten years. We stopped a bus route down an all residential street that had no commuting interest for anyone, we got curb ramps for wheelchairs and babystrollers, trees, trashcans for the boulevard, distributed information on how to get city services quickly etc. I even go directly to community service to get them to use their sandblaster to remove the continual graffiti, instead of waiting for the city.

BUT this is endemic to Los Angeles middle class neighborhoods in general, not just mine. This is NOT how middle class neighborhoods in other cities in the United States work. In the rest of the U.S., you have "bad pockets." Here we have this malfeasance distributed in every neighborhood but the most monied.

Also, virtually every neighborhood improvement campaign by us citizens falls short because of highly antagonistic foreign nationals. (I'm going to use that term for the newly arrived, vehemently opposed to English speaking, or illegal, to distinguish them from the numerous populations of good naturalized citizens from all over the world.) I've had people at parties, when I've asked them to stop blasting outdoors music or shrieking outdoors at 3 in the morning, hustle to find someone who speaks English, to drunkenly bellow back at me, "I do whatever I want!" And God forbid they should help clean up a neighborhood, or even report violence around them. "This is how I did it in my home country and I not change here" is the mantra I hear when trying to help others understand American laws. No social cohesion to help improve our immediate surroundings, and separatist sentiment abounds. They feel exempt, and the numbers of law-breakers back them up.

Pollyanna optimists think this is growing pains. Those who've seen how the rest of the country works know better. The paradigm has shifted, with the middle class fleeing for their lives while being forced out by having to pay for all the illegals. Los Angeles, with its new demographic of super-rich cocooned in multi-million dollar hidey-holes, and the rest of everyone else, a poorer, less educated workforce, unable to communicate with anyone outside of their parents' ethnic origin, and not functionally conversant in English despite school efforts, who think the kneejerk retaliation of gangs is macho and who grew up believing the violence of the meanstreets of the new L.A. is "normal," will be the biggest abberation to America, and to the American dream in the future. Except they'll never admit it.

[jlrobe]

In response to you fastfilm, I am young, but I consider myself an avid adventurer and have been to and explored chicago, boston, D.C., France, Tokyo, Taipei, Toronto, ALL of california (from Lassen Lake, to cresent city, to angles camp, to carlsbad, san luis obispo, and everything else in between except maybe the big sur in detail). From what I have seen, 40% of LA is quite nice and quite expensive, while the other 60% is questionable and supposedly middle class.

I think people fail to realize that SF bay area, Los Angeles, and now San Diego really dont have a middle class anymore. San Diego is trying to fight the problem though, while LA and SF bay area did nothing about it. If you want middle class in CA, your best bet is Sacramento and surrounding area. There you can be a teacher, live comfortably in a clean city.

LA technically lost its middle class in the late 80's early 90's, and SF lost its middle class in the mid 80's. It is difficult to evaluate just LA because the loss of our middle class is a state problem, and now is becoming a national problem. I guess LA is ground zero for that. Anyhow, people love to own homes in CA. If people wanted to be professional renters, then there would be a middle class in los angeles again, but people outside of manhattan want to own.

The thing saving new york is
1) people are willing to be life renters
2) NYC is centralized with awesome transportation so you can live 1.5 hours from work, and just take the train in, while in LA, you arent really able to live in say Valencia because there is no train to LA from there.
3) The crappy neighborhoods stick to themselves

Anyhow, I stay in the better 40% of LA and I like it. On the weekends, I plan on going to places like Pasadena/san marino/san gabriel, Studiocity/burbank/glendale, irvine/costa mesa/newport, venice/santa monica/beverly hills/brentwood/malibu/west LA, while renting in Manhattan/redondo/hermosa/palos verdes. Who knows I may even hit up the nicer areas in west hollywood/los feliz/silver lake/griffith park, culver city, mid-wilshire (miracle mile,larchmont strip), and long beach once in awhile. When you do LA like that, I think it can be quite livable. The only problem is you have to live like a new yorker and rent forever.

Also, the traffic isnt that bad on weekends. On the weekdays (assuming you are renting AND working in a very nice area) one can just hang out near home, while saving the long trips for the weekends.

But i agree with you, if you are "middle class" and living in one of the hundreds of busted neighborhoods, and driving in nasty traffic daily, then LA SUCKS!!!!

[parkinso]

Originally Posted by fastfilm

There aren't any. If your income is that of a genuine multi-mega-millionaire, you can live in Palos Verdes, Pacific Palisades, Holmby Hills, Bel Air, San Marino, Han**** Park or Malibu, the only sectors in Los Angeles county that have a majority of "old money" socialites or nouveau riche Film people, who both of whom still tend to be Caucasian.

You shouldn't have taken the job in Los Angeles if that was your expectation. Haven't you "done your homework?" Los Angeles has more foreign born residents than any section of the United States, with 300 illegal immigrants from Mexico or South or Central America entering the city PER DAY. I'm not going to go into the political ramifications necessarily except to say that the quality of life issues here are terrible if you're not rich enough to cocoon yourself.

If you are making six figures, come on down to Orange County.... you can find a family-friendly neighborhood and pay $600k for a starter home. Welcome home!

[puffle]

O.K. Let's take a deep breath. Where in Los Angeles is your job located, if you take it? I have lived here all of my life, mostly in Sherman Oaks and presently in Westlake Village in Ventura County. Sherman Oaks is an easy commute to L.A., so is Pasadena both of which have what you asked for. I live in a beautiful suburb of middle to upper class and above. There is something for everybody here whether you rent or buy. I would suggest if you do move, that you rent for a year first to make sure this is what you want. If you want more info, let me know.

[puffle]

Hi Richard, Where in Los Angeles would your job be located? I can give you some good suggestions according to your wishes after I know. I have lived here my entire life, mainly in the Valley and now in Westlake Village in Ventura County. There is hope.

[Zion]

Originally Posted by Richard Beddington

Because in America people are free to live wherever they wish and I wish to live in a White area.

Would you be asking the same question to a Mexican or Black if they wished to live in an ethnic neighborhood? I don't think so. That would be politically incorrect, while it is PC to harrass me for wishing to live in a White area. I am not some evil racist, just a regular White guy who wants to live in a nice, White suburb.

-Richard

Well, it will be hard to find ALL white. We are such a diverse and mixed area. But, what is your budget? That would depend where I'd direct you.

[DspartacusU]

If you're looking for a place to live, check out HotPads.com. While HotPads doesn't necessarily give you the racial break down, it does provide as much information as possible when trying to get information about a new place to live. It links you to Wikipedia articles and gives you census data and whatnot about the city, as well as particular neighborhoods in it.

[BeenAroundTheBlock]

If you read through the numerous posts.. Richard dropped out of his quest for a white neighborhood in LA. He turned down the job offer.