Leaving La / California - Asap (Los Angeles: income, to live, professionals)

[Robert123]

Thanks Montevista1. I'm a university professor, and you have to go where the jobs are in your particular area of study. It's not like other professions like advertising, for example, where you can pick a city and then find a job. It's really hard in academe to find jobs in any city. Most jobs are in the middle of cornfields.

[montevista1]

Robert123, I think Austin is an awesome place and its in Texas!

[modster]

Yes, the biggest problem is not the hicks in Texas, but the ones in San Antonio! While Dallas & Houston will never be the "trend-setting" places LA is, it would certainly give you a more cosmopolitan urban lifestyle than you could have in San Antonio. Austin has a completely different character as well.

[montevista1]

Alamo Heights is a nice area and of course I love Monte Vista. Homes in the Monte Vista are so cheap compared to L.A.

[montevista1]

I live in the Valley there is no urban lifestyle here and I am still paying thousands for rent!

All the cool places in L.A. are over the hill which takes at least an hour to get to.

[Perdu]

One should note for those unaware that a distance of 3 to 5 miles from the Valley over the foothills and down into L.A. proper is the aforementioned one hour drive. You think we're exaggerating about traffic congestion in L.A.? We're not.

[deuterdu]

Originally Posted by Pacificop

For those of you who love Los Angeles and HAVE NEVER BEEN ANYWHERE ELSE, you are delusional to think that every place is like here and that they have the same problems or it’s the same thing everywhere or some other quaint notion that just simply isn't true. I used to think the same thing until I started traveling throughout the United States. First, I had no idea that those pretty pictures of America in Almanacs and other places are of real places. This country's landscape is gorgeous everywhere east of the Southwestern United States. If you are a desert lover, I mean no offense, but our transplanted greenery is in no way comparable to absolute beauty the rest of this country has.

But more to the point, as a career law enforcement officer in Southern California for a large agency, I have had the great fortune to work all crimes including a 6 year stint in homicide. I have been to all four corners of this country and places in between on business and pleasure trips. I’ve spent time with cops in other major, moderate and small towns. Even some Chicago cops couldn’t fathom some of the experiences I’ve had. There are cities and regions in this country (not Simpletown with 5,000 pop or less) that are dumbfounded at what goes on here. I finally figured out what seemed different on a recent trip to Appleton, Wisconsin. It was that the people seemed relaxed. They enjoyed living there, therefore they enjoyed each other, their jobs, parks and downtowns. They don’t live in constant fear.

I think the difference here is that we have a large populous who are nervous and fearful most of the time. You don’t know how abnormal that is until you visit some other city of 50,000 – 75,000 people and realize, life isn’t supposed to be scary. Is any place perfect – NO! But come on, LA and a growing number of its people enjoy the Gotham mentality. Well, this isn’t the movies; Batman, Superman and all of the other superheroes aren’t going to instantly restore order to a place that has taken decades to deteriorate.

The kind of crimes that get reported and printed on the front page of newspapers in other areas, I wouldn't bother to even prepare a press release for here - the local press would laugh at me for trivializing their work. We take for granted and think it is normal that everyone everywhereis wallowing in the same despair as we are; living in fear just going to the mall or grocery store. But it ain't so.

You see, even if you are wealthy and live in a gated community or mansion, you still need a hair cut, toiletries from the local drug store, milk, bread and eggs from the market and (over priced) gas from the local pumps. It is there that the fight for your life, the fear of being robbed and catching a disease from some virus infested goober trying to get money for drugs - they're not going to buy soup. (Try this social science experiment for those bleeding hearts out there. Next time you are hit up by someone who needs money to eat - offer to buy them a sandwich and see how much hostility you are met with. I've done it.)

I'm pulling an early retirement and moving away from Liberal Angeles to a place where family values are important and part of the city/county goals, being held accountable for ones actions is still regarded, school grades are important to the family and the grass is actually green. The only complaint I hear from people or POSTs about the southern region of the US is the humidity.

Point of fact: Humidity doesn't spray paint on walls, sell drugs on the street corner, offer to put your 12 year old daughter in a sex movie, etc. etc. etc. (I'll just have to lather up on "Bug Off" and carry a fly swatter I guess. Not a bad trade off.)

