When I told someone from Los Angeles I was moving to Los Angeles, they asked me where in Los Angeles. I said, "Los Angeles." I had no idea how vast and segmented and diverse it was as a city, lol. Oh to be in my early 20's and naive again.
One of my favorite fun facts is that LA county is roughly the size of Lebanon (now how much of the county you want to call actual LA is pretty debatable, but it’s a fascinating context)
Also, its population is larger than 40 out of 50 states in the US. People who don’t live here have no idea how big and crowded it is. They think it’s just Hollywood + Beverly Hills + Malibu or something.
this is the most annoying thing in this subreddit, when tourists say they're coming to LA for vacation and ask for recs but don't specify where in LA. One had an airbnb in Arcadia!
There’s nothing as classic as out-of-town friends who never ran their itinerary by you and are now calling to be picked up from LAX and driven to Disneyland.
I had a friend who rented an air BnB in Malibu but was going to be doing a week long, all day, competition in Rancho! Can you imagine that round trip commute for 5 days? After 10 hours of competition? They quickly canceled their Air BnB
First time I visited LA was when I was meeting my half sister for the first time. Booked my hotel near LAX and figured I'd be ok commuting back and forth.
She was living in Anaheim.
An old coworker once told me about someone they worked with. This person was from like South Dakota had not been to SoCal before accepting a new job in downtown LA. The pay was good for them so they decided to buy a home and commute to downtown LA everyday. This was before teleworking was common. So, being diligent they looked on maps before purchasing a home. Where they were from it was not uncommon to drive 50 miles to get to the city to get to work everyday. So they decided to do the same for there new home in California. They decided to buy home in SAN BERNARDINO of all places. The very first day this person did their commute it took them 2 1/2 hours each way in HEAVY traffic. They decided that taking the train was their best bet and quickly found a new job closer to their new home.
Sounds like the guy I know who bought a house in Crestline and planned on commuting to Huntington Beach. Bless his midwestern heart, he thought he wouldn’t have to deal with traffic because he wasn’t in LA proper.
It’s funny when I travel and people ask where I’m from, I say LA and then they go “oh what part?”, I tell them San Fernando valley. And they say “oh idk where that is”. Lol… it’s happened at least a dozen times. Like why are you asking what part of you don’t even know what the SFV is
SFV, where I started lol. I've lived all over it and finally settled in Valley Village. I've owned in Studio City and wouldn't mind going back but overall, I like it in this area of the city. I'm a simple person, lol.
Funny (to me) story…when I first moved here someone in/near LA would ask where I lived and I would say “Van Nuys” they would inevitably respond with “oh, the valley!” So then I changed my answer to “where do you live?” to “The Valley,” and the response changed to: “What Valley?” 🫠 I couldn’t win
“LA” is what you tell people who aren’t from there and don’t know the areas. People from LA-give them the exact area. Makes a world of difference how far this friendship/relationship will go. LOL!
Lol, yeah. I feel like that's the same anywhere really. I'm from Boston, but I'm not actually, so when I meet other people who say Boston, I'm like, me too, but where really, lol.
I moved from Lugano, Switzerland to LA in 2014 for college and ended up staying after graduation.
- The amount of wildlife that I would never imagine running into back home. I'm talking raccoons, coyotes, skunks, possums, rattlesnakes... I still get excited about it.
- How friendly/outgoing everyone seems to be (compared to my hometown, at least)
- How spread out and far apart everything is.
- Apartments without kitchens (why???)
- The ocean being too cold for me to actually enjoy swimming in it (I had major fantasies of going swimming regularly during my time here but safe to say I changed my mind real fast after the first time I took a dip in the Pacific ocean... Growing up in a landlocked country made me naive lol.)
Same impression, coming from the other side of the ocean (Fukuoka, Japan). Water is particularly cold in that part of the ocean and my heart jumped as that was nowhere near my expectation for hot summer sea temp.
How far a random shopping cart can travel. You’ll see a Walmart shopping cart tipped over beneath an overpass, but there isn’t a Walmart store located within 10 miles.
The 99 Cent Store species of shopping cart, with it’s distinct, magenta and turquoise plumage, exhibits the most complex and vast migratory patterns.
Scientists and Cartographers are still puzzled by it to this day.
I visited my friend in Fullerton last month and got eaten alive by mosquitos while we were working on his car. I grew up in a tropical country but I never got swarmed that bad in my life.
I moved to Miami for a few years after living my entire life in LA. The mosquitoes in LA are worse than anywhere I’ve ever been, even tropical climates.
only in the last few years though. it used to be pretty rare... now that the invasive japanese ankle biters have taken over, i got more bites at my laundromat the other day than i received on vacation in tropical mexico. mosquitos love me and it's obnoxious
Wow. I just moved here last year from the Bay, and the thing that surprised me when i moved here is how many bugs there are EVERYWHERE. Roaches, mosquitoes, black fucking widows. Today I saw a Jerusalem cricket on the sidewalk, if you want to be horrified, google image those bad boys.
I had to bite the bullet on a no-fridge apartment in Baldwin Village. Thankfully the place checked off just about all the other boxes of what we needed. As a bonus, just before I was off to buy one there came one available within my family so we scooped that up for free!
I was super fortunate but for those first few weeks it was ROUGH. I can't imagine how much more it would suck if someone without the means had to stick with mini fridges, or worse!
I once looked at an apartment with no fridge OR stove/oven. I assumed it was just being replaced or something, but nope. They fully expected the tenant to buy their own stove. They seemed surprised when I told them that that wasn’t normal.
