Young guy moving to Irvine (maybe!) (Los Angeles, San Francisco: crime rates, homes, living in)

[motor_man_matt]

Hello,

Thought I would post up a thread here to see if anyone could give me a good, honest, insight into my potential life.

I'm a 22y/o english guy currently living in England (Essex - near London). I'm a design engineer specialising in race cars (Formula one etc..) and have a fair bit of experience, especially considering my age. As a result, I have recently been offered a very good, and extremely interesting, job at a company based in Irvine, CA. Accepting the job is a no brainer, its pretty much exactly what I want to be doing. What I now have a slight question mark about is moving to and living in California...

If I were to believe all the dodgy teen drama we get over here then it looks like my dream environment, however I'm a bit more of a realist. I guess there really is plenty of stuff for a young guy to do and easy enough to meet new people etc (I will know no-one when I first come over). But I think my biggest reservation is all the talk of gang violence, high crime rates etc that seems to come into any discussion about CA.

Where I'm from the worst thing we really get is 'Chavs'. Tend to be reasonably harmless and if you keep out the dodgy areas then you tend not to get any bother. With the situation in CA, is it simply a case of keeping out the way and you'll be fine or does it seem to be a bit more random than that...? Is it really something I should be worrying about at all?

Any advice/stories/encouragement people could offer me would be great. Its strange, when I initially applied for the job the reason was to mainly get away from england and experience the US, and now after much more research that seems to be the thing putting doubt in my mind...

Thanks!
Matt

[missionhome]

Orange County has some of the safest cities in the ENTIRE United States for their population size. California has gang problems [as does most of the USA's urban areas now], but is doesn't effect many nice communities. Irvine for example is regarded as "the safest large city in the country," usually with not one single murder in a city of 200,000 people. Many other areas like Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda, Newport Beach, Dana Point, Mission Viejo, etc.... are very very safe. If your budget only allows you to live in bad areas of communities like Anaheim, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Buena Park, La Habra, Fullerton, etc... then it is a different story. Nonetheless, I would say nothing in Orange County matches the violence in other cities like Los Angeles [adjacent neighbor/metro anchor], Oakland, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Baltimore, etc.... which have areas 10 times worse than Orange County's worst areas.

As a young person, you will most likely want to live near the beach. Orange County is largely suburban and filled with families in the more inland suburban areas. Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, etc... have some bars and clubs for people your age. Irvine has some popular places like the Irvine Spectrum for people your age as well, but the city doesn't really have much interesting about it. Flat, safe, everything matches (tan homes, tan shopping malls, etc...), etc...


What is your budget????

[Charles]

Originally Posted by motor_man_matt

Is it really something I should be worrying about at all?

What is your housing budget?

The biggest concerns you may have are cost of housing and traffic.

Most people would agree that Irvine is pretty darn safe and not "dodgy" (whatever that means).

In fact, most people in Irvine dress just like this

[TurcoLoco]

Matt my advice to you would be to not speak any word of English when you leave the airport as local gangs primarily target those with funny accents!

Just kidding mate, OC is arguably one of the better parts of CA and believe me, even though there is crime there much like the rest of the country and even the world, the crime most people talk about is a bit exaggerated imho. Irvine and anything south of Irvine is extremely safe and clean. Even though some people like to believe CA or at least So Cal is liberal, it is mostly conservative. Most of the crime, tough not experience at a significant level, occurs in the shady parts of the north OC, to be more specific, parts of Anaheim, Santa Ana, Orange, Garden Grove and even Westminster. You can run into riff raff in Huntington Beach or even in Lake Forest but for the most part it is a relatively safe, good area. I seriously doubt you would ever wonder into or have any need to go to those undesirable parts.

Funny how most everyone is concerned with the so-called crime in Orange County and talk about it on the forums, I lived there almost 16 years, not a single incident and I have been all over. Worry about the your actions and the friends you make more than what is going around you and you should be fine, honestly. Don't worry about the plastic people or wannabes cause they even exist in Arizona. Learn to ignore them or at least do not let those types affect you in anyway. Life is to short to analyze everyone and worry about trivial things of that nature.

Good Luck with your job and I think you will like and enjoy OC.

@Charles: Man, that really isn't a good picture of me so please stop posting it on the Internet!

~TL

PS. I think only about .5% of the population in OC live their lives in a similar fashion to the ones in related TV shows...

[AKgirlinCA]

listen to missionhome....

I agree that you should try to live closer to the beach....Irvine is pretty boring

[motor_man_matt]

Thanks for the advice everyone - pretty sure I'm worrying about nothing!

I've set my upper housing budget as $2k/month - I would certainly like to live as close to the beach as possible and I believe this budget should allow this.

I've decided to take a trip over in the next couple of weeks to have a look around for myself, I think better knowing the various areas would be a benefit before deciding to live in any of them!

Thanks for the advice so far, all is much appreciated.

Charles - 'Dodgy' means something is a bit risky/hazardous - didn't realise that was a particularly british word!