Amen brother! I got the hell out of Sac and moved to North Carolina. Humidity is only bad about 1 1/2 months out of the year. I spend that time indoors anyway so who cares. The Southern states kick butt and I have NO desire to move back to Cal. I wouldn't mind visiting and enjoying all of it's slendor but NC is in my opinion a much better quality of life. Not to mention I sold allof my real estate in Cal, paid cash for a 4,000 sq foot house in a great part of town and I am now retired/semi-retired at the age of 40. What can I say, I love it out here and have no regrets. It's very safe too.

[looking4home]

No offense, but you typify everything that is wrong with the
"cut and run" mentality that has artificially inflated home prices all over the nation. It's people like you, coming from high-priced areas, and paying cash for their homes, that have driven prices up so that long-time residents can't afford a home anymore. It happened in Sac, with all the people coming from the Bay Area, and now you did the same thing in NC.

You "cashed out" of CA, but I just hope you don't regret it five years from now and want to come back. Believe me, it happens. I know many people who left CA, for "nicer" places like VA, ID, Oregon, Utah, New England, etc. only to return and find it very difficult, financially, to jump back in once they got out.

And for the record, I'd put up with dry heat, even over 110 (and be honest, this year was freakish, it's only that high a couple of days a year) rather than melt and sweat in stifling humidity, while battling hordes of mosquitoes and other assorted bugs!

[Yodelady]

L.A. is the armpit of the universe. I lived t here for 10 years and couldn't be happier that I've left. There is so much crime, noise, pollution, gangs, riots, crowds, traffic, smog, and you pay a fortune to live there! The only good thing there is the weather.

I moved 60 miles away to a small community where everyone knows each jiother, there is no crime, no pollution and no noise. The tradoff is that it is very hot here.

I am personally planning to move back to New England as soon as I am able.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Pacificop

I wouldn’t live in London either for the same reasons I want out of So Cal. On that note, if you notice, neither I nor anyone else who understood the original posting, has suggested moving to New York City, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Washington DC or any other major metropolitan city for the exact same reasons. This is not a case of bragging rights for who has the worst standard of living and worst crime all, coupled with the highest housing prices. Everyone who is from a major and expensive crime ridden city, living in fear for their lives needs to move away from those cities too, not chastise me and others for, well I guess, stating the obvious . . . But you gotta ask yourself this question. Why is it that so many people in this forum are complaining and have a feeling of doom, yet you go to other forums, i.e Southern or Midwestern states, the negativity is hard to find and the discussions are 180 degrees different from LA, New York, DC, Chicago, etc, etc, etc.?

I can't speak for any of the other cities you mention, but I'm really not sure why you keep dragging Chicago into this. I'm very active in the Chicago threads, and I'm sorry, I just don't see the kind of "doom and gloom" postings that seem to be a staple feature of the L.A. threads.

I'm not gonna BS you. This city has its problems. But the vast majority of those problems are confined to particular parts of the city. And while I don't mean to trivialize or ignore the very real, very serious problems faced by the people who live in the bad parts of the city, the rest of us feel safe walking around our neighborhoods at night; or at the very least, we're definitely not living in a constant state of fear. And there's certainly no sense that all is lost in our city. In fact there's actually quite a lot of hope and optimism here; it seems like things just keep getting better. Our murder rate has dropped by nearly a third in just 2 years. High-rise projects are being torn down. Urban renewal is sprouting up everywhere. And there's no mass exodus of folks fleeing Chicago for neighboring states.

Go read the Chicago threads for a while. We're candid about the problems the city has; we advise that there are areas that one does not want to live in and that the city schools suck. But even so, there is no "doom and gloom" but instead I think you'll find that the substantial majority of us actually like it here.

[EDIT] OK, I should have read the whole thread before posting this. Then I would have caught your correction. I notice in your correction that you assumed Chicago has big city problems. It does. It just manifests itself differently than it does in L.A. Much of Chicago proper is very liveable. Almost all of the suburban areas are also very liveable. There are some suburbs that suck, but the vast majority of the Chicago area is safe and quiet, as is a good portion of the city proper.

Oh, and as for the weather... some of us actually like winter. My only complaint is that winter is not cold enough in Chicago. So when I need a dose of REAL winter, I zoom up to Wisconsin. You don't know good times until you've laid out a race course on a frozen lake and competed in an automotive ice race. (Of course, half the fun is when the gang heads to the local tavern to, uh, "warm up" after the trophies are handed out.) Try doing THAT in SoCal