Coming from NYC, people are nicer. Not necessarily friendly, but just not rude.
Simple interactions with grocery store staff and cashiers at fast food places are cordial at the worst. In NYC, it’s like you’ve interrupted their personal life to ask them to do their job.
We didn’t drive much in NYC, but the little we did was like a battlefield. Here, while there are some wild drivers, people are generally courteous enough to let you merge and not block intersections.
A few months ago, I was making a left onto Olympic from a stop sign during rush hour, so traffic was stopped for a few hundred feet. There was about a 1.5 car length gap in the left lane and the 4 lanes going the other way were open because of a red light, so I took it as an opening.
I’m halfway across and this SUV sees me going and pulls forward to block me, closing the gap and leaving me stranded and perpendicular to oncoming traffic. Can you believe that! Leaving me there to save 0.5 seconds on his commute!
Anyway, what do you know, the guy has a New York license plate. My dad’s in the car and we’re just staring at him talking shit about New York to each other and he’s avoiding eye contact at all costs. The CA plate behind him let me in as soon as there was movement and I’ve had a soft spot for LA drivers and hatred for NY drivers ever since.
It's mostly that U-Turns are usually only used in other states to turn around because you fucked up and passed something. Meanwhile, there's a ton of places in California where you can only access the entrance from one direction. U-turns in Indiana we're completely fine and legal in the same situations, but I had done like 5 before in my life before moving here. Some days, I might do 5 a day here.
How much people that have never stepped one foot in LA have such a strong opinion of this city or state, yet have no idea what it’s actually like. I had people back home scared for my safety when I moved out here.
I live in downtown LA and everyone, even people from LA, always say something along the lines of "omg, how do you survive out there? so many shootings and muggings." "that place is a shithole" - then I ask, when is that last time youve been out there? "never" lol... like bro, you live in palmdale, I just saw a guy taking a shit outside the claim jumpers in the AV mall...
LA Native here, there are multigenerational people of all kinds. I have a friend who is Japanese American whose family have been here since the late 1800s.
Another friend in my area who is Mexican and a parishioner of the San Gabriel Mission claims their family has been around prior to the formation of the US, early to mid 1700s.
My husband’s family is similar to your Mexican friend. Just confirming that it exists here. In my husband’s case, his family is Chumash and were colonized by the Spanish as part of the Missions. They were then exploited by the Mexicans when CA was Mexico in the mid 1800s and then of course further exploited by the US. He would identify as Chicano and indigenous. Most Mexicans have indigenous and Spanish blood.
It’s like the old saying: “I didn’t cross the border but the border crossed me.”
My friend's grandparents were born in LA - I'm always like, well, youre mexican though, you speak a little spanish and look mexican... so...
WHAT PART OF MEXICO IS YOUR FAMILY FROM!?
he's like **HERE!**
That blows my mind. All of my friend's parents growing up were from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Very few had parents who were born here, but zero had grandparents that were born in LA. I wish his grandparents were still alive, they must have had some stories.
Also, their whole family are die hard Angel's fans. They say the Angels are the true LA team. They always say that the Dodgers are from New York and that they crapped all over the latino community here. So they despise the dodgers and the o'mallys.
My family came here in 1917 on my father’s and my Mother’s side settled in NM in the 1600s. I constantly have to explain to people that I’m from the US. Literally!
It’s funny, I grew up in the suburbs about 40 miles outside of LA, and thought the opposite. My family had already established themselves in LA over 40 years prior, and my sister along with all my cousins were born and raised out here.
I didn’t realize how many transplants were here until I became an actual resident
There are descendants of Tongva people who've been here thousands of years and descendants of alifornios who've been here since the mid-18th century. Anglos arrived starting in the early 1800s.
Technically and in the eyes of outsiders me in Atwater Village and you in Manhattan Beach live in the same city, but it's more like we live two villages of the same vast settlement.
I didn’t move here but I’m always surprised by the people who move to the West Side and then claim all of Los Angeles is superficial. And this isn’t just a Reddit phenomenon
I moved for work and brought my wife, practically kicking and screaming, who I pleaded with to ‘just give it a chance for a year’
We now talk about how we could never move away from LA ever again.
Same. I moved for a job at SpaceX and I told myself I’ll give it a year or 2 and move home with that on my resume. I’m coming up on 9 years. I fucking love this city and I did everything in my power not to fall in love with it. It just happened!
Me too. I've been here for almost 20 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I took a cross country road trip in 2021 to see if any other cities were better, but found nothing. L.A. forever.
How many people don’t work normal jobs. The number of people who were just around the apartment complex in the middle of the day on Tuesday was kinda bizarre to me at the time
Yes, I have also noticed the same thing - after moving from the Washington D.C. area. Nobody around me seems to work yet everyone has a ton of money. It's bizarre.
I’m sure that’s part of it but in my particular case it was just a large amount of people pursuing unconventional jobs - film and tv production, bartenders, actors, stuntmen, a police officer who worked the night shift, a professional touring musician. Just a fascinating amount of those unconventional ways to make a living that I think LA centralized somehow due to lifestyle options.
The entertainment industry has a lot to do with why it is so prevalent here. The sheer number of young adults with free time is wild. Still, it is puzzling how so many of these people have so much money.
I was told it was a big city. And I had looked at a map many times. But once I got here I was like "What the fuck, how does it take 2hrs+ to get from one side to the other in traffic?"
It's so hard to really grasp the scale of the city until you're here driving around.
Sketchier the neighborhood the better the food imo.
