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We lived in OC for 11 years after living in Ohio & New Mexico. Loved the sunshine (not as much as NM though) but as a small business owner, found the business climate/regulations/costs overwhelming and left 3 years ago for South Carolina. Very happy here, still own the same biz, own a much larger house at half the cost of CA, no traffic, mild change of seasons, still have mountains & beaches. I didn't realize how much I missed warm summer nights, warm ocean water, & warm swimming pools until I got back here to the east coast.
I do miss dear friends, our church & a handful of family members who stayed in CA, but go out several times a year for visits. I don't miss the ridiculous amount of money we wasted on housing while out there.
I moved to OC from farmland in the MidWest in 1976. OC is not as good as it used to be. It has gone through a lot of changes and most are not for better.
The air quality is better now with the strict air quality laws. When I moved to OC I could not see the mountains and thought the topography was flat. It was until the first rain cleaned the sky and revealed the mountains that I asked a girlfriend, "Since when does CA have mountains? I can see mountains now. I never saw them before." She laughed said, "You can the see the mountains after the rains because the air is clear. They are close by, but hidden by the smog."
At school we did not run a mile in P.E. on days when there was a smog alert because kids passed out and had to be picked up by an ambulance. Today, the air is cleaner and we have far fewer smog alerts than in the 70s and early 80s. The kids growing up today breathe cleaner air than I did when I was their age. The kids today have fewer instances of asthma and other breathing problems because the air is cleaner today.
When I was a kid and went to Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Corona Del Mar there was tar on the beach that we stepped in and got it stuck all over our feet. You had to use sand to scrub it off. These came from the petrolatum oil wells off our shores. Off shore drilling resulted in dirty beaches. New laws were passed and this became a thing of the past. This has improved significantly.
Heal the Bay was created to clean up the water of Santa Monica Bay, but it was extended past Santa Monica and has resulted in cleaner water at the beaches today than we had in the 70s and 80s. I appreciate the efforts of Heal the Bay. They have made a difference for all of us. They have improved the quality of our beach water.
Labor laws, clean air acts, tax structures have all caused businesses to flee to AZ and NV and not return. The current set up in CA is not favorable to businesses and does not allow them to grow and flourish, thus job growth is down. NAFTA hurt our economy and was a very bad idea. Manufacturing jobs to employ people with little job skills and education found their job relocated to Mexico. Those jobs did not not return. Outsourcing has meant call center jobs for those with only a high school diploma who could always count on a call center job have found their job moved to the Philippines, India, Taiwan and China. The draining away of these jobs has resulted in the lower class becoming poorer than they were before and the lower class has grown in size. This is not helpful to our economy and the blighted areas have only grown in size.
The cancerous blight in the center of OC has grown past the borders of Santa Ana as illegal immigration has continued unabated. Illegal immigration has resulted in me having to attend school with scary gang bangers because they were kicked out of every school in Santa Ana so a judge sent them to school in nice, wealthy, white areas of other cities in the hopes the gang bangers would straighten up and fly right. Instead the gang bangers terrorized the rich kids and cut them up. Those judges were idiots. Today, this problem of gang bangers in the schools is only worse rather than better. With illegal immigration comes crime. We don't get ONLY people seeking a job or new life. We ALSO get criminals coming here to escape prosecution in Mexico. We also get the drug cartels from Mexico. We can not pick and choose who runs across the border. We get a mixed bag of everyone from all strata of society and not even the illegal Mexicans want the law breakers here, but they come anyway. Then we must deal with the drugs, alcoholism, violence, criminal activity and the urban blight that comes with undesirable people.
Take a look at a map sometime of OC and think about how the cancerous urban blight has spread out from Santa Ana like a spiderweb killing communities as it goes is coming to your community. Give it 20 years and only Newport Beach will stand alone as a nice community.
