Vegas is a shithole. Don’t come here, unless you dream of spending your off time in smoke-filled bars or casinos.
You guys are all doing a terrible job. Except this:
The 405 made me cringe, but it can be avoidable if you stay off that side of town, which I generally do, but the DMV sealed it. The DMV in LA is simply, hands down, the worst thing ever. It’s just… ugh…
Hmm, Vegas isn’t bad. Not bad at all, and considering the countless quick trips I made over that way when I lived in LA, I don’t suppose the reverse would be too difficult.
Okay, so Vegas is a Plan B. No, wait. Plan C, since staying here is still my Plan A for now.
Another vote for NoCal - we Bay Area natives simply can’t abide by the fact that SoCal is even part of our state. Now hand me my Chardonnay while the hot tub warms up 
Where did you go to school in the Bay Area and what about it do you find basically meh?
After living in Chicago for almost 5 years, I don’t think I could ever move to a drive-everywhere city. So if for some reason I ever started thinking of LA, I would take the suggestion from another poster above and start thinking of SF instead.
I say GO! The Midwest doesn’t want you here anymore! Bah!
(There - now do you want to stay out of spite?)
I saw a documentary that said there’s a giant volcano under the La Brea Tar Pits.
You know, these “You have to drive everywhere in LA” arguments don’t exactly sway me as a) So? Don’t most people who don’t live in Manhattan drive cars?, b) it’s not even true, depending on where you live, and c) this is how the car-free mobility of where I live now, so meh.
You know, don’t tempt me. Six months ago, I’d have thought this could be a doable next move, but fortunately for me and New York, I’m a little tired of starting in new places again.
Stanford, terrible beaches, and the Bay Area is the only place I’ve ever been where I’ve found the suburbs to be more enjoyable than the city itself. People in SF are just absolutely insufferable. I wouldn’t mind the Peninsula again, or maybe Oakland.
Cool!
I live in Oakland, and I can see why you’d be turned off by San Franciscans’ attitudes, but the suburbs? I don’t know what suburbs you mean, but I personally avoid them like the plague out here. I can’t think of a single Bay Area suburb I’d want to spend any real time in.
Anyway, if you don’t really like L.A., Chicago or the Bay Area, I’m not sure what you’re looking for. Maybe New Orleans. Minneapolis?
Perhaps I’ve insulted Oakland by categorizing it as a suburb, but I think of SF as the city, and everything else in the Bay Area as the burbs. I like some parts of the SF Bay Area, Oakland included, but I don’t like SF. The Midwest might not be my thing I’m starting to realize, having lived in Mpls and Chicago, and I don’t dislike LA. I think you’ve misread my posts to this thread.
I grew up in Redwood City so you were just down the street from me. If you ever ate at the Togo’s sandwich shop on University Way, you were at one of the shops I worked at during high school.
Was the neighborhood known as Whisky Gulch still there when you were there? It was a little bit of East Palo Alto on the “better” side of 101. It has since been totally razed and expensive houses put up. But back in the day, it was where Goldie’s BBQ was - best damn ribs I’ve ever eaten, and don’t get me started about the peach cobbler…
…sorry for the hijack. And yeah, I would vote for Oakland, San Jose or a few other larger non-SF-but-Bay Area cities before I would target LA. But we NoCal types are genetically required to not like SoCal…which is funny, because SoCal types as a rule are either indifferent or amused, at best, about NoCal’ers…
Yeah, Oakland definitely isn’t a suburb. We’ve got NFL and MLB teams and a Chinatown. That’s my definition of a city.
Maybe I misread your posts, but you seem at least ambivalent at the idea of moving back to L.A., despite all the things about it you enjoy. So “don’t really like” was, I guess, an overstatement.
I love living in NYC. I love it so much that when I walk down the street cartoon birds appear out of nowhere and whistle show tunes like a damned Disney movie. But the first year I was here? It was hard. It took the entirety of that first year to really develop real friendships and learn enough about the city to truly function here. After that first year I quit my job that required 3 hours of commuting each way and got a job much closer to home, met the man who later became my husband and adjusted to the weather which all made living here just about perfect.
Unless you just hate it you should really give Chicago a full year or two before you move again and see if it is right for you. Then you should really think about why you left LA before you move back. The only thing worse than hating where you live is hating where you live and discovering you were stupid enough to choose to live there twice.
I haven’t read the thread, but I’ll post anyway.
