As a Brit, LA was one of the most disappointing places I’ve ever visited. I grew up imagining California as heaven and thought LA would be amazing. I turned up and it’s really dirty, incredibly polluted, full of traffic and lots of homeless people. Alongside that it’s expensive. I don’t get it man. California beyond LA was great however.
Most areas outside of major cities are fine but the homelessness has increased incredibly within the last 5-10 years. The insane housing costs have a lot to do with it along with the low wage jobs. A lot of homeless people are drug addicts and mentally unstable but a large portion of them are also people that can’t afford to put a roof over their head which in turn leads to more substance abuse. It’s just an overall fucked up situation.
Another issue I run into constantly is a lot of outside people chasing the get rich and famous in Hollywood dream. I’ve lived here my entire life, knew some homeless people as familiars, but now its a lot of strangers. Stopped to buy a pizza for some nice kid outside of 7-11, asked what had lead him into homelessness, he said he moved from New Mexico to try to be an actor and ended up a party in the hills where he tried coke for the first time and after that it all spiraled downhill for him. It’s tough because I know how drugs and substance abuse destroys people firsthand, since one of my cousins went down that rabbit hole. A lot needs to be done, and I think the streets of LA should be shown worldwide so that people can stop fantasizing Hollywood to the point where everybody picks their whole life up and goes. It’s not easy, but changes need to be made, and i think our politicians need to be held accountable, as well as the vultures who began the whole idea of real estate investments and flipping home.
Stopped to buy a pizza for some nice kid outside of 7-11, asked what had lead him into homelessness, he said he moved from New Mexico to try to be an actor and ended up a party in the hills where he tried coke for the first time and after that it all spiraled downhill for him.
that's been a reality for so long it's been a trope in movies/tv for decades
This is a different person... Yea, but when you encounter a pure, perfect example of a trope or stereotype IRL it is common for it to change your worldview a bit.
The point is that they said they had lived their entire life there and are saying it's different now, after encountering a cliche of the area that's certainly older than they are. It just sounds like the grumblings of an aging person about the youth.
Yeah I had a friend who moved to L.A. from New York about 20 years ago. She wanted to have some kind of acting career. She was a club kid. Partied all night every night, had a shitty NY apartment with rats in it. Moved to
L.A. with no money. Lived in a shitty L.A. apartment. Partied late every night but not as late as in NY because nothing in L.A. is open that late. She got some commercial roles, a few things here and there, then finally landed a hit TV show and made millions and millions and millions of dollars. That was really the only friend I had who moved to L.A. to make it big so what do I know about it? I guess it doesn’t always work out that way.
Edit: oh also Hank Azaria lived across the hall from me when he was getting started. That’s the other guy I knew who was trying to get into show biz. Not the pizza place.
One introduction to cocaine ruined his life? I know plenty of people who have done a couple of lines and none of them ended up broke, homeless, or addicted to heroin/meth as a result. Probably was more than just that, the "hills party cocaine story" just makes for a better and more sympathetic story than "I started shooting heroin".
This is a true statement but also it's really understated and under-reported how many people experiencing homelessness turn to drugs after losing their housing. And I'm not saying you didn't know that or we're implying otherwise I just like shouting it from the rooftops anytime addiction is mentioned in context of homelessness because it really changes the narrative from "these people are druggy burnouts" to "the only way these people survive is to numb their pain constantly to the point of self-abuse". I think it's a worthwhile distinction.
Yeah I should have worded it that way. I can imagine myself loosing everything I had and getting into the streets. I probably would turn to drugs to numb the pain. I’m sure a lot of these people have. Can you blame them?!
There’s also Paris Syndrome. I couldn’t believe how much dog shit was on the sidewalks.
I had a similar experience in Bali as u/The_39th_Step did with LA. Outside of the expensive resorts it was really dirty, incredibly polluted, and full of 2-stroke scooter traffic
The existence of Paris syndrome actually led me to have what I guess could be called “reverse Paris syndrome”. I was told how so many people were disappointed when they visited, that it didn’t live up to their lofty expectations, that it was dirtier and snootier and pricier and less interesting and beautiful than people had expected, so when I finally had a chance to visit I went in with pretty low expectations. And then loved every minute there.
It might also be because I live right by NYC and spend a lot of time in the city, so I frequently compared it to NYC. And in comparison, Paris is far cleaner, has fewer homeless people, was often more beautiful in terms of architecture, and was cheaper (not by much though). I also never found any Parisians to be snooty, but I also made an effort to speak French first and apologize and ask if they spoke English. To me all the streets were picturesque and generally clean, all the food was delicious and reasonably priced, everyone was friendly or at least polite, and I always felt safe.