As long as Illegal aliens run across the border with Mexico and move up to Santa Ana, refuse to acclimate to America, refuse to live to a higher standard of living, refuse to paint their houses/cut their grass/get rid of old junky cars in the driveway and on the lawn, maintain their home and yard, learn English, go to college and just generally become an American instead of a Mexican the blight in the center of our county is only going to grow. All previous immigrant groups have become Americanized and learned to fit in, but the Mexicans refuse. This is a problem for our county, state and country. If you own a home in a city that borders Santa Ana it has dropped in value rather than rising like other cities.
Seal Beach used to be nice, but the gang bangers from Long Beach invaded Seal Beach and it went downhill. The gang bangers of Long Beach don't want to sit on the beach in LB for fear of being shot...so, they go to Seal Beach and now Seal Beach has been deteriorating since the 90s. It used to be so nice. I used to live there and then the undesirables came so I left.
I moved from upstate NY to be with my husband (who is from California) in '99 and stayed there two years with him. It was a magical time for me. We lived in Costa Mesa (we were both in our early 30s) and used to go to many clubs and restaurants. I remember it being so much fun. I only had a 15 minute commute to work (RARE, I know! LOL). I had our daughter there and then my husband's job transfered us to SC when she was only 11 weeks old.
I hated leaving, but never let on. We couldn't afford a house and we didn't want to raise our girl in an apartment. We now have a nice home in SC and I DO love the seasons, especially FALL! I still miss Cali sometimes, though, but there's no going back. I've found that when you try to recapture something - it's not the same.
We went to visit my husband's family in April and I hadn't been there in four years. I have to say - when we drove around our old haunts things really looked different. I couldn't believe how dirty everything looked. It made me feel sad. And we got stuck in traffic, which I DON'T miss, trying to get back to my husband's parents' house for dinner from a day at Huntington Beach (his parents live in Corona in Riverside County).
I don't know how people raise families there. I'm always running to a dance class or Tae Kwon Do and I work full time. I remember looking for childcare in Costa Mesa when my daughter was born and "ghetto" care was like $1,000/month. I couldn't imagine what it is now.
I'll tell you the awesome things were driving only 3 hours to Vegas to spend a romantic weekend. Or driving 5 hours to Arizona to simply go see a movie (yes - we were nutty like that!). We took our daughter on the trip I mentioned in April to Ruby's Diner on the Pier (our first ever date experience). The food was crappy, but you can't beat looking out on the ocean with the birds flying by and watching people surf. And we lived right up the road from Disney Land, perfect for me because I'm an amusement park junkie. My poor husband! Every other weekend I was like "Can we go to Disney? Can we go to Knott's Berry Farm?, etc..."
I'll tell you this, though - we're only an 8 hour drive where we live now from Disney World in Flordia and Disney Land can't touch it.
Deep down I'm glad we left OC, but I still miss it sometimes. I still miss NY, too (but man! You canNOT get me back to snow - EVER!). I know we're in the right place now.
Thanks for asking that question in your post. It was a nice trip down memory lane!
I don't know if you're having regrets, but remember - if you are - you can change things. You can move or you can try to be happy where you're at. I think God places us where he thinks we'll do best.
Well I was born in OC and have lived here (and in Riverside Co. for various periods of time) for my entire life, and I would not want to live anywhere else! The people are nice, culture is good, food is good, weather is great, tons of things to do! I am still finding new things to do!
People complain about Santa Ana and central OC constantly, but when I lived there I really didn't mind it. It's not that bad, and a very nice reprieve from the "real houswife" types that live in some other parts of OC.
I think we connected on another forum..just wanted to say that I found the same thing on a quick 24 hour trip to Irvine this past weekend. I was VERY surprised at how friendly people were that I met..I almost venture to say people were a bit more "smiley" than generally here in the Bay Area. I am ok now with moving to OC.
irvine and newport is smiley... i wouldnt take that as indicative of all of orange county!
