Across the Miles, My Different Lifestyles: L.A. Edition

‘It must be SO great to live with your best friend’ was a common response I received when friends learned I moved to L.A.

I’d often reply with something like, ‘It’s been 3 days since I’ve seen her and I only got to talk to her for 15 minutes.’  Given that we had completely opposite schedules where I typically worked 9-12 hours during the day from home and my best friend went to school subsequently working 2 jobs that were mostly night shift, spending 1+ hours one way commuting with traffic, it wasn’t what people imagined when I said I moved in and lived with my best friend.  The moments where we could actually sit down and catch up were precious and too rare, making me wish we had more of those.

Born and raised in NorCal, I was conditioned to have “hella” dislike for SoCal, which apparently is generally a one-sided rivalry. But due to certain life circumstances, I moved to L.A. mid-2013.  While I looked forward to living with and having my best friend’s support starting a fresh new chapter in my life, I anticipated having to make some adjustments.

I once had a flight out of LAX airport which is 45 minutes away from Arcadia (per Google Maps) and was sweating bullets when 45 minutes into the ride I was moving barely 2mph and nowhere near the airport.  I had never felt so stressed out starting a vacation and ended up being the last person to board my flight since it took 1.5 hours to get to the airport due to traffic. I’d often ask my best friend how far any given place was and often received ‘About 45 mins depending on traffic’, quickly learning, that caveat could mean an hour and a half or more.  L.A. county spans ~34K square miles, while the Bay Area is only ~7K square miles. Factor in traffic, which is notoriously bad regardless of where you are going or what time of day it is, means people in SoCal spend A LOT of time in the car. More recently, I’ve been picked up from LAX with my ride saying it took them about an hour from exiting the freeway to getting to the terminals of the airport, which is approximately 1 mile in distance.  This was not the first time I’ve heard this, with one even asking their ride to let them out of the car so they could walk the remaining way to the terminal since it would be faster! It has gotten to the point where if I have to take a flight in or out of the LA area, I will without hesitation spend more money on the flight to leave from either Burbank or Ontario airport instead of dealing with the traffic and long security lines around the LAX airport.  I do highly recommend both Burbank and Ontario airports because not only are they much less congested than LAX, but getting through security or picking up baggage has never taken me more than 10 minutes. There have actually been numerous occasions I experienced only 1-2 people in the security line!

Aside from the traffic, having a long history of being involved in several car accidents (none of which were my fault) in NorCal I often worried I would get into another car accident because I experienced how terrible drivers (whom more often than not were Asian!) are in the Arcadia area almost every time I was out driving. I have had to swerve, brake or change lanes to move away from a car I’m behind more often times than I can count because an Asian driver (yes, I would look to see what ethnicity the driver was) would drift into my lane, change lanes suddenly without signalling or apparently looking over, hit their brakes hard – sometimes without any car in front of them, or worse yet ride their brakes going 15 mph while the remaining traffic around them are going 30mph. I have never exclaimed at other drivers as much as I have in L.A.  As a female Asian driver myself, who has driven on the west coast, east coast and in between, especially around Texas, my experience has been that Asians appear to be the worst drivers I’ve encountered on the roads and there are a lot of them in the Arcadia area. As a result of hating the driving experience, I found myself averse to going out. This significantly affected my lifestyle in L.A. as I become somewhat anti-social, not making the effort to go out and meet up with people, not wanting to deal with the frustration of driving around L.A.

Despite frustrating Asian drivers, with a large Asian community, several great Asian restaurants abound, but the one cuisine that surprisingly disappointed me was Mexican.  I’m not sure if I simply didn’t find the right places, but I could not find a great burrito, as I was accustomed to easily getting around The Bay Area, despite being closer to Mexico.  While there are places I do make a point to hit up whenever I return to SoCal, such as getting a Japanese cheesecake from the Santa Anita mall, I would say overall, there are several other metropolitan areas that have the same if not a better variety and delicious food options as L.A.  As for the drinking scene, SoCal has great breweries and I actually switched from being a wine drinker (influenced by Napa in NorCal) to a sour beer lover, with my favorite brewery located in Placentia, “The Bruery”. That is one place I actually would willingly drive out to so that I could pick up bottles of my favorite sour beers!

With several more million people and their cars on the road in SoCal than NorCal and without ocean breezes inland, smog is always visible as a gray film often obscuring the horizon’s view, regularly included in weather reports as haze.  It is amazing how something you do 24 hours a day everyday can be taken for granted and I realized how much I enjoy simply breathing when I’m not in L.A. and at another location that actually has clean air! After several months and especially after returning to L.A. after being gone for a couple weeks at a time, I realized the bad air quality was causing my almost daily nasal/chest congestion, which really sucked because living in L.A made breathing unpleasant!  This only made me want to take trips out of L.A. to other places to get a breath of fresh air.

Since L.A. is driving distance to The Bay Area (6 hours), Las Vegas (4 hours) and San Diego (2 hours), I found myself taking more road trips, appreciating the convenience of being able to jump in the car for a spontaneous getaway, to visit friends and family, since both travelling and spending quality time with loved ones became more of a priority. As long as I left the L.A area during times where traffic was not at its peak, the drives, even to The Bay Area at 6 hours, felt much easier than driving 2 hours in traffic in L.A.

The one super easy adjustment I made was SoCal weather, finally able to enjoy hotter temps (80s-90s) and refreshingly cooler, but not too cold for my taste, evenings (60s-70s).  I loved being able to live in shorts, skirts, dresses, tank tops, short sleeved tops and flip flops almost year round because the temperature was so moderate regardless of the season.  

As for the people in SoCal, my impression is many are more attentive with appearance and focused on their wealth or status in one way or another, whereas I see NorCal people being less conspicuous in both areas. While people come off generally nice in the entire state, it seemed to me people in SoCal were more often fake as I’d hear negative talk behind others backs, sometimes simply overhearing strangers conversations in public.  Of course this is not to say all people in SoCal are like this, or that I didn’t experience this in NorCal either, but I did notice it more often. And living in the east coast, I rarely came across this, as people were upfront with how they felt about you especially if it was negative. Some consider NY’ers rude, but I appreciate the blunt openness about them and prefer this style to the seemingly fake CA style of being nice but talking opposite behind their back.  

It was late 2015 when I received the call that changed my life, my younger brother unexpectedly passed away. After initial grieving, I decided it was time to make a major change in 2016. Stay tuned for my next “Across the Miles” post to see how this life changing traumatic event prompted my next move to a different place.