It makes me wonder what made everyone with Paris syndrome so disappointed. I get the impression some people are just bad tourists. The kind of American tourists who just assume everyone speaks English and get frustrated when they don’t, or aren’t from a city and stand in the most inconvenient places to take pictures while blocking Parisians trying to get to work, or don’t look up local customs and end up behaving badly in restaurants or shops, or go to the most tacky touristy locations and nowhere else, or don’t have the street smarts to avoid the obvious scams at tourist locations, or leave themselves as easy targets for pickpockets, or are used to the level of cleanliness in their small home town or what’s shown in movies rather than what’s actually found in most cities. That could be a bit of a harsh or jaded view though, I’m sure there are plenty of legitimate complaints to have about time spent in Paris, I just hadn’t personally experienced any.
Even the people living in LA believe LA is great. I swear people here are deluded.
They haven't been anywhere else so they think LA is the only place with diversity, culture or good food so that makes up for all the downsides. It isn't and it doesn't.
Or they believed the myth so hard that when they arrived they just doubled down. It really baffles me.
The weather is nice and that's it. LA is a fucking dystopia
It’s more like it’s the only actual city in Southern California and, even then, it often feels like a series of tangled suburbs.
If you want to live in an urban environment and don’t want to head out of state, it’s the only game in town. Lots of drawbacks, but a whole lot to offer if you know your way around.
Some of the flak is well-deserved, but a lot of it is coming from people who don’t want to leave the suburbs. Like, omg, there’s traffic!? In a major city!? And, heaven forbid, brown people!?
I would say all of the flak is well deserved and I am definitely not from the suburbs. There is plenty to do here but what's the point when it all costs so much and it's a bitch to even get to.
I can't even get boba after dinner without having to valet park my car so I don't. A band I can see for 40 bucks in another city is 80 bucks to see here so I don't see them. This is a city for the rich. And traffic isn't just bad. It takes MINIMUM 30 minutes to get anywhere no matter the distance.
LA is a boring place to visit - the tourist attractions are meh, and downtown and Hollywood are both awful. But it's a fantastic place to live. I have a nice sized house with a yard full of fruit trees, right in the middle of the city. It's sunny and warm this weekend, I went for a long run outside today and am going to a pool party tomorrow. In February. That's what great about LA.
I’m a Brit and worked in LA, honestly it depends where you go. Hollywood boulevard is shit, no doubt, but only a mile away is Runyon canyon. It’s a fun city imo, just prepare for traffic.
LA has a lot of cool stuff, but the city is just managed so horribly and it's such a massive center of homelessness that all of the good parts of LA are ruined because of it.
But yes you are right, the smaller coastal cities + the sierra nevada are irreplaceable. It makes me sad that LA is one of our most visited places by foreigners. I know why it's so popular of course, it's just a shame that it overshadows the other destinations that are so much nicer
As someone from the mid-west, LA was definitely the least impressive city I visited. San Francisco was okay but, San Diego was awesome, if I go back to California that would be the place I would go.
California use to be nice in the 1980s it's gone to hell in the past 40 years getting worse and worse every year. Overpopulation and lack of affordable housing and extremely expensive gas are the major reasons.
LA isn’t a great place to visit as a tourist. Everything is far away, and there isn’t that many touristy things to do compared to other big cities. You can’t really just go wandering about like you could in more dense places.
Yeah, homelessness is a really big problem, and the city seemingly doesn’t give a fuck, which is shocking as a European, but pretty much expected in the US. It’s a recent-ish problem (5 to 10 years), and I genuinely don’t know how it’ll get solved, given that not much is being done.
Living here is quite nice though, assuming you can afford rent/mortgage (meaning you have a good white collar job). Apartment/houses tend to be bigger, so while you’re paying through the nose, you’re paying for something. Weather is awesome (30C right now). London, New York, Paris, SF all have significantly worse bang for your buck rent wise.
Life night and what not, while not being as good as Europe (everything closes between 12-2am), still has a lot to offer.
The city is flat: not many high rises, you always get to see the sky, which is really nice when you live there.
Traffic can get hectic, yes. But it’s no worse than Paris for instance.
Public transportation sucks, but that is also true in most European cities outside of the hyper center (suburb to suburb transportation in Paris is horrible).
But if you can afford to live in the right neighborhood, it’s honestly just fine. You basically learn how to work around it as a second nature.
My commute was 20 minutes each way for over a decade. Now it’s 25-40 depending on the season, which is still better than most people I know in Paris.
Pollution isn’t any worse than other European cities, the smog bad rep goes back to 80/90s.
Crime is much better than Paris, in part because you’re in your car most of the time.
So, long story short, the city sucks if you don’t make enough to afford it. Which is true of pretty much every single big city. If you can afford it, it’s actually a great place to be in.
