Apr 11, 2009

Things I have learned in California

1. Californians drive like bats out of Hell. Theory: It's easy to go fast when you own a BMW, Quattro Audi, Mercedes, and the like.

2. Californian motorbikers have a death wish. If there is at least an inch between two cars, they will pass you by zooming through it.

3. Los Angeles, in comparison to Irvine, is a big dirty looking shit hole with tons of graffiti and trash everywhere. I am glad to be in Orange County. Although, there are nice little areas here and there near the beaches. Still kinda run down and old.

4. When I was in Nashville, there weren't too many half asian kids around. Now I feel lost in the sea of spikey black haired, big brown eyed dudes that look almost like me. Now I know how ya'll white people feel... boring and ubiquitous. Chuckle at my own joke.

5. Teeth whitening and hair removal is aggressively advertised out there. I am going to get my teeth whitened, and that meadow of hair right above my ass crack BEGONE soon! I think I also want to get Lasik.

6. There's a lot of pretty girls out here, and because of it, the standard o' good looking has been raised. Nashville girls that would have been a strong 8 are now reduced to like 6.5 or 7. I'm just kidding?

7. People are much more concerned about health here than in Nashville. Lots more gyms, bike lanes are EVERYWHERE.

8. There are HUNDREDS of awesome places to eat. Peruvian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Greek, etc. Even the cheap fast food places have better, delicious food than places like O'Charleys, Chili's, etc from the South. You would think there would be alot more fat people out here, but apparently everyone works out.

9. Everyone seems to be much more genuinely NICER (except on the road) in public.

10. The gas here isn't that expensive. $2.30.

Overall, when I was in Tennessee and anyone would mention California, the first thing they would say was "It's so expensive to live out there."

It seems people get paid accordingly. I live the same lifestyle I did in Nashville, actually better, but in a nicer climate, better food, and more seemingly happy and progressive atmosphere.

11. Toni, Toni, Toni said, "It never rains in Southern California..." It's not necessarily true. In actuality, it sometimes does. Here's a story about rain.

I threw out my coffee onto the parking lot pavement in front of Matt.

Jimi, "Was that wrong, the rain will wash it away..."

Matt, "Well..."

Jimi, "It doesn't rain much here..."

Matt, Chuckle

Toni, Toni, Toni should have said, "It rarely rains in Southern California..."

I guess that didn't have the same vibe and ring to it, but yeah, it rains, but very little.

12. Californians, at least in OC, throw away alot of good stuff. I'm somewhat ashamed, but I got some perfectly good furniture from beside the trash. I saw the exact same thing today at IKEA on sale for $129.

The people whose apartment Im renting/housesitting, found a perfectly good, working 600m Dell laptop beside the trash. WTF!

7 comments:

snarkygal said...

Yeah compare a planned community of 200,000 that's only been in existence since the l971 to a city with over 3.8 million. There are plenty of nice parts of LA with no graffiti and trash.

:-(

Andrew Lapinski-Barker said...

Dude you think California drivers are bad? You should see the ones here in China, its like a near miss every 5 seconds, no one obeys the lines including the cops and not a single person has gotten in an accident yet, its incredible. Ikea is the roxxors, I'm jealous you have one near you

jimiyo said...

snarkygal: im sure there are nice parts.

Andrew: hahah IKEA is awesome, but its scary. stuff is cheap, but its like... well.. i just bought several hundred dollars worth of cheap stuff. LOL. easy to be like.. OOO.. i like that... Ooo i like that too.

Anonymous said...

I actually thought the drivers, from my 1.5 day visit there last week were extremely good drivers (they weren't poking around driving overly cautious) and I liked the aggressiveness. Like you I didn't care at all for LA except for the nice areas where the huge majority of vehicles were in the 6 figure range - where do they get all that money???

I also read through an apt guide and the prices were not expensive, when I was there about 10 years ago they seemed to be much higher than now (were ~1500/month compared to around 1100/month now - relative average of course).

The quantity of food and the costs were kick ass, but I think even better in northern california as you weed out the overwhelming number of wet back restaurants and introduce even more asian cuisine ($6 bento boxes!!!! in jap town). California is hard to beat, you should live like a tourist for the first couple of years - just too many friggin people, and mexicans... :)

snarkygal said...

I don't live in a "fancy part of town" and there is no trash. Yeah, there is a bit of graffiti, but it is cleaned up pretty fast.

We drive fast, but we are good drivers. LA is so spread out, if you don't drive fast, it will take you forever to get anywhere LOL. But, most of the time on the freeways, it is bumper to bumper (at least at rush hour) so you don't go more than 10 mph anyways.

X said...

Good to hear you are digging it out here. Good weather, good food, good looking girls...what else could you ask for?

LA can be cool, but I prefer to live day in and day out in OC.

Mark said...

Yeah Cali if nice place!
Downtown LA does look like a dump at first look but their are many interesting places around...Check out Korea town!... dynamic and giant you would think its a small city within LA...Crazy!....oh and don't forget about Thai town, Little Russia, Japan Town, and Ethiopia town!...very interesting...

Speaking of OC...
Just wait till summer comes...
Newport Beach July 4th!...
out of control!....
they close off all off Balboa Blvd. and the whole place turns into one big zone!
Watch out for the girls who say they are over 18!