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The thermal gradient is intense up and down the CA coast. LA's topography introduces surprising results (compare West Hollywood and North Hollywood!), but the general idea, that it's so much hotter 30 miles inland than right on the coast, holds. The result? Trends in population density, real estate prices, and demographics.
Climate isn't everything. You have houses in Hancock Park and San Marino that rival Pacific Palisades in $/sqft but are much more inland and warmer.
That depends on who one is, and from where one hails. For instance, LA is hard to beat, if you're an ethnic Armenian or Persian. Not even NYC can compare. There are of course other "minority" examples, but these two come to mind, because they're so quintessentially LA.
Multiply your example and we have enclaves for Cambodians, Vietnamese, Mexicans, & other Central/South Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean neighborhoods, shops, and restaurants making the SoCal unique.
Given this diversity, we "average non-ethnic" peoples have highten sense of culture awareness and "educated palate". For example, our company cafeteria regularly serve Mexican food & Japanese Sushi for lunch on daily basis, and nobody raises an eyebrow over this "ethnic food" choice.
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Formerly, LA was a major center for the aerospace/defense industry. Then came the Peace Dividend, which combined with high real estate prices, caused a scattering of the aerospace industry. Some portions remain, but now, the DC area is the go-to place for aerospace/defense contracting/consulting. Still, LA is second only to the Bay Area in fecundity of tech start-ups. Such ecosystem is hard to recreate elsewhere, even in quite substantial and affluent cities elsewhere in the country.
The DC area has long been well-known as "beltway bandits" for government consulting contracts, but not for manufacturing capabilities, whereas the LA area are known for its innovative manufacturing, developing advanced prototype that change the paradigm of industry practice. Starting with SpaceX then you have a number of startups in LA/Long Beach/ Venice Beach (Silicone Beach). The young people are attracted by the weather, life styles, and opportunities here.
The weather is the main draw about this place and thats it.. That what is mainly Southern California has to offer is mild weather at price though. Yes, economic opportunities too but not as big emphasis .
I disagree. For those of us not born in California but brought as young kids to the L.A. suburbs by parents--who came from the midwest for job opportunites, and stayed--we're here for more reasons than the weather. This is where our friends are, our families are, our jobs are, where our kids were born. And we like it!
I disagree. For those of us not born in California but brought as young kids to the L.A. suburbs by parents--who came from the midwest for job opportunites, and stayed--we're here for more reasons than the weather. This is where our friends are, our families are, our jobs are, where our kids were born. And we like it!
Exactly.
My eldest sister came here in the ‘80s for UCLA MBA, did the internship in Southern California Gas that she ended up getting the job and became a top executive there. Her daughter who’s only turned 34 in July, is made partner at one of the biggest law firms in CA and won her clients (as the youngest and only female) billions of dollars in litigation.
My own daughter was born in NYC, lived in LA since she was a 6 months old infant for 10 yrs, moved away for 4 yrs (including the so-called “paradise” state) and still misses L.A. she even chose her future major and colleges in L.A (for now at least. She’s only 14.)-some of us chose it for reasons other than the weather. Weather is a plus but LA is more than just nice Mediterranean weather.
Other than having “nice weather”, L.A’s business model and lifestyle have nothing like say Miami and Florida where the main draw and characteristics are tourism + low wages + retiree attraction + foreign money parking. Older retirees aren’t known to flock to L.A to relax (other than Palm Springs but that’s a known niche market, more an identity than the attractions such as no income tax and desert weather isn’t known to be a “paradise”.) and other than the typical Hollywood glitz L.A isn’t known as a party central like Miami’s South Beach. There are plenty, plenty of industries here, not a lot of significant amount of people working in tourism and service jobs either, unlike FL, another state known and constantly reminder of “nice weather”.
Speaking of job opportunities, I know people who work in JPL, I know more than one person working in Northrop Grumman (one of whom a close family member.), I know people working in YouTube in Playa del Ray, and I know people working in finance in both Bunker Hill and Santa Monica. My lawyer niece works in Century City and her little brother works for Zoom works from home.-L.A industries are very diverse. It’s more than just Hollywood.
I like L.A because it’s one American city where I’m not cringed by local cultures of which the demographics are less than desirable.
I grew up in a SGV suburb in the 70’s and 80’s. Used to love it here and California in general.
I even watched the crime diminish in DTLA in particular and LA overall starting in the late 90’s that got to the point where I would have described downtown as safe by around 2008-2010. And things stayed that way for a while. The unforgivable sin is letting things go again after fixing the issue, and that’s exactly what happened. And that is just sad. The homeless and crime have now spread throughout LA. Traffic is worse. State income tax is horrible. Housing cost is above and beyond anything I think.
I no longer enjoy living in LA, even though I live in one of the nicest suburbs. I have to keep my head on a swivel, I pay too much in rent for too little, traffic makes it take forever to get anywhere, and I think things are not getting better no matter how much the government throws at it. To top it off, law enforcement can’t even attract enough employees to maintain their numbers. On paper LAPD is more than 1000 officers below where it was when Mayor Villaraigosa increased the funding to have more than 9900 officers deployed in the late 2000’s. LAPD on paper has 8900 right now, but between increased IOD claims and those officers running time until retirement, I wouldn’t be surprised if only 7800 officers were deployable. Citizens should be having a crap attack. There’s watches at some of the stations where there’s only one or two cars to serve 200-300k residents. Imagine a city the size of San Bernadino or Riverside only having one cop car covering the entire city. All agencies in surrounding cities are experiencing the exact same issues.