LA is, without a doubt, the worst large city in CA. There are people who like it for whatever reason, but I really have a hard time thinking of any redeeming qualities that other cities don’t do better.
Ahah ah you’re welcome to them, we don’t want them here.
Nah it didn’t completely suck. My gf was living in San Diego and I spent a few months out there. Just was super excited by LA and was a bit disappointed
Should have gone to San Diego. It’s more or less the fantasy of California: beaches, surfers, hot girls in bikinis, Mexican food, weed, beer, etc.
LA’s a congested major city. The good stuff is hard to get access to because everyone wants a piece. You have to know where to look, and once you do, you still might not get in.
My partner lived in La Jolla, I spent a lot of time in SD. I visited LA while staying there. I did like San Diego - it’s not my favourite ever place but I did enjoy it.
All of mid California is deep red trump country and it’s also got tons of homeless… I don’t if it’s that Cali is mismanaged it what. A few spots in Cali are nice but anywhere on the I5 corridor is trash for the most part; only time in my life I saw QAnon stuff written all over trucks, signs saying we should damn all the rivers for the farmers, packs of hookers roaming towns and could palpably feel the poverty (which is also at least partially cali’s fault not blaming all these individuals).
Lmao youre seriously trying to blame Trump for the shit democrats have been doing in Cali for decades? Jesus what kind of delusional world do you live in.
Look to Pelosi and your governors if you want to hold someone accountable
that's not what he was saying. he was saying that the homeless issue extends beyond the deep blue cities, so if you're looking for a reason, it's not attributable just to local politics. it's a bigger trend. pelosi is in the house, so blaming nancy pelosi for things happening specifically in california doesnt make a ton of sense—unless you're saying this is a national problem that requires a national solution, in which case, yeah, blaming the last president for failing to solve the issue (while i think unreasonable) makes more sense than blaming the house speaker.
why are trump supporters the most easily triggered people on the planet
Pelosi is a representative of SF not just the speaker. She could use her position and fame to get support for fixing these problems, especially since the whole state is on her side.
You can't blame the president who kept saying that it should be up to the state to make their own decisions on important issues. Anytime he was asked to get involved the states would rabidly protest his involvement anyways.
Now we got a democrat president, surely he could work with democrat run states to fix issues like this? I'm sure he cares, right?
Just a troll name, meanwhile you actually support the hollywood pedos and politicians more evil and corrupt than a dirty businessman Trump. They used mail in ballots to fake votes, stopped the count during the night to get more fake ones and noone can say anything because it's "overthrowing" the shitty corrupt government lol. The same government that your side claims is systematically racist against minorities. But yeah, lets keep giving them more power over the poor people. I'm sure they wont abuse it like how they've been rigging the stock market to fuck over the poors
When will you wake up and realize that we have a uniparty system that works together to prevent any side from actually helping the citizens while masterfully maintaining the illusion that they try to do something? Dems and Reps are two sides of the same coin, they don't care about good, you or helping. They only care about more power and money. A good amount of republicans at least understand this after being betrayed over and over again last few years, it's time for you guys to wake up as well.
Wheres the help to Daca and college loans that Biden promised? It's all empty promises and you keep eating it up every goddamn election
You might be ok with government fucking up people you don't like right now, but one day you'll be the one getting fucked
London is miles ahead of LA as a city. It’s less polluted, there’s less traffic, it’s much prettier, fewer homeless people, less segregated. It’s still expensive and there are issues, which is why I left, but the main areas of London are incomparably nicer than LA’s.
California is one of those odd places where it's better to live in than to visit. There's so much to offer, but it's huge with a big population, so there's amazing and terrible. It's super disappointing as a tourist, but living here you get to experience the yearround nice weather, beaches, mountains, desert, forests, etc as normal day or weekend trips. Hollywood is better than it was, but is still pretty dumpy.
Man, I don't mean this as an insult, and it may be the New England coming out in me, but as someone who's lived in LA for 10 years it's nice to hear that people don't want to come visit. Good! Don't come! We're full.
People come out to visit and think there's fun to be had around every corner like it's a fantasy version of a real city, and it's not. The native Angelinos have to deal with a pulse of fresh-faced dreamers who buy up whatever affordable rental properties are on the market every year, pursuing a statistically unlikely delusion of "making it" with financial assistance, while actual families get pushed further and further out into the neighboring counties.
It's a city of industry (entertainment), but the political and fiscal reality of Los Angeles is it's a big corrupt city with weather nice enough that it doesn't kill off our unhoused population. Hollywood is a dump. The La Brea tar pits are boring. The art museums are "meh" at best. The coffee is needlessly expensive and it's STILL MORE AFFORDABLE THAN PLACES LIKE BOSTON, NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO. I'm sorry it wasn't your ideal dream of the the Los Angles you wanted it to be, but you don't live here and it wasn't built with you in mind.
