Anyone else think LA is going down the toilet? (Los Angeles: rent, to buy)

[JackSparrow]

Originally Posted by CAgoingtoCO

My family has lived in SoCal for generations dating back to the original settlers. I cannot tell you how disappointing this state has become. Most recently in the past 10 years I feel that things have changed dramatically. I am currently thinking of moving out of the state because of all the problems that CA is going to have to deal with in the future (traffic, imigration, cost of living, etc.). The middle class is definitely being pushed out. They might not realize it but it will be for their own good if they go now.

Yeah, right, cause Colorado doesn't have ANY problems with immigration, cost of living, and worst of all traffic (just wait and see)!

The middle class is being eradicated across America. Los Angeles is just a little more avant garde.

Good luck!

[Charles]

Originally Posted by CAgoingtoCO

My family has lived in SoCal for generations dating back to the original settlers. I cannot tell you how disappointing this state has become. Most recently in the past 10 years I feel that things have changed dramatically. I am currently thinking of moving out of the state because of all the problems that CA is going to have to deal with in the future (traffic, imigration, cost of living, etc.). The middle class is definitely being pushed out. They might not realize it but it will be for their own good if they go now.

Traffic in the Denver metro is nothing compared to LA. Example: Last week my plane landed at Denver around 4:30PM on a weekday. I dorked up and didn't take the E-470 to circumvent the presumed Aurora and Tech Center traffic. I ended up on the 225 and 25. Guess what? At "rush" hour I hit stop and go for maybe five minutes in 25 miles - and this is through one of the busier traffic corridors in the Denver metro. Big Deal. Now, We fly into LAX this past Sunday. Driving up the 405 at 1 PM it is bumper to bumper heading south and maybe around 40 mph max heading north. It was so bad I almost couldn't admire all the graffiti on every single paintable surface between LAX and Wilshire. Almost couldn't cut into the 101N transition at the bottom of the Sep Pass in the valley. (We went to the Aquarium and Children's Museum near the Denver Bronco football stadium - one of the "rougher" parts of town, right? Barely any graffiti.)

If you can handle sunny mid forties weather in the winter then you will do fine in Colorado. I did. Much more affordable, much less social problems, more good jobs per capita, and much less traffic. Much more cheerful. Just colder winters. OK, it's a trade off. Check out the southern regions of Denver metro: Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock, Lone Tree, Castle Pines and Parker. Or, to get access to two job centers (Colorado Springs and Denver, both within 45 minutes), head a little further south and check out Monument near where I live - 25 minutes from downtown COS, 40 minutes from the Denver tech center, about one hour from downtown Denver.

I'm here in LA this week at our folks in two of the nicer communities (Calabasas and Agoura Hills) in southern California. It is still crowded. Pretty, leafy, well heeled, but crowded and expensive. In Colorado, with the exception of warm winter weather, I get nearly the same for one third the cost. And less traffic too.

[calidude]

no LA isnt going down the toilet. LA rules i was born and raised in the city of Angels and i still love it as much as ive always had. It may be a little dirty and have crime but what other cities dont if u want somewhere that is hell go to 6 mile and john r road in detroit now that it going down the toilet

[monti]

Detroit isn't going down the toilet - it IS a toilet - that's all you've gotta do to shut the LA haters up - tell them to move to Detroit (hey, it IS cheaper, right? NOthing could be worse than LA right?!?)

Wrong. People always underestimate the ****tiness of the midwest.

[matt345]

Originally Posted by monti

Detroit isn't going down the toilet - it IS a toilet - that's all you've gotta do to shut the LA haters up - tell them to move to Detroit (hey, it IS cheaper, right? NOthing could be worse than LA right?!?)

Wrong. People always underestimate the ****tiness of the midwest.

Or try Baltimore, where I'm from. Good god, we have probably the highest murder rate in the country right now - but, like Detroit, it's also cheaper than LA so it must be better!

[AVMan]

More proof LA is going down the toilet:

Sign Up (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-crime18jul18,1,5476254.story?coll=la-headlines-california - broken link)

Homicide rates decline in the Southland
LAPD notes a 22% drop and credits an increase in the number of officers on the streets.
By Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein, Times Staff Writers
July 18, 2007

Southern California law enforcement officials, who started the year fearing a surge in gang crime, have reached midyear with a major drop in homicides, according to crime statistics released Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, there have been 201 homicides this year in the city of Los Angeles, 56 fewer than at the same time in 2006, a 22% drop.

Oh no. Whatever shall we do?

[monti]

Originally Posted by matt345

Or try Baltimore, where I'm from. Good god, we have probably the highest murder rate in the country right now - but, like Detroit, it's also cheaper than LA so it must be better!

I visited Maryland for a week - you guys have some nice looking "rural" locations. Took quite a few pics, and location scouted.

