Perfect places to take the horses for a day ride.
So I should live in Santa Monica or Marina del Rey, depending on how much I want to spend?
Good God!!!
I faced traffic when I lived in San Antonio, but it was nothing compared to Dallas or Austin or Houston. I’m sure they’re nothing compared to LA. ’
Like I said before–one benefit of living in Smalltown USA is that I can roll out of bed at 7:30 a.m., and still be at work, dressed, shaven, coffee in hand, by 8:00. Today, my commute was 8 minutes instead of the normal 7, because I got stopped at two red lights instead of just one.
THe apartment and condo scene in Newport itself kind of sucks. Really its all large houses, and they don’t exist for under a million. Irvine is nice, but absolute suburbia. If you’re young and don’t mind a little culture, Costa Mesa is actually pretty cool and a bike ride to the beach.
As for the vibrancy of the finance scene, theres a ton of money, so you find a lot of alternative shops and money managers. Also a ton of real estate and the assocaited debt markets. There’s also this fixed income fund I keep hearing about.
Newport really isn’t an option if you work in LA. Its 1.5 hours to downtown on a good day.
The southbay cities (hermosa, manhattan, redondo beach) are actually a great option if you work downtown because the highways that go directly north actually work. So its probably a 30-45 minute commute.
In LA proper, I wouldn’t personally live downtown, but agree that its improved a lot and has become a good yuppie live/work area. If hipsters don’t offend you, look at Echo Park for affordability, then silverlake and los feliz are a little bit more expensive. The 10 moves both ways, albeit slowly, so you can live in Santa Monica if you are willing to do 45 minutes both ways. The key is to avoid the highway interchanges. If you work market hours, the mornings are easy.
Quite different from most other industrialized countries. You wouldn’t be complaining if you were in the auto industry.
Pretty much all of London would qualify as ‘downtown’ within an American context.
It’s been a while since I did trips from Pasadena / Glendale to downtown, but if I jumped on the 2, it was the least crowded freeway in LA. I always said, if I had to work downtown, I would live in Pasadena. Sounds like others have a different experience. Traffic does suck though. Funny, I went from Camarillo to SLO this last weekend. Santa Barbara folk hate LA because of the crowds, but the traffic in SB is worse than anyplace. That place is WAY overrated.
Depends on how long of a commute you want and how much you want to spend. My wife and I lived in Koreatown and enjoyed it alright. $1700 for a 1 bedroom in a newer building. Equidistant from the beach, downtown, and Universal City (where I worked for a few months).
One big negative about LA area that I hear a lot is poor public transit. So you would be driving into downtown, which is usually not fun in any city.
How many sqft are these ‘1 BR Apartments’?
If you like getting stuck in traffic for hours and hours, sure.
The beach (and beach cities) are nowhere close to downtown.
Also, distances in L.A. are measured in hours, not in miles. Car-hours, like light-years.
True, downtown is far in traffic, but the flow generally moves the other way.