When was the "heyday" of moving to Los Angeles? (Santa Monica: home, camping)

[John23]

I don't remember much traffic, at least compared to now.

-In Santa Monica, I use to go trick or treating at Santa Monica Place. When I think of the 80's there...I think of the old, dying promenade. The All American Burger on wilshire, that place was pretty popular. More mom and pop stores....then with the water garden, google, yahoo. The traffic must be 3x times as bad now.

The Dodgers were great then, I think they represented LA well. They had a well balanced team, '82-90, with Hershiser, Scioscia, Fernando. The Lakers with showtime. The Rams and Raiders before they moved. The Gretzky trade. I think all the teams represented LA well.

[GoodbyeCalifornia]

From a historical perspective, I would say the heyday of moving to Los Angeles and Southern California began just after the end of World War II and continued on through the 70's. The 50's and 60's were such a boom time for L.A. and So Cal, so I would think the majority of new arrivals showed up during that era.

As a teenager in Los Angeles during the 1980's, I think that was really the last gasp of the good times for the city. There was traffic, but it wasn't a chore to get from place to place as it is now. People could afford to buy homes. It just seemed to be a much more livable place. Everything changed in the 90's.

Today...forget it. You couldn't pay me to live in Los Angeles again. But judging by all the posts about people wanting to move there, makes me think that perhaps the "heyday" of moving to Los Angeles is now.

[CESpeed]

I agree. I think that people who grew up here when GoodBye and I did feel that L.A. is no longer a good place to live. I think that the people who want to move here now are moving here because of the idea of what L.A. is suppose to be and what it used to be rather than what it is today. And they are being influenced by the greed machine that L.A. has become. I'm getting the impression that people think that by moving here they automatically become rich. They have a rude awakening coming.

[Charles]

Here are year by year population data for Los Angeles County. I saw some funny jumps at the beginning of each decade in the 19th century....may be the way the census data were integrated or tabulated....but I think most of us are interested in the population changes in the mid to late 20th century so I built a chart in Excel.

Table 2. Population Growth by Single Year (http://www.urbanedpartnership.org/target/science/population/table.html - broken link)

[CamaroGuy]

The 80s were definately the last glorious decade for Los Angeles. I've lived here all my life so I can tell you firsthand. Traffic was only bad between the hours of 4:30 and 6:30. Nowadays its bad between 2:30 and 7:30.

I remember my mom telling me when she first moved here in 1953 that Los Angeles felt like a paradise then. Its such a crying shame what's happened to not just Los Angeles but most of Southern California the past 18 years.:-(

[_redbird_]

My parents moved to L.A. during the late 1950's as part of the Indian Relocation program. There used to be a very large and thriving Indian population in L.A. back in the 60's, not sure how many have left. My high school Bell G@rdens had the most Indian students *over a 100 than any other high school in L.A. county back in the 70's.

We actually lived in south L.A. to begin with, but kept moving east as the neighborhoods changed. Finally by the time they retired, we lived way out in the Inland Empire. I still remember when I was about 4 years old, my mom used to take me on the bus to shop in Huntington Park in the early 1960's.

I tell people L.A. was a great place to grow up. We would ditch school and go to the beach or drive to Hollyweird or Griffith Park Observatory and hike to the Hollyweird sign. It was great, life was good, and we were happy.

[Prince of Lombards]

Originally Posted by John23

I don't remember much traffic, at least compared to now.

-In Santa Monica, I use to go trick or treating at Santa Monica Place. When I think of the 80's there...I think of the old, dying promenade. The All American Burger on wilshire, that place was pretty popular. More mom and pop stores....then with the water garden, google, yahoo. The traffic must be 3x times as bad now.

The Dodgers were great then, I think they represented LA well. They had a well balanced team, '82-90, with Hershiser, Scioscia, Fernando. The Lakers with showtime. The Rams and Raiders before they moved. The Gretzky trade. I think all the teams represented LA well.

Remember the jukebox at All American Burger? I once played Here I Go Again by Whitesnake. Yep.

[CESpeed]

My friends and I used to crawl all over Westwood and Hollywood in the late 1980's. It was so much fun. We couldn't go a block without seeing someone we knew. And we used to always miss curfew because it would take the bus a half hour or longer to crawl from Highland to Vine. Sometimes the bus driver would play the radio while we made our way down Hollywood Blvd. It was so much fun!!

[Charles]

My buddy and I used to take the RTD buses from Canoga Park to Santa Monica Beach using transfers around 1975 or 1976. It was $0.40 for a ride a $.10 for a transfer (which we used three times). We would tear a dollar bill in half, scrunch up one half, and drop it in the fare box. The driver would think we dropped in a whole dollar, so he'd hand each of us a transfer (40 + 40 + 10 + 10).

We'd use the other half of the dollar to come home. Cheapskate 70s stoner kids.

[BRinSM]

I'm getting the vibe that the people who missed the LA of the 80s and earlier enjoyed it more then because it was more suburban in nature. Unfortunately, LA cannot offer this lifestyle anymore, but that is the downside of living in a dynamic city. Even though I never had a chance to appreciate those days in LA (I grew up behind the orange curtain), I can respect the way LA used to be. However, once a city fails to remain dynamic, it becomes static and opportunities and jobs for the residents flee the city. Look at Detroit as an example of this. LA is far from perfect, but I'd say its doing much better than Detroit.