Santa Monica Measured Residents’ Well-Being for Four Years | Hacker News Reader

Santa Monica Measured Residents’ Well-Being for Four Years

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44 pointslnguyen33 comments

Former Santa Monica resident. The problem with Santa Monica feels like the problem with Silicon Valley.

It's nice if you can afford to live there, but current residents seem hell-bent on blocking new housing.

In particular I'm thinking of the Bergamot Transit Village [1], a proposed mixed-use project that spent years in limbo. Current residents complained about traffic impact.

Eventually, the developers gave up and turned it all into office space, which has a similar traffic impact, but didn't involve the same level of scrutiny.

[1] https://la.curbed.com/2015/1/9/10003866/developer-giving-up-...

You basically just said its expensive to live there, and residents should somehow feel bad for not making their city worse, to support more people.

Of all the cities in the 25 different countries I traveled to, Santa Monica is definitely up there. Great location in LA, amazing food, vibrant neighborhoods, beautiful (and mostly friendly) people. Biggest downside to me is that there isn’t enough tech opportunities there. Else I’d move there in a heartbeat.

I'm here. I moved from Austin (call me crazy). I haven't seen a slowdown in recruiter spam since I've arrived.

Isn't the Venice/Santa Monica area known as Silicon Beach? I was under the impression there were relatively many media related software jobs there.

I was just there 2 weeks ago and loved it. I like that area much more than some of the popular neighborhoods like SilverLake, etc.

Silicon Beach is used to refer to Los Angeles.

Silicon Beach refers to the Westside of LA. Most tech in LA is located on the west: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Beach

No, it’s generally considered to be the area west of the 405 from north of LAX to the Santa Monica mountains. Hundreds of tech companies, especially startups. (I work at one of them.)

It is.

When you say there aren't enough tech opportunities, what cities is this relative to?

> beautiful people

No kidding. Quite a distraction, though.

Not sure how long ago you were here, but there's an increasing number of tech opportunities here and nearby. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Hulu and more are all in or next door to Santa Monica. Over at Riot Games, we've got at least a hundred open engineering positions ranging from entry level to senior leaders. There are dozens of startups.

No, it's not the bay area and it never will be. But I'm fairly certain any reasonably skilled engineer is not going to have trouble finding work on the westside of LA. Compensation is competitive too, since we have to lure folks down from the bay but our cost of living is not nearly as expensive.

Santa Monica people look like a pretty happy crowd to me whenever I get there. Perfect weather, lots to do. As long as you can afford it.

> Perfect weather

People say this about a lot of places in California, but it's not my experience. "Perfect weather" seems to mean a dystopia of identical days, no changes, no wind, no clouds, just constant sun. Living in Alameda/Oakland drove me crazy in the summer. Nothing ever changes, every day is exactly the same. Yuck.

Santa Monica weather isn't nice for everyone. But I get it, there's a lot of sun and not much rain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica,_California#Clima...

Sounds a lot better than the 2 seasons we have here in Pittsburgh: summer and winter. Especially with the deep-freeze we've have this winter.

similar to Calgary, AB - though we often get several day-long autumns and a series of 25 C degree temperature swings starting in January tricking you with the promise of an early spring...

I think weather a few miles in from the coast is pretty good. They often get fog but also a lot of sun. It also never gets hot. I live 40 miles inland and there the sun and dryness can be oppressive and relentless. I never thought I could get too much sun but now I crave bad weather. I can live without German winters though.

There's something about late summer California nights that I haven't experienced anywhere else. It just feels (and smells) beautiful the second you step outside. It's the one thing I miss most living in NYC.

I guess my point is the spectrum of weather is very narrow but there's still some diversity.

I grew up with hot, dry summers in a semi-desert environment and still to this day love rain. Meanwhile, four hours away on the coast, 7+ months of fog & rain has massive health impacts

Interesting how divergent perspectives can be on this. Your dystopian view is my utopian view. As a California native, I literally exclaim "it's a beautiful day!" every single morning when I look outside and see it's perfectly sunny and blue.

