Interesting, I've fallen completely out of love with New York. Still enjoy visiting but no desire at all to live there. I would need to be paid some ridiculous amount of $$ to consider it, yet I will live in L.A. for pocket change.
It's a lifestyle thing...if you like cars and dogs and houses, not to mention mountains and beaches and having $$ to travel, the west is the best. This is not coming from some big city or NYC hater. When I was younger, it was my favorite place in the world. I've lived in Manhattan under very lucky circumstances, (including on 79th between Columbus and Amsterdam), and I have great, cool friends there. I see them all in L.A. anyways, so no loss there.
Between Guiliani and Bloomberg, they killed it for me with all these rules and laws and whatnot...cleaned the place up too much or something. Plus it's just ungodly expensive, which drives out a lot of cool people and attracts rich scum, IMO.
But it's still the great city. I just don't want to live there. I'm opinionated about these things, so YMMV.
I wish you good luck in whatever you do.