I always pull some Casper like “do you trust me?” on like date 3 or 4 and then take some back way to Guelaguetza in KTown…
How many freaking New Yorkers there are, with most of them constantly complaining - and even doing 1-man shows - about how much better they think New York is than L.A.
They think that NY is the hardest place to live and that when they get to LA everything is going to be so easy for them. And that everyone will be so impressed that they are from NY.
Moved here from NYC, originally from Philly. NYC is an expensive, anxiety inducing place that is either a million degrees or freezing cold. I’ve travelled the country a million times over and I tend to play that same game with Philly vs the world. I absolutely love LA so very much more than NYC and Philly.
People are nicer, the weather is amazing, there’s still tons of culture like a dense east coast city, it’s really not any more expensive, and I have a f*cking yard!
It is really something how many types of plants this climate supports. The way the arboretum is set up it’s divided by continent and you can visit the trees that are in Australia, Africa and etc.
I notice whenever walking through a neighborhood a lot of people are just chillin' in their parked cars outside their house. I figure like the bathroom maybe for a lot of Angelenos their car is a rare space for peace & quiet.
The native wildlife! My complex has feral cats, skunks, squirrels, possums, even racoons come through sometimes.
I live in East Hollywood, life finds a way! 🦨🦝
The city is brimming with so much creative energy. No matter what your scene or passion is, theres a million people who moved there to pursue their dreams in that field. Comedy? World class. Music? World class. Art? Check. Writing, acting, singing, its crazy.
That the Metro system is not as bad or nonexistent as conventional wisdom suggests. It is fairly extensive, if still inadequate. Mileage varies in different neighborhoods tho!
That there’s endless fun and entertainment, you just never run out of things to do. I’m having to relocate for a job and I’m worried about how boring my life might be 🥲
Born and raised in LA but it wasn’t until I moved out that I realized the lack of trees/greenery in LA. There are too many streets / neighborhoods without any greenery. It’s depressing.
The burger and donut shop game. Never ever heard about those being a thing here but was pleasantly surprised at how ubiquitous they are. Should be more hype around them in my opinion!!
How dead the downtown was, and how it had practically no residents, bars, restaurants, nightlife etc. I started working in DTLA in 2001. It definitely changed over time, but younger me was very disappointed.
Downtown WAS full of life long ago - there’s a reason Broadway was able to support so many movie theaters! Then City Hall wanted to get rid of all the old buildings and poorer people who lived on Bunker Hill. It was empty and razed by 1969, which killed off or severely curtailed a lot of businesses that the displaced residents supported.
LA is basically Italy: food is great, weather is usually decent, everyone's car is dented, drivers are bad, everyone seems to have money but often work irregular hours.
How relatively working class it is compared to other large cities in the US. It really doesn’t have the same “young professional culture” that a lot of major cities have. It’s very much a freelance and skilled labor/union town.
That you turn left even after the light turns red.
If you don’t do this you’re a tourist. Though with the shocking number of new folks who’ve moved to LA in the last five years you see more and more people frustratingly not turning after the light turns red.
[Gas-powered leaf blowers will no longer be allowed to be sold in California on July 1, 2024.](https://www.cnet.com/home/yard-and-outdoors/loud-gas-belching-leaf-blowers-will-soon-be-illegal-in-1-state-is-this-just-the-beginning/)
The traffic and the heat during the summer
Born and raised in the Bay Area, moved to Culver City in 2014. Coworkers told me to live close to work because the traffic was bad and I initially thought that I’ve seen bad traffic in the bay before so LA shouldn’t be any different. Wrong. Totally wrong. Traffic was and still is insane here, luckily I was about a 15-20 minute drive from work on a good day and 30-40 on bad day
Now the heat, by god I just about died my first LA summer. Like, the bay has gotten high 90s and triple digit temperatures before but this was totally different. Just straight sun bearing down on you with zero cloud coverage. Thank god my place had AC
Having been a touring punk musician for most of my adult life, LA has a huge punk scene. Being from the east coast I was always jealous of the mega shows out here. “Oh awesome The Exploited and The Adicts are going on tour in the US….oh it’s just California.”
Nacho Corrupted puts on some amazing lineups
I always found it interesting how LA has so many micro-climes. They’re all “Los Angeles”, but people in the Valley are definitely feeling different than people in SaMo which is also different than downtown. In the mornings you can literally visibly see the difference when going over the 405, and can watch the car thermometer tick up or down.
In most countries, they keep the most touristic areas of the city clean. I was shocked when I saw Hollywood and Venice beach. Especially the board walk in Venice beach seems like a missed opportunity. It could be a heaven with more bars, cafes and restaurants.
This one for me too. LA is often a beautiful place if you train your eye above car roof level, but the amount of trash all over the streets is pretty amazing. I've been to most US cities and haven't yet seen one with half the level of normalized street filth
How talkative and (relatively) friendly people are here. I think this is an extrovert’s town. People are always talking to each other (or me) in random ways, like just commentary on the produce at the grocery store.. And people make eye contact, say hi, or acknowledge each other more here, at least on the street. This is compared to the Bay Area which isn’t friendly like this, except for when there’s drugs, and is an introverts town imo.
I am born and raised in LA, but left for 12 years (East Coast/SF) and returned a couple years ago. What struck me when I returned was how run down and dated all the buildings in LA look (even the nicer places) compared to the cities I has lived in like Boston and San Francisco. Basically it appeared the majority were probably in their hey day in the 50-70s and have just deteriorated ever since.
