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