However, anyplace that has a town named Boring... well, it's got to live up to it's name (and Maryland/Baltimore/etc. didn't dissapoint)

Just like here in Minnesota there is a town named Hell

Hell aint warm, remember that next time you guys are stuck in traffic out on the 101 - lucky for me I was given a full scholarship for film to CalArts so I'm gettin out of this land of 10,000 cess pools

[Charles]

Originally Posted by AVMan

More proof LA is going down the toilet:

Sign Up (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-crime18jul18,1,5476254.story?coll=la-headlines-california - broken link)

Homicide rates decline in the Southland
LAPD notes a 22% drop and credits an increase in the number of officers on the streets.
By Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein, Times Staff Writers
July 18, 2007

To get most news items from the LA Times (like the one above), NY Times, Wash Post, Chic Tribune, etc. you need to register. If you don't want to provide all your personal information, go to

Bugmenot.com - login with these free web passwords to bypass compulsory registration

and get anonymous logins and passwords.

[RobE]

Anymore, I just wonder if America's major cities are largely for losers.

Tale the black community, for example: as blacks become more integrated into the middle class, they are also leaving for suburbia in order to flee the crime and crush of major urban areas. That means that blacks with professional skills or entrepeneurial impulses who otherwise were forced to stay due to segregation are now gone and this has hollowed out the culture of the black community so that all you have left are the gang bangers, single mothers, drug addicts and the unemployable who just float along according to what is in front of their own noses.

Into that vacuum came illegal aliens with their gangs, their illiteracy and, let's face it, education isn't exactly a big part of regular hispanic culture (you tend to see more of an education orientation in the upper classes in Mexico), especially with regard to how women are raised. So there is little hispanics are contributing intellectually or economically to L.A. other than being day workers, hamburger flippers or political hustlers (Mike Hernandez, Gloria Molina, Villaraigosa, etc). Those that aren't working menially are gang banging and you see a lot of second and third generation hispanic gang members who are now taking over what has been black turf that is now being moved to Palmdale and environs thanks to tearing down housing projects and availability of section eight opportunities in the desert.

The Korean immigrants, if they have not been shot and killed by local gang members (last I heard, about five dozen Korean store employees had been shot and either wounded or killed by black gangsters in holdups over the years; somebody please tell the racist Korean hating Maxine Waters that), eventually move to Orange County once they get their kids through college and have saved enough to get out of running mom and pop groceries in the hood.

The gay community isn't really in L.A. proper, but in Hollywood,. Silverlake, the West Side, etc. but still carries a lot of economic and political clout in L.A. due to not being openly welcomed in conservative bastions such as OC or Riverside plus the proximity of creative outlets such as tv and film production. They are winners economically, but not socially, unfortunately.

Onetime white working class bastions in L.A. have seen whites who can afford it flee to the valley and OC while most wealthy whites have also fled to the OC or semi-protected colonies such as Malibu, Bel Air, Rancho Palos Verdes and even Orange County due to being fed up with the cime and the collection of boobs that run L.A. politics. So a lot of the whites that are left, at least the non gay ones, are there to either go to school (USC, UCLA, etc), get into showbiz or just party. The ones who went to school will leave, as will the partiers when they start to grow up The showbiz types will move to Beverly Hills, Laurel Canyon or Malibu once they make it.

So L.A. is a more and more a place to escape from, just like most large American cities, not spend all of your life in. And nobody has a plan to fix that state of affairs. Ironic that conservatives made such a big fuss over Terry Schiavo while whole major sections of the country are allowed to die without so much as a sorrowful shake of the head while liberals don't have the spine to go in and do the butt kicking that is necessary to clean these places up and put them in working order because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

What a joke.

[StriderMatic]

Originally Posted by RobE

Anymore, I just wonder if America's major cities are largely for losers.

Tale the black community, for example: as blacks become more integrated into the middle class, they are also leaving for suburbia in order to flee the crime and crush of major urban areas. That means that blacks with professional skills or entrepeneurial impulses who otherwise were forced to stay due to segregation are now gone and this has hollowed out the culture of the black community so that all you have left are the gang bangers, single mothers, drug addicts and the unemployable who just float along according to what is in front of their own noses..

Black people left for suburbia during the 60's and 70's. That is why most Black people in the country today grow up in intergrated areas. What's happening right now is their children (those part of the hip-hop generation) are becoming adults, and some of them aspire to move INTO the hood because unfortunately popular culture spent more time raising them than their own parents, and are going there to parttake in a backwards social situation rather than try to improve it.

Nowadays 'The Black Community' doesn't mean much as it pertains to geography, but more of a state of mind because people live spread out. However, if one wants to look at a geographical location for where there are mostly Black people living, I wish people would think of all the wealthy Black neighborhoods across the U.S. before they think of the poor and crime-infested ones. But what can ya do.