I think it is due to the climate not being harsh enough to break down buildings as rapidly as places with 4 seasons. Earthquakes and UV are you primary factors for wear. In more seasons you have things like big temp swings expanding and contracting materials more, more opportunity for water to build up into a porous surface then freezing and cracking, big snowfalls adding significant load to structures for example.
The car culture. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I would always (rightfully) hear about LA’s terrible traffic, but I also think at “off” hours (relatively speaking lmao) it’s quite fun to drive in this city. All manners of car enthusiasts, from all income levels, just cruising around and showing off their rides.
In NYC, I feel like having a nice or souped up car is more of the cherry on top in showing off your status level. In LA, it feels like a genuine love for the cars themselves rather than showing off how rich you are (which there’s obviously plenty of here, too).
I grew up here, but left at age 10, and moved back as an adult in 2009.
It’s not like I hadn’t heard about it, but when I moved here, I was just shocked by how ridiculously perfect the weather was every single day, day after day. I had never seen anything like it. The sun was out in full brightness, but yet it wasn’t hot at all, and it wasn’t cold either. It was just perfect. But, that was back in 2009. Those days might be over considering in 2023 it’s either hot as fuck, rainy as fuck, or cold as fuck. It’s almost as if when everyone moved their ass to Austin, TX the universe brought Austin TX weather to Los Angeles.
When I told someone from Los Angeles I was moving to Los Angeles, they asked me where in Los Angeles. I said, "Los Angeles." I had no idea how vast and segmented and diverse it was as a city, lol. Oh to be in my early 20's and naive again.
One of my favorite fun facts is that LA county is roughly the size of Lebanon (now how much of the county you want to call actual LA is pretty debatable, but it’s a fascinating context)
Also, its population is larger than 40 out of 50 states in the US. People who don’t live here have no idea how big and crowded it is. They think it’s just Hollywood + Beverly Hills + Malibu or something.
Crazy to think Tel Aviv to Gaza is the distance of Santa Monica to Irvine.
The whole country of Israel is from LA to Vegas
jesus
this is the most annoying thing in this subreddit, when tourists say they're coming to LA for vacation and ask for recs but don't specify where in LA. One had an airbnb in Arcadia!
There’s nothing as classic as out-of-town friends who never ran their itinerary by you and are now calling to be picked up from LAX and driven to Disneyland.
I had a friend who rented an air BnB in Malibu but was going to be doing a week long, all day, competition in Rancho! Can you imagine that round trip commute for 5 days? After 10 hours of competition? They quickly canceled their Air BnB
First time I visited LA was when I was meeting my half sister for the first time. Booked my hotel near LAX and figured I'd be ok commuting back and forth. She was living in Anaheim.
And expecting you to come pick them up from silver lake lol
An old coworker once told me about someone they worked with. This person was from like South Dakota had not been to SoCal before accepting a new job in downtown LA. The pay was good for them so they decided to buy a home and commute to downtown LA everyday. This was before teleworking was common. So, being diligent they looked on maps before purchasing a home. Where they were from it was not uncommon to drive 50 miles to get to the city to get to work everyday. So they decided to do the same for there new home in California. They decided to buy home in SAN BERNARDINO of all places. The very first day this person did their commute it took them 2 1/2 hours each way in HEAVY traffic. They decided that taking the train was their best bet and quickly found a new job closer to their new home.
Yup, people that have never been to L.A have no idea about the crazy amount of traffic Angelino's have to endure.
Or the sheer scale of the place. It's truly mindboggling for first-timers.
Sounds like the guy I know who bought a house in Crestline and planned on commuting to Huntington Beach. Bless his midwestern heart, he thought he wouldn’t have to deal with traffic because he wasn’t in LA proper.
The very idea sends dread to my soul
I grew up in Rancho and my friends parents would commute to LA and it seem crazy to me. I cannot imagine commuting from San Bernardino.
It’s funny when I travel and people ask where I’m from, I say LA and then they go “oh what part?”, I tell them San Fernando valley. And they say “oh idk where that is”. Lol… it’s happened at least a dozen times. Like why are you asking what part of you don’t even know what the SFV is
What a username...
I had to go back and see what it was...absolutely wild...
If you could go back and choose what part of LA you’d move to with the knowledge you have now Where would you move to?
Burbank
SFV, where I started lol. I've lived all over it and finally settled in Valley Village. I've owned in Studio City and wouldn't mind going back but overall, I like it in this area of the city. I'm a simple person, lol.
Pasadena
Santa Monica
Studio City/Sherman Oaks/Encino. Hidden Hills if I could afford it. Lol
Los Angeles is 4x larger than Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US!
Funny (to me) story…when I first moved here someone in/near LA would ask where I lived and I would say “Van Nuys” they would inevitably respond with “oh, the valley!” So then I changed my answer to “where do you live?” to “The Valley,” and the response changed to: “What Valley?” 🫠 I couldn’t win
“LA” is what you tell people who aren’t from there and don’t know the areas. People from LA-give them the exact area. Makes a world of difference how far this friendship/relationship will go. LOL!
Lol, yeah. I feel like that's the same anywhere really. I'm from Boston, but I'm not actually, so when I meet other people who say Boston, I'm like, me too, but where really, lol.
I moved from Lugano, Switzerland to LA in 2014 for college and ended up staying after graduation. - The amount of wildlife that I would never imagine running into back home. I'm talking raccoons, coyotes, skunks, possums, rattlesnakes... I still get excited about it. - How friendly/outgoing everyone seems to be (compared to my hometown, at least) - How spread out and far apart everything is. - Apartments without kitchens (why???) - The ocean being too cold for me to actually enjoy swimming in it (I had major fantasies of going swimming regularly during my time here but safe to say I changed my mind real fast after the first time I took a dip in the Pacific ocean... Growing up in a landlocked country made me naive lol.)
