I’m sorry Los Angeles, I have betrayed you. For 18 years the city of Los Angeles was my home. This is where I grew up, being bathed by the warm sun in Venice, fed mouth-watering barbecue in KTown, and serenaded to sleep by the stream of jets flying into LAX. But after a decade in the bay (5 years in San Francisco), I can’t even fathom going back to Los Angeles.
I guess part of the American experience is leaving your hometown for new adventures. The thing is though, it’s not like I’d be moving back to some small podunk town. I’d be moving back to Los Angeles, a global city that is the world’s entertainment capital filled with beautiful beaches and fantastic food.
But it’s hard for me to imagine an adult life there. Growing up, I remember feeling stuck at home in the suburbs by the airport. Going anywhere interesting required getting into a car, heading out on the 405 freeway, and preparing for a nasty parking situation. After living in a (much more) walkable city, I can’t imagine spending my life stuck in traffic.
But I’ve come to the realization, can I truly judge LA? While I did spend most of my life there, I never really experienced what it is like to be an adult in Los Angeles. I’ve never experienced the nightlife, bar scene, or culture of the city as a twenty-something. And while I do have some misgivings about the city, I also have a soft spot for LA: the beaches, the weather, and the prevalent Mexican-American culture.
I didn’t want to completely write off LA; maybe as an adult, it’s a totally different experience. Do the things I love about LA make up for the traffic and sprawl? Are there things that I never experienced as a kid that make LA worth it? I decided to speak with a few friends who experienced adult lives in Los Angeles but also in other big cities (San Francisco, New York City). What’s so great about LA?
For starters, diversity. Especially for my friends who lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles can feel much more diverse. My friend Oscar noted that Los Angeles has a much richer Latino community, something that I find myself missing in San Francisco. Diversity isn’t reflected just by race or culture, but also by occupations and lifestyles. A friend of mine who recently moved from SF to LA noted that he felt that more “normal people” lived in the city, meaning not just people looking to climb the tech career ladder. Los Angeles has a rich arts scene, stretching beyond film to music and video games. With several major universities, you have many folks pursuing careers in medicine, law, and more. Beyond that, Los Angeles feels like a place much better suited to raising kids than San Francisco or New York.
This diversity is also reflected in the incredible cuisines found in the city. My friends called out food as a highlight of Los Angeles. From homey Mexican and Vietnamese restaurants to Michelin-starred Japanese and French joints, Los Angeles has a plethora of options to choose from. Los Angeles has an exciting coffee culture, with many options to satisfy your palette. Beyond food, there’s just a huge number of options for things to do and see in the city. The beach, incredible amusement parks, sightseeing, and exploring neighborhoods like Little Tokyo, Venice, Beverly Hills, and more. It’s hard to be bored in Los Angeles.
The weather was something my friends called out, and I couldn’t agree more. Most of the year, Los Angeles is filled with sunny skies and barely a rainy day. Jackets are optional, and snow is never an option. For people who would rather not be bogged down by umbrellas or snowboots, it’s hard to beat Los Angeles. But if you’re looking for something else, the chilly alpine quiet of Lake Arrowhead or the desert sun of Las Vegas are not too far away.
Los Angeles is a massive city, and all the people living there help contribute to its vibrant culture, diversity, and sheer amount of activities to do. But according to many of my friends, the city's size also contributes to what they hate about it.
The issue isn’t about the number of people, it’s about how painful it is to get around. My friends called out the need for a car being a sore spot, and this was what I remembered growing up. Needing to plan for parking and dealing with traffic were frustrations that I remembered, and ones that bogged down my friends’ adult lives. They wished for better public transit, more connected neighborhoods, and more walkable spaces. While every neighborhood is a gem, it’s better to spend an entire day in just one than deal with the pain of getting around.
Additionally, while diversity was called out as a benefit, in comparison to other cities my friends noted that Los Angeles still has room for improvement. For one, people can be fairly cliquey in the city. This could be due to how hard it can be to even see people, on account of the sprawl and traffic. But one friend called out that Los Angeles has shallow networking culture, mostly driven by the entertainment business. It can feel like a different flavor of the type of shallow networking seen in career-driven Silicon Valley. This culture can lead to some difficulty in making new friends.
Los Angeles is also very segregated. Compared to New York City, where everyone rides the subway, a friend called out that in LA people aren’t very integrated. The layout and infrastructure of the city don’t help, since people have few opportunities to cross paths on the street and spend most of their time on the freeway. Los Angeles can feel less like a melting pot and more like a fruit salad.
After listening to my friends and learning about what they liked and disliked about Los Angeles, I was disappointed. There was a part of me hoping to learn about some new redeeming quality about the city, something that could convince me to move back. But it seems as though the experiences I had growing up were pretty representative of adult life, even though I was under 21.
And that makes me sad. The things that make LA great are truly amazing: weather, food, people, diversity, and culture. In an ideal world, Los Angeles would be another world-class city like London or Tokyo. But because of how painful traffic is, and how atrocious it is to get around without a car, the city can feel like a barren desert, with a few oases of fun in between. Someone on Twitter described LA as “shitty heaven” and I couldn’t agree more (NYC is “fun hell”).
Living in San Francisco has given me a lot of perspective on what I like and dislike about LA, and for my friends, living in other places has helped them reflect on their preferences. One friend explicitly wished more people would experience spending some time living outside of LA to bring back ideas to make the city better. For people anywhere (I’m looking at you, San Francisco), spending time somewhere else really can open your eyes to what is out there, and make you realize what you appreciate and what should be changed.
Today, it’s hard for me to imagine going back to Los Angeles. But if the city gets its shit together to build a solid transit network and densify so that the city can be more affordable and walkable, I’ll be getting my bags ready.
hey man, that's our city! lol. couldn't agree more though.. diversity and scope of LA is great, but i hate that it comes with large geographical scope as well
Great article! Aplausos!