SF vs. LA: "Level of Difficulty" in Day-to-day Life? (Los Angeles: 2014, to live in)

[04kL4nD]

LA is much easier in living day to day life. First of all, everything is lower priced for the same exact item in SF. 2nd, there are more services and retail outlets available. The variety and competition is fierce for the consumer in LA. Not so in SF where there are retail stores who have a monopoly because of little competition, driving up the prices. 3rd, there is too much queing in SF. Whether it be scarce parking spaces or lines out the door restaurants because they don't have enough competition, you have to wait everywhere you go in SF. The Muni system is terrible. People rudely pile into the busses like a russian food line in winter. People are crushed sardines in Muni. 4th, the weather is horrible in SF. It's so cold that people where heavy coats which causes them to have a mean defensive personality. In contrast, LA is warm and people work out more, keeping their bodies in shape and not becoming fat like SFers. In LA, you'll see people proud of showing their legs. You can actually wear a dress in LA. In SF, ladies wear these thick pea coats to cover up their fat. 6th, people are actually nice in LA. They are laid back and relaxed. Not so in SF where they're all frigid and have something to hate.

Please

People have to wait in line just as much in LA, they just do it in different ways: ie sitting in their cars on the freeway where it can take 2 hours to move 2 miles, or standing in line at a nightclub that's half empty when you get inside.

Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that people in SF are fat. It's consistently rated as one of the fittest cities in the nation.

[mayorhaggar]

My list of pros and cons of SF and nearby parts of the Bay Area compared against/with LA. And of course I'm conflating LA with the wider SoCal region, but not doing the same with SF.

SF/Bay Area Pros:

• Cooler weather than LA, rarely gets over 70. A/C definitely not needed since it only gets over 90 maybe one or two days a year.
• SF is a small city so even though Muni and BART can be flaky it doesn't take all that long to get from A to B on public transit.
• Public transit is at least there, and it's set up better than LA since the Bay Area has more of a regional job center in downtown SF--LA has a ton of job centers that are scattered all over the place which means its public transit system does a bad job of
• SF is way the hell more walkable, so you have a good alternative to using public transit, though mainly only if you live in the denser eastern parts of SF.
• Jobs pay better than LA, and you at least have the option of living somewhere like Oakland or San Mateo or whatever if you can't hack SF rent.
• You can get by without a car which saves a lot of money and makes up for the high rent.
• Lots of good cheap dining options, and waitservice is way better than LA where honestly places can be really lazy about serving you and getting your food to you quickly.
• Normal people from all walks of life use the public transit so you don't feel like a loser if you have to ride the train to work like you might in LA.
• Rush hour traffic can be bad but at least the Bay Area is smaller than the LA area so you don't need to drive as far from A to B.
• If you don't like the weather in SF then you can move to more temperate areas nearby.

SF/Bay Area Cons:

• SF is a filthy and smelly city despite being so expensive. Lots of homeless people, and they're generally pretty crazy.
• Using public transit every day can drive you to pull your hair out after a while, especially if you ride the ridiculously inconsistent Muni Metro trains. BART is better but filthy and overpriced for short trips.
• It's an older region so a lot of stuff is really decrepit, like a lot of apartment buildings and certain highways, and cities like Oakland have a ton of potholes. You'd think such a wealthy region could patch itself up better, but no.
• If you're like me, after a while the cool spring-through-autumn weather will drive you crazy. In SF especially the wind never stops blowing. When you first move there it will feel like the entire city is air-conditioned, but after a few years it might feel like a relentlessly cutting gale that never quite goes away.
• Winters SUCK...it's cold and clammy and usually it rains a lot, and it's icky cold rain.
• SF is really crowded which makes simple things like going to the grocery store or buying a t-shirt or taking Muni Metro to work a hassle. Anywhere else in the Bay Area is way less crowded though.
• Beaches pretty much suck unless you like bundling up in August to sit on the beach and think depressing thoughts. Also the fog is depressing in general too. There is a raw beauty to the beaches and the fog but it's really not conducive to (figuratively) chilling on the beach.

