Korean Job Discussion Forums

[TheFonz]

[pocketfluff]

I've only read the first page of the thread so far, but I have to ask everyone to clarify where exactly in Los Angeles they live/have lived.

LA is not like NYC or other cities in that it is spread out over a vast part of land. You could live in downtown Los Angeles for 10 years and not know what the city as a whole is like.

That said, I've lived in suburbia Glendale (only making the "suburbia" emphasis for those not familiar with LA) and its surrounding neighborhoods, near South Central (went to USC), and Koreatown. Glendale, when I left it, was a burgeoning city full of whites, Armenians, Koreans, and a whole lot of other races. There was nothing you could want for (lots of ethnic stores/restaurants), traffic was a breeze, and the beach and mountains were in day-trip range.

South Central, or the area around USC, was fine in terms of safety, but I stuck to the immediate area surrounding the campus. There was still the yearly mugging/fraternity rape stories in the news, but that's typical of every college campus near a big city. Beach was 10 minutes away, Arrowhead mountain was 2 hours away. Everything was in reach: Sunset Blvd., downtown, artist districts Los Feliz and Silverlake.

Koreatown is crazy in terms of noise. Lots of noise - boys with their rice rockets and pumped up bass, helicoptors, sirens, etc. But you can't beat the proximity to everything in Los Angeles. Marginally safer than South Central. If you want downtown city life without the insane prices, Koreatown is the place to live.

In general:
As in any city, traffic is insane. So is pollution. However, you just cannot beat the weather, beautiful beaches, and the proximity to everything. Crime is a problem, but that goes for any other big city. I feel safer walking around metropolitan LA than I do in DC.

Sure, there are fake people, but there are idiots everywhere. Actually, I find that people in Los Angeles are much more progressive and open-minded about new things, which is a plus in my book.

And I'll take earthquakes any day over hurricanes and tornadoes.

[ella]

I grew up on the freeways, you just work around the busy times like you do in any big city. I made sure I never lived more than half an hour from where I worked and picked jobs with hours that would keep me off the freeways during the worst of it; working, for example, from 7:00 - 3:00, so I was at work and home again before either the morning or afternoon rush hour. I think people get intimidated by the sheer number of cars. You can arrange it so you're at the gym or Disneyland or shopping or wherever you like after work during rush hour. You find ways to get things done where you are. It's not that big a deal. It's also a matter of knowing where and when to get on and off the freeway - that's where your Thomas Brothers comes in.

pocketfluff makes some good points about location. I grew up in Redondo but I've lived and worked in Alhambra, South Pas, San Marino, Santa Barbara, Montecito, and east L.A. People like to lump L.A. county and its surrounding areas all together but they're definitely not the same, especially in terms of air quality. You can't just say, "Oh, there's bad air quality." The beach cities don't have the pollution of the valleys and Riverside and San Bernadino counties. I practically hold my breath when I drive through areas like that, but the air quality at the beaches is great.

Something I miss about home is the high quality produce. I didn't know how really good we have it until I tried living outside soCal. I wondered why people didn't like to eat well until I discovered produce doesn't look or taste all that great when it's trucked in from out of state. So much of it on the east coast was mediocre. What I've found here in Arizona is just sad. Freshness matters.

Another high quality product in soCal is fitness. Both ACE and IDEA have their headquarters in San Diego and the overall quality of fitness instruction in southern California isn't just high, it's some of the very best in the world. For many years UC Santa Barbara had an outstanding training program for aerobics instrcutors that was the only one of its kind on the planet and it still shows in the quality of classes there (and all up and down the coast).

You can find superficial people wherever you want but in soCal you get one heck of a lot of support for a healthy lifestyle both in diet and fitness. When you have all kinds of delicious, healthy food at your fingertips and you can step outside any time of the year, day or night, and exercise, that's a combination that's hard to beat.

[Yaya]