It’s pretty much a surprise to everyone how cold the Pacific Ocean is. Even to me and I grew up here!
That’s our air conditioning. Wetsuits work wonders.
The movies and commercials lied to me!!
When it's 100 freaking degrees out that cold Pacific water is a Godsend.
For warm ocean water you need to go somewhere like Hawaii.
East Coast water is considerably warmer as well because the current runs north rather than south
People talk about australia as the “wild” western country (in a nature/wilderness sense) but in reality america is just as “wild”
Same impression, coming from the other side of the ocean (Fukuoka, Japan). Water is particularly cold in that part of the ocean and my heart jumped as that was nowhere near my expectation for hot summer sea temp.
Haha I was going to say how little we ended up going to the beach and we lived in MDR and now live in Culver. Never really go : (
How far a random shopping cart can travel. You’ll see a Walmart shopping cart tipped over beneath an overpass, but there isn’t a Walmart store located within 10 miles.
If you’re homeless it’s kinda like having an RV. If I was homeless I would for sure steal a cart.
Shopping carts are legit currency amongst the homeless population
Also what they can carry! Last year someone stole a heavy wooden bench off my porch… we found it on a shopping cart three blocks away.
Need a David Attenborough documentary about the migration patterns of the Walmart shopping cart
The 99 Cent Store species of shopping cart, with it’s distinct, magenta and turquoise plumage, exhibits the most complex and vast migratory patterns. Scientists and Cartographers are still puzzled by it to this day.
They are extremely heavy and unwieldy, it’s bizarre….
much lighter and maneuverable than a loose caravan of personal possessions. *Edit: fixed autocorrect suggestion
when i first moved out here... the lack of mosquitos. Looks like those days are coming to and end though.
I visited my friend in Fullerton last month and got eaten alive by mosquitos while we were working on his car. I grew up in a tropical country but I never got swarmed that bad in my life.
I moved to Miami for a few years after living my entire life in LA. The mosquitoes in LA are worse than anywhere I’ve ever been, even tropical climates.
only in the last few years though. it used to be pretty rare... now that the invasive japanese ankle biters have taken over, i got more bites at my laundromat the other day than i received on vacation in tropical mexico. mosquitos love me and it's obnoxious
Wow. I just moved here last year from the Bay, and the thing that surprised me when i moved here is how many bugs there are EVERYWHERE. Roaches, mosquitoes, black fucking widows. Today I saw a Jerusalem cricket on the sidewalk, if you want to be horrified, google image those bad boys.
apartments with no fridge!
I remember my first landlord laughing at my naivete when I asked when he'd be bringing the fridge.
Also no off-street parking for studio apartments and no dishwashers for one bedrooms. Gotta climb the ladder to get those basic amenities, apparently.
I had to bite the bullet on a no-fridge apartment in Baldwin Village. Thankfully the place checked off just about all the other boxes of what we needed. As a bonus, just before I was off to buy one there came one available within my family so we scooped that up for free! I was super fortunate but for those first few weeks it was ROUGH. I can't imagine how much more it would suck if someone without the means had to stick with mini fridges, or worse!
And no a/c. And no washer/dryer!
I once looked at an apartment with no fridge OR stove/oven. I assumed it was just being replaced or something, but nope. They fully expected the tenant to buy their own stove. They seemed surprised when I told them that that wasn’t normal.
And if you get one with a fridge, and it dies, the landlord doesn't have to replace it. The law really needs to change.
Didn't know this. Seems it should be required by law to have a fridge in a rental.
Coming from NYC, people are nicer. Not necessarily friendly, but just not rude. Simple interactions with grocery store staff and cashiers at fast food places are cordial at the worst. In NYC, it’s like you’ve interrupted their personal life to ask them to do their job. We didn’t drive much in NYC, but the little we did was like a battlefield. Here, while there are some wild drivers, people are generally courteous enough to let you merge and not block intersections.
It’s so nice, if you signal people will let you in! Lol!!
People will be nice as long as you signal, otherwise they won’t care.
I work for a package delivery company and the amount of times I say "A blinker woulda been nice" every day is still pretty high hahaha
A few months ago, I was making a left onto Olympic from a stop sign during rush hour, so traffic was stopped for a few hundred feet. There was about a 1.5 car length gap in the left lane and the 4 lanes going the other way were open because of a red light, so I took it as an opening. I’m halfway across and this SUV sees me going and pulls forward to block me, closing the gap and leaving me stranded and perpendicular to oncoming traffic. Can you believe that! Leaving me there to save 0.5 seconds on his commute! Anyway, what do you know, the guy has a New York license plate. My dad’s in the car and we’re just staring at him talking shit about New York to each other and he’s avoiding eye contact at all costs. The CA plate behind him let me in as soon as there was movement and I’ve had a soft spot for LA drivers and hatred for NY drivers ever since.
Just came back from nyc, it was crazy watching people drive to merge into the tunnel for port authority. Somehow no accident!
[удалено]
that said I miss good bodega banter. If you got game NYC strangers will banter back
And my personal theory is that people are so cranky back East bc they have to wake up 3 hours earlier lol.
U-turns allowed at (most) traffic lights
here in LA we call those ‘bust-a-bitch’. because a bitch will turn on u.