LA area pros:

• Weather is pretty much perfect if you are in the LA basin or otherwise fairly close to beaches. It gets warmer than SF but rarely gets really hot.
• Beaches! The water is still cold but at least you can lay out on the sand on occasional warm days by around March, and the water gets just about warm to swim in around June or so.
• Your dollar definitely goes further when it comes to rent, though not by a lot.
• The public transit isn't that great mainly because LA is so spread out and built around cars, but at least LA Metro is waaaay more proactive than Muni or BART about building new train lines and buying new trains and buses. But they are basically doing catch-up now with what the Bay Area was doing in the 70's.

LA area cons:

• You definitely need a car, especially for getting to work and doing basic stuff like grocery shopping, and the crappy rush hour traffic makes that a pain. Just having a car adds way more to your budget and pretty much cancels out any rent savings compared with the Bay Area.
• The public transit would be ok but it's basically built for a small urban area like SF, so it can take a really long time to get from A to B. Considering A and B tend to be way further apart in LA than in SF, that means way longer commute times. If you just need to get around a 5 mile radius and have a few good train or bus options to choose from then it would be doable to live without a car, but otherwise not really. Areas that tend to have jobs with somewhat decent wages like Century City and Irvine tend to be far from affordable places to live.
• Wages tend to be really low, and the local economy in LA is pretty bad compared with the Bay Area which at least has a currently busy tech sector.
• Lots of ugly industrial crap, especially around the South Bay/Long Beach area where there are a lot of oil refineries and oil wells, and the charming concrete hellscape of the LA River.
• Despite the warm weather, it can be chilly and breezy outside of summer if you're near the beach, especially at night.
• A lot of people tend to be pretty trashy and not take care of themselves. Rich people really stick out and don't blend in like in the Bay Area. The Bay Area has poverty too but LA has some huge areas that are really poor.

[uptown_urbanist]

Originally Posted by InternationalOrange

A friend of mine (who lives in West Hollywood) recently visited me here in SF, and commented that SF seems like a harder place to live than LA. She's lived in LA for about 10 years and feels like life there is pretty easy in the sense that there's a laid-back vibe, the ocean is warm enough to swim in, the weather's sunny 360 days a year, she goes surfing on weekends, rides her bike a lot, etc. She does work a full-time job during the week, but feels like in general the lifestyle in LA is low-key. She hasn't lived in SF before, only visited.

To each their own, but I feel like life in LA would be more difficult in the sense that it's car-centric, sprawling, there's heavy traffic, and the weather being sunny most every day would get to me (I dislike snow, but do like rain sometimes, as well as chillier weather).

What do you think? Which is "easier" to live in -- SF or LA?

We moved to SF after living in LA. For public transportation, LA was actually much easier. I found MUNI to be very slow, extremely crowded (and very tough to navigate with a small child), and the routes not very well set up to get across the city quickly and easily (if not going downtown). I think when people think about San Francisco's public transportation they're often thinking of BART, which does work very well, just not for most of those living within city limits. I know that to say this will get some people angry (everyone loves to bash LA), but I thought LA was much easier from the public transportation standpoint. For walking, SF gets the edge, although I think our walkscore in both cities was about equal. We had better walking access to nice playgrounds and parks in San Francisco. So... in LA I had an easier time getting around conveniently by public transportation (and riders were FAR more polite), but in SF it was easier to get around to more things by foot.

I think for those who prefer a more suburban environment, the Bay Area is probably better, as you have a lot more options that are located on BART.

More recently, I think LA has got to be much easier for newcomers, as it's next to impossible these days to find a rental in SF. If you already have a place and a job, it probably just depends on individual circumstances. And, much as I loved our former SF neighborhood, I had a tough time with the weather. I didn't like the summer heat in LA, but I realize that I need more sun in my life. (now live in the East Bay by the bay, where we get the best of both worlds -- doesn't get too hot, but we actually see the sun!)

For us, personally, LA was easier, but much of that was because LA was cheaper. If not for that, everything else is kind of a draw. LA is easier in some ways, SF in others.

[mayorhaggar]

Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist

I think when people think about San Francisco's public transportation they're often thinking of BART, which does work very well, just not for most of those living within city limits.