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i agree with most of the comments about competition, rat race, and conspicuous consumerism. also some of the plastic-y people... then the transplants also adopt this attitude thinking that they have to.
i grew up in Huntington Beach and have lived in this area all of my life (i'm 49) and i am ready to get out.
thinking of moving to one of the new england states so i still have the ocean and get the seasons.
i feel for people that come here and then adopt "The Lifestyle".
I moved from upstate NY to be with my husband (who is from California) in '99 and stayed there two years with him. It was a magical time for me. We lived in Costa Mesa (we were both in our early 30s) and used to go to many clubs and restaurants. I remember it being so much fun. I only had a 15 minute commute to work (RARE, I know! LOL). I had our daughter there and then my husband's job transfered us to SC when she was only 11 weeks old.
I hated leaving, but never let on. We couldn't afford a house and we didn't want to raise our girl in an apartment. We now have a nice home in SC and I DO love the seasons, especially FALL! I still miss Cali sometimes, though, but there's no going back. I've found that when you try to recapture something - it's not the same.
We went to visit my husband's family in April and I hadn't been there in four years. I have to say - when we drove around our old haunts things really looked different. I couldn't believe how dirty everything looked. It made me feel sad. And we got stuck in traffic, which I DON'T miss, trying to get back to my husband's parents' house for dinner from a day at Huntington Beach (his parents live in Corona in Riverside County).
I don't know how people raise families there. I'm always running to a dance class or Tae Kwon Do and I work full time. I remember looking for childcare in Costa Mesa when my daughter was born and "ghetto" care was like $1,000/month. I couldn't imagine what it is now.
I'll tell you the awesome things were driving only 3 hours to Vegas to spend a romantic weekend. Or driving 5 hours to Arizona to simply go see a movie (yes - we were nutty like that!). We took our daughter on the trip I mentioned in April to Ruby's Diner on the Pier (our first ever date experience). The food was crappy, but you can't beat looking out on the ocean with the birds flying by and watching people surf. And we lived right up the road from Disney Land, perfect for me because I'm an amusement park junkie. My poor husband! Every other weekend I was like "Can we go to Disney? Can we go to Knott's Berry Farm?, etc..."
I'll tell you this, though - we're only an 8 hour drive where we live now from Disney World in Flordia and Disney Land can't touch it.
Deep down I'm glad we left OC, but I still miss it sometimes. I still miss NY, too (but man! You canNOT get me back to snow - EVER!). I know we're in the right place now.
Thanks for asking that question in your post. It was a nice trip down memory lane!
I don't know if you're having regrets, but remember - if you are - you can change things. You can move or you can try to be happy where you're at. I think God places us where he thinks we'll do best.
i really liked this post.
i have to admit that as a so CA native i've never been to vegas... not once.
I
We get a mixed bag of everyone from all strata of society and not even the illegal Mexicans want the law breakers here, but they come anyway.
Illegal "Mexicans" are law breakers by definition. (Quotes because not all illegal Hispanics are "Mexicans" They come from a half dozen or more countries).
This is the problem with our current immigration policy. It does not stem the flow of immigration, it only serves to ensure that the only immigrants we get in large numbers are the ones who are willing to break our laws to get here. Thus, poential immigrants who are interested in following our laws, do nto come here because it is illegal to do so (or so difficult and time consuming that it is impractical). Ultimately the best people stay in Mexico (best meaning the ones who will not break our laws) and the lawbreakers flood across. Every single illegal immigrant is a lawbreaker. They know that they are breaking our laws coming here illegally. Perhaps that law is not considered important however do we really want the people who feel it is ok to pick and choose which of our laws they will obey? Seems like we should be promoting the opposite result.
Sorry to drift a bit - just responding to the post.
Can you please post a picture of your Bugatti? I love those things and never get to see them.
Keep in mind that my experience is from 11-12 years ago before you get all snarky. Which reminds me of what I DON'T miss about the OC.
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