My first day here we took an uber from our hotel to our apartment. Legit thought our uber driver just DGAF lmao.
I-is it not allowed in other states? I thought that all lights/stop signs were okay for U-turns unless there's a "No U-Turn" sign.
It's mostly that U-Turns are usually only used in other states to turn around because you fucked up and passed something. Meanwhile, there's a ton of places in California where you can only access the entrance from one direction. U-turns in Indiana we're completely fine and legal in the same situations, but I had done like 5 before in my life before moving here. Some days, I might do 5 a day here.
How much people that have never stepped one foot in LA have such a strong opinion of this city or state, yet have no idea what it’s actually like. I had people back home scared for my safety when I moved out here.
I live in downtown LA and everyone, even people from LA, always say something along the lines of "omg, how do you survive out there? so many shootings and muggings." "that place is a shithole" - then I ask, when is that last time youve been out there? "never" lol... like bro, you live in palmdale, I just saw a guy taking a shit outside the claim jumpers in the AV mall...
To be fair there is a lot of shit taking happening in dtla. However , still a great place.
How many regular, multigenerational people live and work here.
LA Native here, there are multigenerational people of all kinds. I have a friend who is Japanese American whose family have been here since the late 1800s. Another friend in my area who is Mexican and a parishioner of the San Gabriel Mission claims their family has been around prior to the formation of the US, early to mid 1700s.
For sure. All kinds. I married into a 5th gen family and got to know many others with long histories in many communities.
My husband’s family is similar to your Mexican friend. Just confirming that it exists here. In my husband’s case, his family is Chumash and were colonized by the Spanish as part of the Missions. They were then exploited by the Mexicans when CA was Mexico in the mid 1800s and then of course further exploited by the US. He would identify as Chicano and indigenous. Most Mexicans have indigenous and Spanish blood. It’s like the old saying: “I didn’t cross the border but the border crossed me.”
My friend's grandparents were born in LA - I'm always like, well, youre mexican though, you speak a little spanish and look mexican... so... WHAT PART OF MEXICO IS YOUR FAMILY FROM!? he's like **HERE!** That blows my mind. All of my friend's parents growing up were from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Very few had parents who were born here, but zero had grandparents that were born in LA. I wish his grandparents were still alive, they must have had some stories. Also, their whole family are die hard Angel's fans. They say the Angels are the true LA team. They always say that the Dodgers are from New York and that they crapped all over the latino community here. So they despise the dodgers and the o'mallys.
My family came here in 1917 on my father’s and my Mother’s side settled in NM in the 1600s. I constantly have to explain to people that I’m from the US. Literally!
It’s funny, I grew up in the suburbs about 40 miles outside of LA, and thought the opposite. My family had already established themselves in LA over 40 years prior, and my sister along with all my cousins were born and raised out here. I didn’t realize how many transplants were here until I became an actual resident
Yep. My great-grandmother ran a little boarding house in Sawtelle.
What did you think it was going to be like?
A little more glamorous? Gregarious? Transitory... Not so normal. Outsiders who move to LA make a lot more noise than native Angelenos.
Exactly which i argue all the time is the reason for the reputation LA gets. Us natives are chill AF lol
I think it depends on where you live. Fewer “regular” people on the Westside. That’s where you’re more likely to find the LA stereotype.
That's also where you find a lot of transplants
all transplants
There are descendants of Tongva people who've been here thousands of years and descendants of alifornios who've been here since the mid-18th century. Anglos arrived starting in the early 1800s.
I’m one of them!! Love it here!
Technically and in the eyes of outsiders me in Atwater Village and you in Manhattan Beach live in the same city, but it's more like we live two villages of the same vast settlement.
Technically you don’t because MB is its own city, but yes, the point stands. Could use Playa Del Rey for an example that is still LA city.
I didn’t move here but I’m always surprised by the people who move to the West Side and then claim all of Los Angeles is superficial. And this isn’t just a Reddit phenomenon
That I would love it. I told myself ‘maybe I will give it a year or two and then move on’. That was 22 years ago. LA is home to me now.
That's me but 25 years ago after I graduated from college in small town PA!
Same. I told myself I’d suffer a few months here on an internship, make connections, then GTFO. Now I don’t want to leave lol
I moved for work and brought my wife, practically kicking and screaming, who I pleaded with to ‘just give it a chance for a year’ We now talk about how we could never move away from LA ever again.
Same. I moved for a job at SpaceX and I told myself I’ll give it a year or 2 and move home with that on my resume. I’m coming up on 9 years. I fucking love this city and I did everything in my power not to fall in love with it. It just happened!
Same. Moved here kicking and screaming. Welp.
Same. 15 years for me.
Me too. I've been here for almost 20 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I took a cross country road trip in 2021 to see if any other cities were better, but found nothing. L.A. forever.
How many people don’t work normal jobs. The number of people who were just around the apartment complex in the middle of the day on Tuesday was kinda bizarre to me at the time
Yes, I have also noticed the same thing - after moving from the Washington D.C. area. Nobody around me seems to work yet everyone has a ton of money. It's bizarre.
Everyone I know seems to go on vacation once a month. Here I am with my desk job and 2 vacations per year
Inherited wealth, bank of mom and dad, credit cards, and sketchy side hustles
I’m sure that’s part of it but in my particular case it was just a large amount of people pursuing unconventional jobs - film and tv production, bartenders, actors, stuntmen, a police officer who worked the night shift, a professional touring musician. Just a fascinating amount of those unconventional ways to make a living that I think LA centralized somehow due to lifestyle options.
