Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [19]
Long-range regional plans call for extensions of subway and light rail lines, but for now our advice is to double the time you think it will take to get anywhere (triple at rush hour), take your cell phone, and should you get stuck in traffic, be Zen about it. Those waiting for you will understand.
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However, the rest of SoCal tends to behave more like a ‘red state.’ We’ve heard progressive views met with ‘Well, that’s LA talking’ in Orange County, a conservative stronghold with congressmen like Chris Cox and Dana Rohrabacher. However, things are changing even here, as Democrats like Loretta Sanchez win long-held Republican seats in Congress. Conservative politics extend to San Diego and the desert areas, largely because of the high numbers of military personnel and wealthy retirees who live there.
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www.laobserved.com is a one-stop blog for media, news and media news.
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And then there’s the rest of California. It’s not unusual for Angelenos visiting San Francisco to be told point blank ‘Ugh!’, ‘How can you live there?!?’, ‘That place is a hellhole!’ and worse, and much of the interior of the state reviles LA for having ‘stolen’ its water. We wouldn’t call this a rivalry, though, as it seems to be one-way. Angelenos generally seem to like the rest of the state, or are indifferent to it.
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LIFESTYLE
LA presents a microcosm of America’s income disparities. Some of America’s richest individuals live in SoCal communities like Montecito, Malibu, Bel Air, Palos Verdes, Newport Beach and Rancho Santa Fe, and their domestic help might commute 1½ hours by bus. But the vast majority here is middle class. After all, this is the birthplace of the planned community. In 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, the national median household income was $48,201, compared with an LA County median of $51,315 (while the percentage below the poverty line in LA was about 15.4%, compared with 12.3% nationally).
In outlying communities (little-visited by tourists) in the West San Fernando, Santa Clarita and San Gabriel Valleys, many people live out the American dream in quiet residential subdivisions. SoCal’s poor are concentrated in certain inner-city neighborhoods and in towns in the inland valleys and deserts.
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San Diego’s carefree outward appearance belies a dark underbelly. Get the dirt in Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See by Mike Davis et al (2003).
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All this means that the very rich and very poor rarely mix except in certain beach communities. Everyone, it seems, likes the weather.
Beach Life
Grab your flip-flops, blanket and umbrella, your bike or rollerblades. Beach culture offers a respite from city life, and it’s so close. But which beach to choose? LA’s Venice used to be the definitive hippie beach and despite rising real estate prices, some of that aesthetic remains on its boardwalk, a mile-and-a-half-long party with performers, merchants and graffiti artists. Neighboring Santa Monica, meanwhile, is great for kids, including the amusement park on its pier. For views, visit Malibu, La Jolla or the innumerable Santa Barbara County beaches. For surf culture, try Orange County’s Huntington Beach or San Diego’s Encinitas, Mission or Pacific Beaches.
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LIFE AS AN ANGELENO Amy Balfour
Just who lives in LA? If you believe the stereotypes, they’re a flaky bunch. Liberal. Self-absorbed. Greedy. Botoxed and blow-dried. Though these adjectives may have a hint of truth for certain subgroups, with 4 million people crammed into the city’s 465 sq miles and 10 million jostling for space in sprawling LA County, no one label fits all.
How is LA’s ethnic diversity playing