I was born in L.A. (Actually, L.A. County, near Long Beach; but near as dammit.) San Diego as a child, and the Mojave Desert (Antelope Valley) in Northern L.A. County as a teen. L.A. (City of) for 17 years as an adult.
L.A. was fun when I moved there. I had friends to hang out with, a pool to swim in, and a motorcycle to ride. Though I was on the West Side (just north of Culver City), it still got a bit warm – and what I didn’t have was an air conditioner. L.A. has a lot to offer, and there are many things I miss about it. But the noise, the crowding, and the boring weather was driving me nuts. Toward the end I hated the place. Now that I’ve been away for 8 years, I no longer do. I wouldn’t want to live there, but if I had the means I wouldn’t mind a Winter condo.
I’ve probably been to the Togo’s and if there was a Whiskey Gulch when I was there, I wasn’t aware of it. I may have been in it, but unaware. There weren’t really a lot of places to go out and drink there, Palo Alto residents were somewhat hostile toward the university students. There were a handful of what can generously be described as “college bars” in which the bartenders weren’t eying you suspiciously the entire evening, with you always being one barely perceptible misstep from being kicked out.
Ha! I didn’t even realize y’all hated us until I went up there and everyone was seething about a place they’d never even been to. I was like, “You guys care about us? Uh, okay.” It’s sort of like the Cal/Stanford rivalry. People at Cal get their hackles raised about it big time, while everyone at “Furd” is like, “Dude, whatever.”
Edit: pbbth, there we go, some sense. Maybe I should stick it out another year and really give the town a try. I was considering getting the hell out once my lease is up this summer, but the first year may not be giving me the fairest impression of what it’s like to really be here. Maybe I should spend the second year really getting to know the town better, since year one was entirely spent making friends. Plus there are some True Chicago Things I still need to do, like go to a Cubs game and become really racist.
Yep - PA’ers aren’t big on loud college types, but I am sure you put your time in a the O and the Goose.
Whiskey Gulch was the last block of University Ave right before 101.
and The Big Game - yep, exactly.
I’m not sure what you were missing when you went to L.A., but I will say that my first thoughts of Houston when I moved here were that it felt just like L.A, only much less expensive to live (and minus the mountains, movie stars, beaches, and wineries). It is currently 75 outside and snow is a once every 5-10 year event in the winter. Summers are a little different though…and from someone who also grew up/went to school near the Bay Area, the weather was a hard shock to get used to.
We are much friendlier than Californians, and are probably too close to Minnesotans for your liking. Still…one could do worse.
Consider San Diego. 2.5 Hours away from LA (well, on a good time of day), way better beaches, practically zero traffic, thirty minutes from Tijuana donkey shows, water everywhere, and the whole city proper is bikeable. You could do worse than San Diego.
Wuhuh?? I thought the whole point of moving up North was to get away from that crap? Is it like, socially acceptable up there? :eek:
Mind you, I know squat about LA but even I know there’s been a race-based tangle or two with the cops out there.
But enough about my ignorance. What I know about is change. It sucks. Even good change sucks. It takes a long time to feel like you belong somewhere and to find your way around the bad parts and into the good parts of any city, suburb, village or forest. Moving again won’t solve the problems that the last move didn’t solve. Especially if they are the problems from the move before that - the which you left LA to get away from in the first place.
So yes, I vote that you fight the urge to run and take a long hard look in the mirror. I’m not purporting to have the slightest idea of what you might find, only that the symptoms of a “something” are in your OP.
The best way I have found to feel “at home” is to make a contribution - and I don’t mean writing a check. Find some volunteer work. Pick the thing you hate most about where you are and give a few hours to some folks trying to make that bit better.
Don’t leave until you feel confident that you are leaving a place a little bit better than you found it.
Don’t know your tastes, but the music scene in Chicago stomps LA right into the ground. Yes, everybody goes to LA to try to get discovered, but wind up playing utterly evil “pay to play” shitholes like the Whiskey. And if any sort of buzz happens, the gig is going to be plagued with Industry assholes talking on their cells. And any big show is going to be scalped to people who make more in a year than the GNP of several small countries, utterly distorting the market. (NYC suffers from the same problems).
No, Chicago is the best city for music in the USA. Big enough to get all the artists (especially early in their careers when they are cheap to see) but not a center for the Biz. Couple that with an astonishing cultural diversity that brings in artists from all over the world, nothing can touch it.