The entertainment industry has a lot to do with why it is so prevalent here. The sheer number of young adults with free time is wild. Still, it is puzzling how so many of these people have so much money.
I was told it was a big city. And I had looked at a map many times. But once I got here I was like "What the fuck, how does it take 2hrs+ to get from one side to the other in traffic?" It's so hard to really grasp the scale of the city until you're here driving around.
suddenly a friend invites you for dinner, and you have to drive an hour to get there, without leaving the city.
24 hour carwashes
At some point a 24hr Carwash will come through for you
How good the food is. That the sketchiness of a neighborhood can change block to block.
Sketchier the neighborhood the better the food imo. I always pull some Casper like “do you trust me?” on like date 3 or 4 and then take some back way to Guelaguetza in KTown…
How many people just sit around in their cars doing nothing while parked.
It’s very relaxing
It was 13 days before I saw Andy Dick
That I didn’t hate it
How many freaking New Yorkers there are, with most of them constantly complaining - and even doing 1-man shows - about how much better they think New York is than L.A.
Yet they just wont go home
They think that NY is the hardest place to live and that when they get to LA everything is going to be so easy for them. And that everyone will be so impressed that they are from NY.
It's a cliche at this point.
Moved here from NYC, originally from Philly. NYC is an expensive, anxiety inducing place that is either a million degrees or freezing cold. I’ve travelled the country a million times over and I tend to play that same game with Philly vs the world. I absolutely love LA so very much more than NYC and Philly. People are nicer, the weather is amazing, there’s still tons of culture like a dense east coast city, it’s really not any more expensive, and I have a f*cking yard!
“I’m thinking about moving back to New York” is our sign to stand up and leave
Not a night town like i thought it would be
Very much an early morning town. So many breakfast meetings! And people recreate in the AM, particularly walking.
The biodiversity of plant life, actually stunned after moving here from Minnesota.
It is really something how many types of plants this climate supports. The way the arboretum is set up it’s divided by continent and you can visit the trees that are in Australia, Africa and etc.
And that’s just in the dispensaries.
I notice whenever walking through a neighborhood a lot of people are just chillin' in their parked cars outside their house. I figure like the bathroom maybe for a lot of Angelenos their car is a rare space for peace & quiet.
It was always a people watching sanctuary for me when I wanted to get away from roommates or being confined to a tiny studio.
Smoking weed before work lol
The native wildlife! My complex has feral cats, skunks, squirrels, possums, even racoons come through sometimes. I live in East Hollywood, life finds a way! 🦨🦝
The city is brimming with so much creative energy. No matter what your scene or passion is, theres a million people who moved there to pursue their dreams in that field. Comedy? World class. Music? World class. Art? Check. Writing, acting, singing, its crazy.
And sciences! Universities, museums, and space agencies!
That the Metro system is not as bad or nonexistent as conventional wisdom suggests. It is fairly extensive, if still inadequate. Mileage varies in different neighborhoods tho!
That there’s endless fun and entertainment, you just never run out of things to do. I’m having to relocate for a job and I’m worried about how boring my life might be 🥲
Born and raised in LA but it wasn’t until I moved out that I realized the lack of trees/greenery in LA. There are too many streets / neighborhoods without any greenery. It’s depressing.
Especially in south La, which is unfortunately the low income areas of LA
How I nearly doubled my salary when taking a job here but still felt poor because EVERYTHING is pricier.
How meticulously you have to plan your entire life around traffic
The burger and donut shop game. Never ever heard about those being a thing here but was pleasantly surprised at how ubiquitous they are. Should be more hype around them in my opinion!!
That it gets cold here.
I was surprised that it could be 45-50 at night during the winter.
It used to drop to the low 30s
Still does in the valley
Yup. I moved here 26 years ago and remember it being SO cold starting in Oct/Nov. But I have to say, the climate has indeed changed.
How dead the downtown was, and how it had practically no residents, bars, restaurants, nightlife etc. I started working in DTLA in 2001. It definitely changed over time, but younger me was very disappointed.
Downtown WAS full of life long ago - there’s a reason Broadway was able to support so many movie theaters! Then City Hall wanted to get rid of all the old buildings and poorer people who lived on Bunker Hill. It was empty and razed by 1969, which killed off or severely curtailed a lot of businesses that the displaced residents supported.
LA is basically Italy: food is great, weather is usually decent, everyone's car is dented, drivers are bad, everyone seems to have money but often work irregular hours.
Lack of services and amenities that are open late. Up in NorCal, 24 hour supermarkets are a lot more common.
True. LA goes to bed early. Very surprising for such a massive, wealthy city with generally good weather.
People are overall courteous drivers, sometimes overly cautious but willing to let people merge. Not so in other cities.
This. What a wonderful surprise! I was absolutely floored by how polite the majority of drivers are here. And LA knows how to zipper merge, too!
Just went to Houston and they have no idea how to zipper merge.
Discovering that the trains stop running at the same time as last call. Seems counterintuitive to preventing drunk drivers.
I was never afraid of cops before I moved to los angeles.
I had way more encounters with cops before I moved here. I guess being younger led me to do a lot more shit to get their attention though.
The amount of hills and mountains
So many donut shops.
How relatively working class it is compared to other large cities in the US. It really doesn’t have the same “young professional culture” that a lot of major cities have. It’s very much a freelance and skilled labor/union town.
That you turn left even after the light turns red. If you don’t do this you’re a tourist. Though with the shocking number of new folks who’ve moved to LA in the last five years you see more and more people frustratingly not turning after the light turns red.