And it’s going to be worse. I can’t wait to leave. I’d leave now, but I’m too close to retirement. I love my Dodgers, but I no longer love living here. The big…huge…draw was always the level of activities, but traffic restricts that heavily. What good does world class museums and fantastic food do me if it takes an hour or hour and a half (or longer)to get anywhere? Heck, I live 4.5 miles from one of the nicest beaches in So Cal and it takes damn near 30 minutes to get there. What’s the point of living so close?
4.5 miles from the beach and takes you thirty minutes to get there. Thats LA traffic for you... I live about the same distance from the beach and it takes me half that time.
You were constantly hustling to make ends meet: Cut your costs, gain more skills, a better job, move to a cheaper place, share a place etc...
It was really overcrowded: Choose an area that is less crowded. LA Metro is a huge place and not all locations are overcrowded. You can find serenity in many different parts of the area.
The cost of living was unreasonable: again, see the first point.
No offense. I respect your post, but you're dismissing the idea that some people actually are dealing with on a daily basis.
First, "hustling" as you call it doesn't always translate to more $. If anything, hustling can lower your quality of life as it demands more resources on your time. Cutting costs I think is something everyone can do-- but cutting costs while rents/ rates and unaffordability is at or near an all time high is just being ignoring reality. You can't cut costs when costs like shelter, transportation, food, etc. are going up. That's not a budgeting issue.
Secondly, people can't just move somewhere quieter. You can't go from Koreatown to Rancho Palos Verdes to get away. You can't just move from Lawndale or Van Nuys to Holmby Hills to find serenity. Let's be honest, you can't even move from a low rise apartment in DTLA to a high rise on the same block for serenity. Also as others have pointed out, you can't just move to Tustin to "get away" if your job is in Santa Monica.
To discount that cost of living is major, impactful issue for a majority of Los Angelinos is an interesting take. Again, this is not a budgeting issue for most.
I lived in the South Bay, and LA proper for close to a decade. I made more and more each year, and had a great job in Cali. I still decided to relocate due to the reasons you're trying to discredit.
No offense. I respect your post, but you're dismissing the idea that some people actually are dealing with on a daily basis.
First, "hustling" as you call it doesn't always translate to more $. If anything, hustling can lower your quality of life as it demands more resources on your time. Cutting costs I think is something everyone can do-- but cutting costs while rents/ rates and unaffordability is at or near an all time high is just being ignoring reality. You can't cut costs when costs like shelter, transportation, food, etc. are going up. That's not a budgeting issue.
Secondly, people can't just move somewhere quieter. You can't go from Koreatown to Rancho Palos Verdes to get away. You can't just move from Lawndale or Van Nuys to Holmby Hills to find serenity. Let's be honest, you can't even move from a low rise apartment in DTLA to a high rise on the same block for serenity. Also as others have pointed out, you can't just move to Tustin to "get away" if your job is in Santa Monica.
To discount that cost of living is major, impactful issue for a majority of Los Angelinos is an interesting take. Again, this is not a budgeting issue for most.
I lived in the South Bay, and LA proper for close to a decade. I made more and more each year, and had a great job in Cali. I still decided to relocate due to the reasons you're trying to discredit.
Excellent points!
First, we should realize that as our W2 income rises, so too do the taxes - federal and especially state. It's a treadmill of sorts. Even if we remain frugal and don't allow our consumption to follow rising income, the net-gains aren't so liberating.
Second, LA happens to have some reasonably priced small apartments in the... less desirable areas. I live in one of them. It isn't enormously costlier than a place in the Midwest. That's no longer true, if instead we consider a tonier part of LA. Living in a place with, to put it euphemistically, frequent low-altitude flights by police helicopters, is a "housing hack". It substantially attenuates cost of living... at a price.
Third, the sturdier route to peace and quiet, isn't a better apartment, but the buying of a house, where there is... more peace and quiet. No, this isn't a rant about excessive housing prices! Instead it's a rant about property taxes. Even if I had a spare torrent of cash, to buy a house in Brentwood all-cash, the carrying costs of that house would be most unpalatable.
Fourth, because of the pocketed/patchwork nature of LA, our housing options are very much constrained by our workplace location. Suppose that I had that house in Brentwood, and were perfectly fine with its carrying costs... but worked in Pasadena. How would I commute between Brentwood and Pasadena? It's just not practical. And if I worked in Pasadena for years, and were looking for a luxurious and quiet locale for where to settle, then Brentwood would be off-limits, no matter what was my financial situation.
4.5 miles from the beach and takes you thirty minutes to get there. Thats LA traffic for you... I live about the same distance from the beach and it takes me half that time.
Mapquest tells me it takes 23 minutes to get from Sherman Oaks to Will Rogers State Beach. Not a chance. Easily 45 minutes to an hour.
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