10 Comments

'the sun is pleasant, but somewhat thin and unsatisfying, like a lot of British comedy.' Like a lot of (I'd argue more than british) American comedy too.

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I assumed the sentence was going to end, “like a lot of British sunshine” 🤣

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You have such beautiful insights but this type of writing is really limited.

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There's nothing philosophical about this at all!

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Oh lawd the pollution in LA though... Also the constant need to look and act a certain way and the endless vanity. It comes from the entertainment industry too. Perhaps I just know the wrong people there

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I totally get your line of thinking. I lived in LA for three months studying acting, and initially I got bitten by the LA bug, and wanted to go back there afterwards for quite a long time. But now I understand that I'm a European through and through and (probably) couldn't really live in LA on a permanent basis (although coming back would probably do me good in terms of psychological rewiring - Alain de Botton wrote that LA is a great city to come to terms with having worldly ambitions). It's very nice and very pleasant, but lacks that density (esp. historical density) and depth that I appreciate in Europe and which is very stimulating for the mind. Although I live in Warsaw, in which 90% of its density and depth was swept off the surface of the Earth in WWII and now it's basically like NYC in winter and like LA in the summer, but steeped in fucked-up European 20th-century history on the one hand and having a vibrant economy, modern lifestyle and a booming startup ecosystem (think SF) on the other.

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I visited LA and had free time there for the first time last January and the thing that made it intolerable to me was the knowing that it was in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet but that the city was designed to keep people from enjoying that. That was intolerable for me.

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I always appreciate a bald statement of incontrovertible objective facts ')

I'm guessing that, for one, you're not native to either LA or SF (and that you're a lot younger than me, 53). As a San Francisco native, it's easy for me to just say that you've gotten it back-asswards, and that "San Francisco is simply, obviously, and orders of magnitude better than LA and the entire surrounding cesspool of lesser, lower, dustier, anonymous paved desert sprawl that is the greater southern California megalopolis, in not just almost but, actually, every respect." Up here we're born knowing we're better than, well, not much, but at least better than LA, always and forever.

Your argument echoes that made recently by a ~friend of mine who also used to live in LA and now lives in the Bay Area and yet also loves to go on about how LA is "better" because of the tacos. He actually did also mention "tacos" as a reason that LA is a "better city." I'll give you that; San Francisco is not a taco town, it's burritoland—although at this point, cross-pollination means that you can get a damn good paper platefull of tacos pretty much anywhere along I-5, including the unmissable El Zaguan taco truck in Weed, CA, between the Pilot Travel Center (aka truck stop) and Grocery Outlet.

Aside from the burritos though, San Francisco is and was always about the geography, and the resulting quality of life. I can only take attempts to convince me that a "walk on Topanga Beach at sunset" is somehow comparable, let alone superior, to a trail run on the pristine singletrack of Mt Tam, in the shade of _actual trees_ (nowhere to be found in the entire LA basin) is an attempt a ironic humor, because, for one, to get to Topanga Beach you have to cross and/or drive down a six-lane highway, and once you're on the beach you're still in lung- and earshot of all that traffic barreling between Santa Monica and Malibu. LA is a desert basin full of roads and cars—and, yes, a wide variety of ethnic foods. San Francisco is one of the world's best natural harbors, surrounded by hills and open space, and you certainly won't go hungry here.

Talking to me about techs and nerds moving to or from Miami or wherever is immaterial. San Francisco does not define itself, nor its inherent superiority, based on who chooses to live here. It's the *place* that's better, and that's because it is an actual geographic place. LA does have more culture, but that's just people. It's self-referential, which is also why the people there do tend to look better. They're looking in the mirror.

I think that's the one thing I'd change about San Francisco. We already had the burritos, and now we have the tacos. Just give us the beautiful people, and then we don't have to have this argument any longer.

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There is plenty to complain about in LA: Always way too hot, and in many places a fairly depressing environment where everything feels like an island surrounded by cars, no people, just endless, unapproachable cars. And, few people to talk to, especially few who could be described as being in my tribe. Even people who _are_ in my tribe, are super far spread apart. I'm so tethered to the internet, simply because it is so hard to find anything good in the physical world here, especially nearby.

I like fog so much more than sunlight, and love technology, and furthermore have the exact same idealistic mindset you describe. In fact, in a diagram I saw of Bay Area subcultures, this huge amount of subcultures I am in where it is so hard to find people who even know about them a lot of the time… All were in that diagram! The Bay Area sounds so great in these respects. Yet, it is ludicrously expensive – I cannot really afford to move there – so I continue doing everything online instead, isolated physically.

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I lived in SF for over 10 years. When the pandemic hit, we packed up and moved to CO.

The fact that LA is only slightly cheaper was a negative. We wanted to significantly reduce expenses to give ourselves the ability to invest more in ourselves. The lower cost of living gives us way more runway for riskier startup bets.

Colorado is also beautiful and fairly liberal, but very conservative by SF standards. In some ways I like the political balance even though I am personally very liberal.

I strongly prefer the casual CO mindset over LA. More ambition would be nice, but people are far more approachable and it's easier to make connections. I don't like the money flaunting LA lifestyle.

LA does have better food though. Best tacos in the US and great overall culinary scene.

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