Chicago/MIL to LA (San Diego, Anaheim: real estate, school, community college)

[Mathead]

I am a Chicagoan currently living in Milwaukee.

So I hear all the typical complaints about LA...crime, traffic, plastic people.

I am strongly considering relocating to LA in the next couple of years. I spent a summer session in college at UCLA and had a great time, met some really good people.

I know that Westwood is it's own little bubble, and college is college but give me some input on LA.

All the complaints I've seen in the Midwest. Chicago's traffic is 2nd in the nation. Talk about crime, I lived in Chicago when it was the murder capital of the country. Milwaukee is rapidly becoming the per-capita homicide capital also. As far as plastic people, some of the biggest snobs I ever met were in Chi-town.

The weather sucks in MIL and Chicago, lake effect makes for winters that can be real bad. Every summer, the heat kills people it gets so intense.

Any one knowledgable about how the cities compare, lets hear it...Thanks

[DontH8Me]

plastic in LA does not = snob. Over here, plastic really means plastic, i.e. plastic parts, silicone, restalyn, implants, lipo, sucko-change-o to the point where they barely have a humanoid resemblance....one time I was at an art showing in Santa Monica and was walking in right when "she" was walking out - when I looked directly in her face I actually recoiled. (I was embarassed for her after this - I'm sure she had hoped all the grueling years of surgery were finally paying off, but to me that split second was like a small heart attack.)

[ejecteject]

I wouldn't hestitate to admit that UCLA's in a decent part of the city, but yes, you're in a bubble there. I was in the rival bubble ('SC) near Downtown Central, and survived by hardly ever going off campus. When I moved to Ventura County, I wondered why I ever went to school in that 'hood. After 17 years here, I realized most people here live in a "bubble": only a disability has kept me here the last 6, long after the white middle class has all but left.

It's hard not to get ethnic when you talk population growth. Where you get your traffic stats is beyond me. For years after I graduated, I could drive to USC for the football games in one hour. From '98 that began to quickly change. By '03, I was lucky to make a ball game in 2-1/2 hours, and I found it could take me over one hour just to get from say, Westwood to Hollywood on a weekday afternoon. One snag on the 101 or 405 (any of them, really), and you're parked for a while, until, say, after 8 or 9 pm - weekends included. Exception: when the Latinos had their walkout last year, news copters showed the freeways literally empty.

Even before traffic got that bad, I realized what I thought was America's armpit when I lived in it was even worse. I still haven't gone down to see the real LaBrea Tar Pits. Yes, L.A. has museums and culture, but they're spread out in spots, not centralized like in S.F. or Boston, and most of L.A. isn't Westwood, i.e., safely "walkable." You're foolish even in Westwood not to maintain a swivelling head and awareness like an owl. Thus, no one from Ventura, San Diego, or even Orange Counties cherishes going to L.A. for culture. Anaheim, in fact, was set to sue the Anaheim Angels when they changed their name to "Angels of L.A." or whatever it is.

As for "plastic," the last post is accurate for the whole region except maybe the desert. When women get a raise here, many come back to work looking bigger and better than ever. Plastic surgery as a personal marketing strategy was just being all but advocated on the local news tonight. It's now being marketing to the kids, rich or not, even under-teenage.

Plastic goes with personality, too. In our singles church group - the only local one, which imploded because the church couldn't afford keeping the pastor-in-charge and pay its property taxes - we had one native who visited Chicago. He recounted to our study group how he was amazed to meet people who actually took time from their work day to talk to a stranger, about anything, for no particular reason. Likewise, this is how anyone from somewhere else - and no, there actually aren't enough to dilute the problem - sticks out like a sore thumb.

I understand, from a Chicago native talking baseball with me, that Chi-Town has a lot of uppeties/Cubbies who couldn't bother with the rest. Well, imagine almost an entire lower half of this state like that. You'll get along fine at school and at work, but on the street or in the store, most people don't speak, much less look at you, unless they want you in their church (ironic given how the area revolves around money), to save your soul, give you business card, or otherwise have to. It took my disability and being out of work for me to wake up and realize this - that I'd been seeing, for instance, the same cashiers in my town for years, and we never enchanged glances like we'd recognized eachother. Compared to every other place in the Midwest, South, and Back East where I'm originally from, the differences are now startlingly obvious. The usual excuse people have is that there are too many "distractions" out here; I think it's more that it's too heterogenous, the L.A. gang factor is widespread and make everyone afraid of strangers to start with, and we don't have blizzards or enough earthquakes to make people look out for eachother.

Agreeing with me was a single Mom who was finishing up in our community college, chirpiest bird in the class; she said she was living with her Mom for a few more months, then going back to Chicago, since she had friends there and the "stress out here to make it isn't worth it." Yes, "people" are stressed, and literally depressed now, in the Land of Fruits and Nuts. Many well outside the city, like here, admit they like the weather, they like the nature that's within reach but getting further away, but really little else. And forget real estate: they've realized a life surrounded by humanity without humanity isn't worth an ocean view. When it was affordable, and I was younger and working, sitting in Navy jet aircraft, coming out here seemed justifiable. Without those golden career years, I'd now call it a mistake. I don't advise your repeating it.

NorCal doesn't seem like the warmest place to East Coasters either, but I don't outright-sense that it's as bad as here. At least they've got S.F. and you get the sense they are quite proud of it, even as gay as it is. (Parts of L.A. are as openly gay and metrosexual if not moreso.) Look there if you can afford it and want to try something closer to what California used to be or should be like, the Golden State.

[Mathead]

Thanks for the input.