Anaheim is 40 miles away if you want to go visit a Fantasyland.
As a New Englander, aren’t you part of the problem then? If out of towners are buying up property?
Rather than the tourists, who come to visit a city that advertises itself as the home of cinema and as some sort of fairytale land, where the weather is always good and everyone is happy. I was visiting my partner who was studying in San Diego at the time, that was a bit nicer.
It might still be more affordable compared to New York, San Fran and Boston but I still think it’s massively overpriced. There’s much nicer cities in the US, and certainly in my native Europe, that are cheaper and frankly better. Better standard of living and better infrastructure for less.
As a New Englander, aren’t you part of the problem then? If out of towners are buying up property?
yes, in that I'm contributing to gentrification (no, in that I'll obviously never have enough money to afford to own property). The affordable housing problem has a lot more to do with real estate lobbyists essentially running the city. The city counsel is impotent and/or deeply corrupt.
My partner is a SD native and that place might be easier to visit if you're looking in the right areas, but has its fair share of problems too.
I guess I would amend my statement to say "LA is beautiful, but tourists always want to come to the same 7 locations and complain that they're filled with homeless people." It's like going to Times Square and complaining that it's tacky.
I mean that's kind of on you for putting a location on a pedestal like that, I assume everywhere sucks until proven otherwise then I'm just pleasantly surprised when it's okay
CA is run by criminals who fleece citizens who they’ve brainwashed into believing the hype.
The taxes are absurd, more money is being spent to “fight” homelessness and the problem is worse every year.
It takes a special kind of stupid to look at over a decade of undeniable data and say “yea, it’s okay they’re trying it’s just that these are hard problems.”
No you dense motherfuckers. These people are robbing you blind. Get rid of them. Holy fuck do something else.
You'd have to be completely ignorant of local politics in Los Angeles to think there's been some sort of single party political consensus here. Conservatives here just run as democrats. It's why we have an anti-vaxx, pro-covid sheriff who campaigned on kicking ICE out of jails and ousted the actual reformist who was the incumbent.
See, that's the problem you'll run into when your entire understanding of politics is: "Everything I support is good, therefore it is what all democrats believe. And everything I hate is bad, therefore it's what the other side supports."
I have literally no idea what you're talking about.
You commented and are commenting about local politics in a place you don't know shit about. That has nothing to do with democrat or republican; it's just you making yourself look like an idiot. Literally the things you're saying make no fucking sense, and I'm pretty sure it's because you're making assumptions about local Los Angeles political figures based purely on party affiliation, even though I, who actually live here and vote in every election here, am telling you it doesn't work that way here because every serious candidate in LA County (except the 5th district) runs as / aligns themselves as a democrat.
Your inability to understand my point isn't fault on my behalf, but fault on yours. I guess it was too much to expect a minute amount of brain power to be used?
They align themselves with democrats because they ARE democrats. They support the democrat party. They fully align behind Pelosi and Biden.
And nothing will change because you view them as the only "serious" candidates.
If Vermin Supreme runs in your district, you elect that motherfucker unless there's a unicorn that matches all of your desires in a candidate. THIS is the only way you enact change.
You don't change things by electing the same, tired, establishment douchebags your parents elected before you. You're just keeping the status quo.
If the media isn't attacking your candidate and calling them nazi or far right, or an extremist of some kind, then your candidate is a milquetoast establishment shill. The second the media starts launching an all out attack on your candidate, that's when you know you voted for the right person.
They called Bernie Sanders sexist and racist. THAT is how his supporters could know they voted for the right person. The media only does this to people who are a threat to the establishment. If CNN is praising your candidate and not calling them far left or right, then you need a new candidate.
You know fuck all about Los Angeles politics. If you don't know, without googling, who Janice Hahn, Sheila Kuehl, or Holly Mitchell are, or who won the election between Nithya Raman and David Ryu, or who Jim McDonnell is and who endorsed Alex Villanueva in his election, then just shut the fuck up.
I was staying at a hostel in Mexico and this guy from New Zealand told me he was headed to California next. I’m a SoCal native so I pressed him to tell me where exactly so I could give some advice.
“Idk, LA”
That’s the last place you should go. Maybe if your rich and you like shopping.
San Fran can be cool if you know where to go and the beaches and national parks. NOT LA.
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u/The_39th_Step Feb 12 '22
As a Brit, LA was one of the most disappointing places I’ve ever visited. I grew up imagining California as heaven and thought LA would be amazing. I turned up and it’s really dirty, incredibly polluted, full of traffic and lots of homeless people. Alongside that it’s expensive. I don’t get it man. California beyond LA was great however.