OT - To All You SoCal Guys (and Girls), Do you like it there? Options

[riverman]

My mind gets active when I have nothing to do, so while the site was down I started thinking about travel. I've always wanted to see California and one day I will, but I began to wonder 'Is it all it's cracked up to be?'

I think one of the reasons California looks so appealing is that it's always hyped in the movies and on TV - good weather, beautiful people, easy lifestyle, rust-free teeners. But the flipside of that is overcrowding, high cost of living, gang violence and smog.

I know that every place has it's qualities (southwestern Ontario - clean cities, safe neighbourhoods, high standard of living, gorgeous summers) and we all live where we live for a reason. But every winter all I want to do is get away. I hate the snow and the cold.

So tell me, is California all it's cracked up to be? For those of you born there, would you rather live somewhere else? For those of you who moved there, was it worth it?

[eeyore]

I was born in San Diego, spent years 0-9 here.
Lived in Germany years 10-16
Came back to San Diego and been here since.

I guess if you stay in a place long enough, your lifestyle and things the locale allows sort of fall into resonance.

In Germany I loved skiing winter and riding my bicycle in the summer.

Now I ride my motorcycle year-round. I'm the weird kind of biker that rides weekdays and drives a pickup truck on weekends. California also 'allows' lanesplitting, so this save me 10 minutes each way.

Occasionally I miss having for-real weather, just for the ability have some sort of time-lock. Years and seasons run together -- "When did I last work on such-and-such? Let's see. It was pretty hot, I was wearing short pants. Oh yeah! That was February of '02!"

Plus, the smog isn't so bad ever since we started parting out and cutting up rust-free teeners.