To each their own.
I lived in Santa Monica and Malibu for 14 years. Left last year for family reasons. Wish I was back.
I lived in Santa Monica and Malibu for 14 years. Left last year for family reasons. Wish I was back.
The easiest way to love LA is simple. Move here, sublet til you find a job, then move into an apartment < 10 minutes from your job. (Or, if that's not doable, try to move opposite the flow of traffic.)
Moving here, picking a place, and then finding out that you have a 90 minute commute is just a recipe for hatred.
As far as the people -- Yes. There are a lot of self-serving actors, actresses, directors, etc. But there are 9.9 million people in this town, which means that even if the people you are inclined to like are a minority, there are hundreds of thousands of them. And the neat thing is, when they find you (and you them), you'll appreciate each other even more.
Talking to people from NYC, I frequently hear comments about how nice people in LA are. I think the gist of it is that people in 'the industry' have a serious need to network in order to find new work, since projects come and go. So unlike in NYC, where random strangers have nothing to offer you, here every burned bridge is potentially a career-killing blunder down the road.
It's really a shame that LA ended up so poorly designed; it's in such a beautiful setting and has one of the best climates in the world.
Not only do I have friends in other neighborhoods but I have friends in other cities, states, and countries. Some I see more often than others. We're still friends.
If I want to go to an event across town I plan accordingly.
LA has good schools and bad schools just like any other city.
It's not that LA isn't a nuclear city, it's just that LA is 5 nuclear cities all within a (traffic free) 30 minute drive of one another. So the problem is when people want to live in one city and work in another.
There are more than enough (schools, companies,etc) within any one 'LA' to restrict your search to that and not be missing out on a golden opportunity.
As far as the friends thing, that's true too, but like another commenter pointed out, they start to become long distance friends, so you make it a point to go hang out with them, and you just end up socializing more with friends in your neighborhood, which is natural because when you go out, you meet people who live near you, more often than not.