Just got back from holiday in LA
 

Well it's been over 35 years since I went to Cali for anything other than training and man has it changed. True I was doing the touristy stuff with the family, but man was it expensive.

A few things were interesting/strange, I only saw 6 Porsches in a week and 3 were Cayenne's where was everyone :)
Nobody anywhere took a debit card unless it was a Visa or Mastercard one; it's like carry around a WAD of cash or use Visa, kind of strange compared to everywhere else...
Traffic was BRUTAL, it took us 2 hours to go 37 miles!, no one used their signal lights not even the cops (ok, maybe 1% of people did), and doing 70 Mph 1/2 a car length DOES lead to rear-enders (saw 3)

Talking to a cabby, I was surprised that being all Eco-friendly CA does not mandate that transport vehicles (cabs, vans, buses, etc) have to be low emissions? He was saying most (cabs) are just gas and his was propane, but I did see a natural gas pump (I think that's what it was). And there was a LOT of transport vehicles

It was nice to see the parks had a lot of healthy choices, we ate right everywhere and I was glad to see we could get good healthy food for the kids too. (there were a LOT of over weight kids from everywhere at the parks)

All in all a lot of fun, no quakes, friendly folks and good food (loved Joe's crab shack), but hardly any exotics in sight, maybe have to go to malibu next year :D

Bob

Yep. They were all in Malibu on Mulholland Highway. Especially New Year's Day. It was a zoo.

I'll have to go back too. It was about 30 or 35 years since I was there. I remmember it was just an ordinary looking town that just went on and on and on and on and on on on.....

Glad you had a great time here. My relatives will not drive in LA when they visit from Calgary. I was shocked one winter when I signaled a car actually slow down and wave his arm to let me in. Here, that means do not let the driver in when they signal. I need to not tailgate when driving elsewhere. I bet one look at my plate, the are already giving me lip. Everything else is a pretty penny here, but food is about the same as everywhere else. I had a pepper steak at a place called Moxies in Calgary. it was one of the best I have had in a long time. I understand they are only a run of the mill place?

Yes i could tell the difference in te beef, but we are knwn for our Alberta beef.

I did think the carpool lane was a good idea, but i didn't understand the stop/go light at the on ramp :)

Moxies is just a chain here.

I can't say that I find LA (in normal day to day stuff, hotels, restaurants, etc.) any more expensive than Canada....and with the dollar more or less at par, a whole lot cheaper than it was. I think that if I owned something nice to drive in LA (with it's absurd traffic) I'd only take it out at select times. I know I saw quite a few wild cars in the area just north of LA along the coast (Santa Barbra, Ventura, etc) I was in Italy this spring and on the trip I visited the Amalfi coast, you would've thought everyone drove POS's due to how few unsmashed cars you saw running around. Turns out that everyone has a "going out of town" fancy ride and a tiny disposible smashed up POS which was the DD. Cheers

It spaces the input of merging traffic. Otherwise a blood clot of vehicles will come on at one time and you get brake lights. One idjut braking will cause massive slow downs as far back as a mile when traffic flow is high.

Dude - youre from Canada and you don't even mention the weather we've been having??

HUGE drop from yesterday...Only gonna be 75F.

Hey dude. It depends where u live in Canada. In Alberta we have had some record high temps recently. It seems like we hardly have a winter. Still cool compared to u though:)

I was just there last week/weekend. Didn't see traffic as any greater issue than anywhere else, but knew what roads to avoid.... there's always several ways to go. Saw so many exotics that it became a yawn. Denis and I were sitting in a restaraunt in Westwood and saw a brand new (still temp tagged) Ferrari 458 drive by, with a new M3 in chase. Saw a new Porsche GT RS 4.0, a Carrera GT, Rolls Royce Phantom, and the list goes on.....
Paid $3.49 for gas, which is 20 cents more than home, but that's still less than 10% more. Paid $120 a night for a four star hotel downtown (Westin). Food is the same as anywhere.

Maybe we were just in two different parts of the city, or have different perspectives/baselines :D

You didn't go to the right parts of town.

Well, unless you're comparing to Beijing, Tokyo, Eritrea, etc :D

You just missed the good old days. My girlfriend says all the orange groves were bulldozed by the early '70s to make room for more houses. