Little bit of heaven
Ninety-four point seven
KMET
Tweedle-dee!
I’ll agree with what Bearflag70 said (I grew up on the other side of the grade from him). If I had to live up there again, I wouldn’t live in Oxnard. I’d aim either for Ventura, TO or Simi. Maybe Camarillo.
The TO Civic Arts Plaza gets some interesting events; my parents have tickets to their “Distinguished Speakers” series and have been rather impressed with who they’ve gotten to see. The whale watching and cruising to the Channel Islands also is good; boats go out of Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme.
The weather is temperate: it’s usually about ten degrees cooler than in LA, and you don’t get the smog. People are nice and friendly, as well, but you’re starting to see more people fleeing LA, as well as a handful who try to make the commute.
Well, we all pronounced it Hyoo-enema, but then we were in the military and weren’t too fond of the area. There is a large Seabee base in Hueneme, and another one (Naval Air Station) in Pt. Mugu (as in “Mr.”). Or there was 20 years ago. If I had my druthers, I’d live up Ventura way or in Ojai.
My spanish is pretty rusty, but I have waaay too many hispanic cousins & stepkids to lose it entirely, or be uptight about cultural variations, so that’s cool for me.
Ooh – thanks for the tip! I’ll remember that!
That shouldn’t be a problem – I have 25 years experience of not crashing into flatlanders on mountain roads.
Port Hueneme & Ojai are easy, but how in the world do you pronounce Septav-whatever Boulevard?
Sepulveda? ‘se-PUHL-ve-da’.
Yes, indeed. If you don’t mind a bit of a commute (probably 30-45 minutes depending on traffic) you might consider taking a look at Ojai. I grew up there, and it’s a great place to live (as long as you’re not the type to want a lot of excitement). Beautiful, peaceful, artsy, quiet, with lots of nice places to walk, bike, and just go off and be by yourself. The bookstore Civil Guy mentioned is called Bart’s Corner, and it’s sort of an “open air” used bookstore, with all kinds of little nooks and crannies filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful books. They even have shelves full of cheap paperbacks that are actually on the outside of the store, so anybody can just wander by, pick one, and toss the money over the wall into the courtyard.
Ojai also has a famous jazz festival and tennis tournament (or at least they used to), the Krishnamurti Institute, the World University, and a lot of other funky-hippie kind of stuff. Even though I’m not really the hippie/granola/alternative religion type, I really enjoyed growing up in Ojai. The hippies are nice people. 
Thank you!
Ojai sounds like a place I will want to visit. In January. It’s hot and I’ve heard stories about the giant spiders <shudder>
Since I’m a devout cheapskate, we’ll be living in a company apartment, at least for a year or so. Both units are (supposedly) “very nice” – ocean view, security features, quiet neighborhood, etc. – according to the big boss’s wife (who was there once five years ago). One is in Oxnard, one is in Ventura, and nobody has yet made a decision on which one we’ll get. :eek:
I found a link to the Ventura County Star newspaper. Apparently, the Cowboys are moving their training camp, the food writer is less articulate than I am, and RV’s parked on the street infuriate the locals.
I did my student teaching in Oxnard as well as my first teaching assignment. As far as that area of Ventura county, it’s decidedly lower-income and has a different share of issues than, say, Thousand Oaks.
Now, this is based on experiences that are coming up on 10 years old (and nearly entirely from the perspective as a teacher working in the area), so keep that in mind…but at the time, schools were year-round and had the most migrant population I’ve ever experienced in all of my teaching. This is certainly attributed to the large numbers of migrant workers who come to work in the fields (agriculture is a huge business in Oxnard). Kids would come in and out of my first grade class, and sadly were often completely overwhelmed. They were wonderful children, but they came and went with the seasons and it made learning (and teaching, for that matter) exceptionally difficult. IIRC, Oxnard also had the lowest salary range of any district in the county at the time. The teachers were pissed about this, and the following year (after I’d moved about an hour away), I heard they were on the verge of striking.
Sorry, that’s a bunch of negative stuff…let me shift to the positive.
I live in the San Gabriel Valley, which is pavement jungle and ridiculously overcrowded. The air quality sucks ass–or perhaps is like something sucked out of an ass–and there is next to no open space. The advantages here are salary and access; we’re a mere 30min from L.A., and there is certainly tons of stuff to do. But I would prefer a place like Oxnard or Camarillo, where the air is clean and there is still actually more than a a few quarter acres here and there of open space.
It’s beautiful land and sooooo much greener out there…enjoy it!
Giant spiders? I lived in Ojai for 18 years and never saw a giant spider…
…well…I guess if you count the long lines of tarantulas that sometimes cross the roads, then I guess I have. But you have to kind of go looking for them–they’re not exactly parading across Main Street or anything.
And they’re really slow. Easy to avoid.
What Bearflag70 said, word for word. Oxnard used to have kind of a bad reputation but there are really nice areas there these days. The weather is a bit better (in terms of less fog/more sun) than Ventura, and it’s a short drive down the coast to some of the best beaches in California. One of the best things about Ventura County in general is that there is still so much farmland. It’s built up a lot over the last 50 years (duh), but there are still fields of strawberries and citrus orchards. It’s VERY different from the Los Angeles area.
Bearflag, I grew up in Camarillo too, in the late 50’s - 60’s. Great place - I’d love to move back someday.
The Fish Report - With a Beat!!!
Yeah, that would be them. A whole convoy of tarantulas <double shudder. maybe triple> could quite possibly inspire teleportation on my part, no matter how slow they may be. Yes, I am just a wee bit hysterical about anything with more than 4 legs, why do you ask?
The bookstore sounds divine. I’m not sure I’ll make it to January before visiting – maybe not even all the way to June 
Thank you to everyone for responding! You’ve helped ease my mind a little, and pique my curiosity & sense of adventure, about this relocation. What else do I need to know?
Buena High (Ventura) grad here.
Oxnard has the rep of being the land of the gangbanger, at least from Wonderbread Ventura. From what I remember, don’t get out and flash money in Colonia, if you want to keep it and your nuts in one piece. OTOH, it has the big mall, (although Ventura is in a race on that one, I’m so un-mall that I don’t know who’s winning). I think it’s like a lot of other towns: find the right neighborhood and you’re OK. I like the smaller town feel in Ventura Co, but you can hurt for the bigger events. U2 will never play there, but Kansas might play the county fair. It’s a 2 hour drive to a Dodger game.
Yeah, Ojai has the rep of being the movie-star refuge. “Oh, over on that hill is Barbara Streisand’s third home”. It’s within a morning’s reach of Los Angeles, but has secluded houses and areas zoned for horses.
I would really like to move back to Ventura County, but the slow-growth initiatives instituted to preserve the farmland for a while make the housing prices compete with Orange County for appreciation. It’s insane. When my parents have to retire, I figure their 3k sq. ft house is their retirement investment, in a deadend Ventura neighborhood. They built it for about 200K, and they’ll probably sell it 30 years later for 1.4 mill, I’d guess. I know that a few years ago they got a drive-by estimate of 750+K. Then they can get a 2 BD house in some forsaken town and live off the rest. Slow growth towns make good investments, if you can get in on the ground floor. I think we sold my grandparents’ house for 8 times the purchase price about 40 years later, which outpaces inflation a good bit.
I grew up in Oxnard, graduated from Hueneme High (or as we called it “Who Needs Me High”) and swore I’d never move back (which I did, twice) Quite a bit of crime (comparitively speaking), but there are still some nice areas of the city. I would recommend living in the following areas if you’re going to move there:
Oxnard’s beach areas - Silver Strand, Hollywood Beach, Oxnard Shores
The area by the River Ridge golf course
Ventura (pretty much anywhere except Ventura Ave., which is definitely “the ghetto”)
Camarillo - would recommend this over all other alternatives
Moorpark
Simi Valley
Newbury Park/Thousand Oaks - over the grade from the Oxnard Plain
There’s some fantastic things in that area that make it worthwhile, but if you’re looking to buy a house, be prepared for sticker shock (a 3 BR, 2 BA 1200SF tract home in Simi Valley is going for $550K).
Some events that I enjoy in the area - the Strawberry Festival, Pt. Mugu Airshow, SeaBee Days, the Art Walk on Main Street in Ventura, Concerts in the Park in Camarillo, Conejo Valley Days in Thousand Oaks, plus numerous happenings at the fairgrounds/Seaside Park.
Attractions within a short drive include all the LA theme/amusement parks, Universal Studios, Staples Center (home of the Lakers, Clippers & the NHL Kings), Santa Barbara, Solvang (an awesome little Danish community), the missions in Santa Barbara/Santa Ynez/Santa Maria, Pea Soup Anderson’s in Buellton, the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, plus Thousand Oaks Civic Center hosts quite a few events.
Plus, Vegas is only 5 hours by road, 1 hour by air from Santa Barbara.
Some good community colleges (I got my AA from Ventura College, but Oxnard and Moorpark Colleges are also good), and they finally started a CalState school in the area (Cal State Channel Islands - CSUCI, also known as C-Sucky, built on the grounds of the former Camarillo State Hospital, a mental institution - can anyone say ghosts?). Cal Lutheran is in Thousand Oaks, and is an incredible school.
The Ojai region constitutes one of the better winemaking appelations in California, as does the Santa Ynez Valley that was already mentioned. If you saw the move “Sideways”, the SYV is where they went.
Not everything southeast of Oxnard is the pits. Once you hit the coast, the drive along PCH to Malibu and Santa Monica is beautiful
I worked at NAS Pt. Mugu for a couple years. I never really explored the town of Oxnard much, but the area is nice if you don’t mind the growth of sprawling suburbia. The weather and the beaches are really nice though, and you’ll still get quite a few days over 80 - but they’ll be beautiful!
Traffic on the 101 is surprisingly bad for a place so far out of LA. The PCH is gorgeous though.
Well, I’m finally here (Oxnard, CA). Yippee. I’m sure you’re all breathless with joy at my return to The Dope, and waiting to hear every detail of my culture shock.
The biggest problem was not the 18 hour drive through the least attractive part of the US, dealing with my parents, my mother-in-law, nor even my darling midlife-career-change-making-him-batshit-crazy during moving and graduation husband, but surviving without lurking here for 3 whole horrific weeks, but I’m FINALLY back online (despite all the idiot lying poopyheads at a certain surly national telecommunications company that provides decent cell-phone service but crappy everything else and whose name starts with a V).
We got the Company Apartment, which is very nice. Very beige, but very nice. I can’t see the ocean, but it is more like a town house (two-story, teeny little fenced back yard, only one shared wall) than what I thought an apartment would be. I suspect I’m not in a wonderful neighborhood (security system, rent-a-cop patrols the parking lot 24/7, phone number for reporting “tagging” – which I assume is the new word for graffiti – in the new resident handbook, lots of flowers and trees in between the buildings), but maybe I’m just such a hick that it seems very nice to me. I haven’t seen any litter, or unconscious humans in a gutter, the radio & wheels are still on my car, and my new human neighbors are quieter than my old cow neighbors.
To use a VERY broad brush, based on all of 8 days experience in the area, I offer my biased opinion:
There is a LOT of oxygen down here.
California Spanish sounds different from Colorado/New Mexico Spanish. Not a huge difference, but enough to make me have to think about it, even in context.
Seagulls are entertaining, but noisy, rats-with-wings.
The Invigorating Ocean Breeze doesn’t smell as lovely as one might expect.
People in Ventura (on the basis of 15-20 minutes in one grocery store) are as pale as I am, but are much ruder.
Seagull poop is abundant and nasty.
The Invigorating Ocean Breeze also makes stuff rust really, really fast.
People in Oxnard (on the basis of 15-20 minutes in another grocery store) come in wide variety of skin tones , and are polite & even friendly.
The southern part of the Gold Coast has no plants that I am allergic to that are blooming right now.
Elderly women (on the basis of 30-40 minutes in two grocery stores), need to spend less time contemplating the damn selection, or at least get the hell outta my way.
I don’t understand why everyone hates California drivers. So far, they’ve been very polite and considerate – or they’re wary of a short little woman in a big-ass crew cab dually with Montana plates. Whatever. It works for me.
Fresh picked strawberries are REALLY yummy, and Oxnard has a whole lovely weekend festival devoted to them.
Pasilla peppers are even better, but they don’t have a celebration.
Trader Joe’s is very shiny.
Eating 47 bazillion fresh picked strawberries during the Strawberry Festival is more effective than metamucil.
One little container of Florida Orange Juice “from concentrate” is $4.50. 10 pounds of fresh, local oranges are two bucks. I need a juicer.
Those twisty trees are beyond cool.
Sales tax sucks.
All in all, I think I like it here.
Welcome to the 805!
I kept trying to pay sales tax in Montana. “What do you mean this product, clearly labeled $2.99, doesn’t cost $3.25? I don’t understand… This is some kind of scam, isn’t it?”
Last time I was in L.A. I adored California drivers. They’re insane, but if you signal a lane change, a car length space will open up for you. I assume not changing lanes at that point would result in gunshots, but that’s ok - in Denver, if you signal a lane change, everyone will close any gaps, flip you off, and try to run you off the road. (If anyone plans on visiting Denver, don’t signal until AFTER you’ve started changing lanes)
I like saying “Oxnard”.
I only go to Oxnard anymore to get some Popeye’s red-beans and rice. Corner of Gonzales and Ventura Rd - you may want to give it a try.
I’d recommend a trip up to Santa Barbara, but it hardly seems worth it…there’s no Popeye’s up here.