99 Reasons I Love Santa Monica and LA (After Moving From San Francisco)

  1. Palm trees.
  2. Trash and recycle bins lined up across the entire coast; clean sand. 
  3. Comedy shows.
  4. Nice strangers (usually).
  5. Perfect weather.
  6. Healthful living and food everywhere (thank you Erewhon).
  7. Environmentally-conscious people.
  8. Paper / compostable straws (I’m that guy). 
  9. Aesthetically pleasing women.
  10. Beaches with waves (EVERY beach does NOT have waves, stop telling me that). 
  11. CoLiving and furnished places available (you have no idea how much I hate moving). 
  12. A varied and growing industry (entertainment, tech, hopefully more that I can think of right now…plastic surgery?).
  13. Original Muscle Beach and The Green for calisthenics, gymnastics, and Acro yoga. 
  14. Ex-girlfriends (they actually are not all in Texas). 
  15. My goal is to get to 99 just so I can title this post 99 blah blah). 
  16. Zoos (animals anti-suck).
  17. Bird and electric scooters. 
  18. Less homeless people than SF (I haven’t checked any stats, just my observations). 
  19. Cleaner streets and less litter than SF. 
  20. A free parking lot (called the 405). 
  21. Deuce Gym (off-the-beaten-path-CrossFit-style gym). 
  22. Everyone thinks they’re an individual and some even are (walk through the Gold’s Gym in Venice)!
  23. Vitamin D
  24. The air quality isn’t THAT bad according to my app Air Matters.
  25. Am I really only a quarter of the way there, I’m so F-ed.
  26. Beach volleyball (which is fun in theory but I’ve been too busy/tired to do it yet here). 
  27. LAX is a hub to go anywhere you want. 
  28. It’s only an hour flight from people I care about, aka family. 
  29. Most people are going somewhere or trying to (ambition is cute).
  30. Tons of amazing hikes and nature spots within an hour drive. 
  31. Diversity of people. 
  32. Hope and dreams. 
  33. Festivals (Acro yoga, Eat Drink Vegan, etc.)
  34. It’s a cool enough city that friends will visit (with or without me).
  35. It has small, no-name commuter schools nearby like UCLA.
  36. Every area in LA is completely different (try convincing someone from Beverly Hills to visit Venice).
  37. Erewhon (it’s so good I’m mentioning it twice).
  38. Whole [Totally Affordable] Foods [Compared to Erewhon].
  39. When you ask people what they do they don’t always say “I’m in tech.”
  40. People ask you what you do less often than in SF.
  41. Don’t ask me what I do (else I might answer with “about what” or some similar premeditated but half-baked retort).
  42. I read that there is a sober bar.
  43. I get to see Kinobody and all his fanboys huddled around, occasionally
  44. Tons of fitness Instagram influencers (who doesn’t want more motivation live and in color?)
  45. I’m no longer even closest to the weirdest dude working out when I go to places like Muscle Beach.
  46. Trying to cross Lincoln Blvd offers great opportunity to meditate or spend idle time however you see fit.
  47. Amazing companies like Thrive Market and Tesla.
  48. The male-female ratio seems better than it was in SF. 
  49. You can overcome stereotypes as a guy by not being a d-bag. 
  50. Definitely not spending $100 at Wally’s for “wine and cheese” on a date I’ll never see again.
  51. Some people have ice baths and/or saunas in their home- that’s commitment!
  52. It gave me a month-long life high when I first moved. 
  53. You might see celebrities that partially made your childhood (I spotted Adam Sandler in Pacific Palisades).
  54. Despite common belief, you actually CAN walk to places (they have sidewalks and the whole nine).
  55. It’s large enough that you can entirely avoid certain areas that you dislike or have no interest in.
  56. It’s a short hop, skip, and jump to Newport Beach and San Diego.
  57. You can watch amazing comics like Neil Brennan perform.
  58. I’ve made it this far for only having lived there for 2 months. 
  59. If you want to go to bars but not stay up late and wreck your sleep you can do so during the day (e.g. Bungalow and Waterfront).
  60. Abbot Kinney St. 
  61. Modern and minimalistic architecture in Venice and Santa Monica. 
  62. You don’t have fly to Ibiza to take a pill (sorry the song came up while I was writing this). 
  63. Sunlife Organics.
  64. Buti Yoga.
  65. Cryotherapy (which is overrated and a one-time occurrence).
  66. Acro yoga jams on The Green on Sundays.
  67. There are more trees than I thought there would be for SoCal.
  68. Greater choose-your-own-adventure-ness to find your people/tribe and routine. 
  69. There’s always something to do, to an exhausting degree.
  70. It’s not humid (like other eternally sunny places like Miami). 
  71. Salesforce doesn’t own half the buildings. 
  72. Kippy’s Ice Cream (literally the best). 
  73. Bulletproof Cafe.
  74. Cafe Gratitude.
  75. I’m hanging on by a thread here, give me credit.
  76. Surfing.
  77. Grains of sand, just kidding that one doesn’t count. 
  78. Women are open and even welcome something else besides bars for a first date. 
  79. I’ll never have to explain where LA is.
  80. Sage restaurant is evidently amazing and the best vegan food, yet to try.
  81. Lots of bodywork places and specialists like Simply Stretch LA and the Stretch Lab
  82. Outdoor showers to rinse feet off after the beach, because tracking sand indoors SUCKS.
  83. It’s a city full of paradoxes (the richest and the poorest, the most environmentally-concerned and the most superficial and materialistic, etc.) 
  84. The water is warm enough in the summer to swim and cold enough during winter to tap into cold plunges and cold therapy.
  85. Where
  86. Would
  87. I
  88. Be
  89. Without
  90. La
  91. La
  92. Land?
  93. Live 
  94. Your 
  95. Dreams
  96. Every
  97. Single
  98. Day
  99. <3