For someone who probably has mild seasonal affective disorder, sunny days really make a considerable boost in my mood.

I live in the North of England, day after day of blue sky/sunny days would drive me crazy inside a couple of weeks.

I like rapidly changing weather.

My friend moved to Scotland and had a baby there. As toddler, one day she pointed up and exclaimed "look! there's a hole in the clouds!".

I lived in Los Angeles for 6 years and in fact worked in Santa Monica. Being from Kentucky, where we have stunningly gorgeous fall leaves, I found the constant brown grass and palm trees to be depressing. None of the firey reds, oranges, or yellows you get from maple and oak trees. No white christmas, just brown mostly dead plants unless you go to beverly hills where they use far too much potable water simply on their lawns, etc.

The weather in Los Angeles is quite nice. I worked at 2nd & Colorado (the floors above the McDonalds are office space). My wife and I would meet there, walk to the pier to get a churro, and then have a nice dinner at the promenade a few times per week. Super nice for a vacation, but still I did miss actual weather or the beauty of a thunderstorm. Different strokes for different folks I suppose!

My experience was that Santa Monica was too hot once you got more than a mile from the beach (I lived 2 miles from the beach). People say they loved the weather but almost everywhere I've lived in CA was miserably hot in the summer. Poor apartment design may have had something to do with this as well.

Also, it was fairly hostile to cycling (albeit better than anywhere else I've ridden in southern California). Gotta say, though, the pool at Santa Monica College was spectacular, and the quality of instruction in their night classes is how I got my career started (and learned a bit of German!)

I can certainly relate. It's definitely awesome having Los Angeles as your home base, somewhere you can come home to and know what to expect and how it will feel. That excitement of coming home to a sunny and beautiful Los Angeles from a bloody cold climate after traveling is what makes this place have the best weather in the world.

But don't get me wrong, it does get old. Whenever rain is in the forecast, it gets me and many others pretty damn excited. That's why often times I'll go up to Seattle for a week just to work in the rain.

Have a look at Mark Twain's remarks in Roughing It. Some from the East and Midwest take to California weather, others (Twain, my wife) don't.

I want to believe it's a local cultural thing. We, the locals and the companies, definitely encourage our friends and employees to be happy and healthy.

The 70-80F always sunny weather and relative affluence definitely helps too.

The south side of Santa Monica (Main Street, away from the Promenade and tourist area) is essentially a small town. I know a lot of people not from work or leisure but just from walking up and down Main Street. I don't know a lot of their full names but you tend to make a lot of "heavy acquaintances" here that really improve your quality of life and make you feel more connected in a relatively alienated metro area.

When I had to leave Santa Monica for a few months in 2014 I had a number of people I knew from walking around town excited to see me back and noting my absence. It's a strange thing to have that level of familiarity with your extended neighbors, especially in the midst of such an anonymous city.

It is also radically expensive to live here. It helps to be in engineering. Most of my close friends employed in entertainment, fashion, and office work have been pushed out of Santa Monica and the Westside and into the Valley over the past 5 years.

That's pretty cool. Just moved out here and have been wondering about how to meet people. Maybe I'll do what you do!

Just moved from Main Street to the Beverly Grove area and I can attest that I knew a lot of people by face (and dog) but not by name. Having moved here from Boston I found the neigborhood remarkably friendly and welcoming.

Link to actual data instead of clickbait : https://wellbeing.smgov.net/about/wellbeing-index

Is it really clickbait though?

The article felt well written and useful enough to stand alone. The data you linked has nothing to follow, and seems broken for me - several charts are showing no data and the text is misplaced (https://i.imgur.com/UzZJdMc.png).

It is! The actual article title is "A California City Measured Residents’ Well-Being For 4 Years. What Lawmakers Discovered Surprised Them."

The simple fact of a city measuring residents' well-being is not really interesting. Even after quickly skimming the article trying to find the answer, I still don't know what lawmakers discovered that was surprising to them.

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