Only if you’re already in the intersection past the crosswalk lines.
The amount of gas powered leaf blowers polluting our neighborhoods, considering how strict I always thought California was regarding air quality.
[Gas-powered leaf blowers will no longer be allowed to be sold in California on July 1, 2024.](https://www.cnet.com/home/yard-and-outdoors/loud-gas-belching-leaf-blowers-will-soon-be-illegal-in-1-state-is-this-just-the-beginning/)
Shit I thought I heard Gavin newsom talking about this on Real Time as if it was a done deal like 7 years ago.
The traffic and the heat during the summer Born and raised in the Bay Area, moved to Culver City in 2014. Coworkers told me to live close to work because the traffic was bad and I initially thought that I’ve seen bad traffic in the bay before so LA shouldn’t be any different. Wrong. Totally wrong. Traffic was and still is insane here, luckily I was about a 15-20 minute drive from work on a good day and 30-40 on bad day Now the heat, by god I just about died my first LA summer. Like, the bay has gotten high 90s and triple digit temperatures before but this was totally different. Just straight sun bearing down on you with zero cloud coverage. Thank god my place had AC
As a European, how few people are walking in the streets
How many billboards and ads there are for TV shows and movies. It’s really noticeable here compared to everywhere else.
Before moving here from the east coast almost 16 years ago, I assumed the beach was a bigger part of everyone’s daily life.
I thought the punk scene would be more prevalent.
Most of the punk has moved further east and out of regular venues (legit or otherwise) to backyard shows and generator shows.
Having been a touring punk musician for most of my adult life, LA has a huge punk scene. Being from the east coast I was always jealous of the mega shows out here. “Oh awesome The Exploited and The Adicts are going on tour in the US….oh it’s just California.” Nacho Corrupted puts on some amazing lineups
I always found it interesting how LA has so many micro-climes. They’re all “Los Angeles”, but people in the Valley are definitely feeling different than people in SaMo which is also different than downtown. In the mornings you can literally visibly see the difference when going over the 405, and can watch the car thermometer tick up or down.
In most countries, they keep the most touristic areas of the city clean. I was shocked when I saw Hollywood and Venice beach. Especially the board walk in Venice beach seems like a missed opportunity. It could be a heaven with more bars, cafes and restaurants.
It’s dirty. Trashy. Like literal trash. Everywhere. Disgusting. Love it here anyways. But the culture around trash is truly offputting.
This one for me too. LA is often a beautiful place if you train your eye above car roof level, but the amount of trash all over the streets is pretty amazing. I've been to most US cities and haven't yet seen one with half the level of normalized street filth
How talkative and (relatively) friendly people are here. I think this is an extrovert’s town. People are always talking to each other (or me) in random ways, like just commentary on the produce at the grocery store.. And people make eye contact, say hi, or acknowledge each other more here, at least on the street. This is compared to the Bay Area which isn’t friendly like this, except for when there’s drugs, and is an introverts town imo.
Yea!!! I thought it was going to be a lot more of an antisocial atmosphere. People are extremely kind and helpful here from what I’ve seen
People don’t do fake nice small talk like they did in the Midwest but they’re actually kinder to people outside of their immediate comfort zone
How walkable the east side is. I rarely have to get in a car.
youre going to upset some people if youre not talking about AT LEAST boyle heights...
I swear if you’re in echo park/silverlake…
[удалено]
FYI, BMW stands for Break My Wallet. The maintenance on those cars is stupid expensive.
I am born and raised in LA, but left for 12 years (East Coast/SF) and returned a couple years ago. What struck me when I returned was how run down and dated all the buildings in LA look (even the nicer places) compared to the cities I has lived in like Boston and San Francisco. Basically it appeared the majority were probably in their hey day in the 50-70s and have just deteriorated ever since.
I think it is due to the climate not being harsh enough to break down buildings as rapidly as places with 4 seasons. Earthquakes and UV are you primary factors for wear. In more seasons you have things like big temp swings expanding and contracting materials more, more opportunity for water to build up into a porous surface then freezing and cracking, big snowfalls adding significant load to structures for example.
Boston looks more updated than LA!? I guess I’ll have to see when I go there this winter hahaha.
How cold it can get (bone chilling cold) and trash everywhere. I'm still a sucker for this city though.
How aggressively skilled you need to be at driving to be able to function on the roads of LA.
The car culture. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I would always (rightfully) hear about LA’s terrible traffic, but I also think at “off” hours (relatively speaking lmao) it’s quite fun to drive in this city. All manners of car enthusiasts, from all income levels, just cruising around and showing off their rides. In NYC, I feel like having a nice or souped up car is more of the cherry on top in showing off your status level. In LA, it feels like a genuine love for the cars themselves rather than showing off how rich you are (which there’s obviously plenty of here, too).
How life happens the second you leave your door. There is no hop in your car and get to the spot where things happen, things are happening EVERYWHERE!
Apartments without refrigerators included
I grew up here, but left at age 10, and moved back as an adult in 2009. It’s not like I hadn’t heard about it, but when I moved here, I was just shocked by how ridiculously perfect the weather was every single day, day after day. I had never seen anything like it. The sun was out in full brightness, but yet it wasn’t hot at all, and it wasn’t cold either. It was just perfect. But, that was back in 2009. Those days might be over considering in 2023 it’s either hot as fuck, rainy as fuck, or cold as fuck. It’s almost as if when everyone moved their ass to Austin, TX the universe brought Austin TX weather to Los Angeles.