If you live somewhere like Glen Park or near the Mission BART stations and you work in downtown SF, you pretty much have the best public transit commute in the country, and one of the best commutes of any kind in the Bay Area. But yeah, if you live anywhere else in SF your commute will really suck because Muni is so flaky.

So... in LA I had an easier time getting around conveniently by public transportation (and riders were FAR more polite)

Mmmnnn...people in LA are completely clueless when it comes to riding public transit. They crowd around the doors of trains and even buses even when there's a ton of room further back from the doors, and they don't take a cue when everyone boarding and exiting has to physically shove past them. When a train arrives everyone getting on just shoves in instead of waiting for the people inside to move aside. Oh, and apparently nobody in LA has heard of headphones, and blare music on their crappy cell phone speakers for everyone to hear. How generous of them to share! People in the Bay Area are just way more streetwise about riding public transit, they don't clog doors, they let people get on and off properly and they don't blare music.

More recently, I think LA has got to be much easier for newcomers, as it's next to impossible these days to find a rental in SF.

Yeah, SF is great and all but it's so small that any time there's a rental bubble it gets completely ridiculous, and there's nothing else like it in the Bay Area, even in Oakland. LA can be lamely non-urban but at least it's such a huge and generally samey area that if you get priced out of one area you can go somewhere else not that far away and have a similar lifestyle.

[uptown_urbanist]

I think it's true that people in SF know how to ride the trains better than do people (overall) in LA; the pushing to get on before people got off drove me crazy in LA. (people weren't good about standing on the right, walking on the left, on escalators there, either, which is my big pet peeve) But bus riders in SF are far, far worse, at least that's been my experience. In LA, people entered the bus orderly, and people would actually stand up and give up their seat if someone getting on the bus needed it. In SF, people rush to beat others onto the bus, and few people wants to willingly offer their seat to an old person, pregnant lady, or even disabled person. SF's the rudest city I've ever encountered in that sense, at least as far as MUNI goes. BART is better. Maybe I'll amend my comments to say I consider LA buses to be much better than SF buses, but SF trains are much better than LA trains. (and yes, if you can find a place in a SF neighborhood with BART then you've got it made! I'd love a cable car commute too, throngs of tourists and all.)

[wooliemonster]

I thought the cable cars were run on tourist schedules, and with tourists prices -- just not practical as an actual commuting tool.

[uptown_urbanist]

Originally Posted by wooliemonster

I thought the cable cars were run on tourist schedules, and with tourists prices -- just not practical as an actual commuting tool.

We're now in the East Bay so I don't have a MUNI pass, but as of a few years ago, anyway, it was included in the basic MUNI monthly pass (assume it's the same today; think it's a way to still get the tourist dollars yet keep it accessible, cost-wise, to locals and commuters) . I've never commuted using one, but when my then-toddler son and I used to ride them during daytime hours there were often some locals using them, too. Mostly tourists, but lots of old ladies shopping in Chinatown, too. And I believe they run pretty late -- not all night, but past my typical bedtime (and start up early). No idea how many people actually commute using them on a regular basis, but they'd be a viable option, or at least a supplement, if you had a monthly pass and lived along a route.

[dalparadise]

Yes, a MUNI pass works on the cable cars. Generally speaking, there are more local commuters on the California line than there are on the others, because it goes from a largely residential area into the heart of the financial district, where tourists are not as likely to go.

[roadwarrior101]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

SF/Bay Area Pros:

• Cooler weather than LA, rarely gets over 70. A/C definitely not needed since it only gets over 90 maybe one or two days a year.

To each their own, but I wouldn't call that a pro. I lived in the city for 4 years and longed for warm sunny weather. It never felt like I got a summer and it made me miserable after a while. The coolness factor, which was compensating in my 20s got a little tired in my 30s. I moved down to the South Bay. While I miss some of the liveliness of SF (often go up on weekends), all in all, the weather just puts me in a much better mood.

[dalparadise]

Summer comes in late September in SF. There are days in October when it is truly hot. Plus, there are summertime temps within a half hour drive from The City in any direction from May-September. Climate in SF is definitely a plus.