Ok but LA sucks for reasons that have nothing to do with what I want from a city and everything to do with what everyone wants from a city: walkability, affordability, good roads/traffic and infrastructure, good vibes, authenticity, public transit, and people who don't suck.
Even people who are from LA and say "we have all that and I love LA" only mean "I love my neighborhood in LA, which is a 90 minute drive from the 7 other malignancies of highway sprawl that also call themselves LA."
I had to temporarily live in LA for three months during which time I came to understand that LA is really a terribly place for humans to live. Yes LA "has everything" but it is all a 40 minute drive from wherever you are one-way. People in LA think driving 90 minutes round trip to go out for dinner is normal behavior because the city has so twisted their concept of "normal"
LA has very few places that are "pretty" surrounded by a hundred miles of sunbaked 1980's low-rise stucco squalor sandwiched between freeways. It's ugly, inconvenient and fully self-absorbed
So it’s city prices but rural Ohio transit times? Yeah I’ll stick with my 15 minute drive
But our food though, amirite?
So if someone says "I Love LA" you want them to mean that they love every single neighborhood in LA? That seems like too high a bar for any city. Agreed about walkability and traffic, though.
I mean more that it's crazy to call them "neighborhoods" when any two have nothing in common and are completely inaccessible to each other unless you have your own car and get on the highway for an hour.
And when that's the case, how does one even say they like "LA" (as in the whole city) when you're more likely to travel out of state from Long Beach than to Westwood.
And poor air quality.
My inlaws live near LA, and they wanted us to move there. I looked at everything you mentioned and just said nope.
My area is better in almost every way except weather, and honestly, I don't mind the weather. LA sucks, I really don't know why so many talk it up...
Hate LA but the people there are very friendly and charming
Thanks!
Transplants suck everywhere, but that doesn't mean LA isn't a complete dumpster fire.
Elll-aeegghhh...
I used to hear a lot of transplants complain about my city too. Now they're only hanging on by their fingernails in our housing market, they don't.
It is somewhat a matter of internal colonialism for so much culture to be centralized in California
Ironic use of that term, internal colonialism, given my LA neighborhood has a flourishing Indian and Vietnamese community, culture and all.
"Transplants" in quite a different way than the meme pokes fun of, though! (And they certainly don't complain about LA and their food is awesome).
We are better off than the UK at least, where everything is based on London. Media is centered around LA and New York with Memphis and Nashville as secondary music hubs. California is just a big state with a ton of people who live there.
inorite all these colonists invading california bringing all their culture with them
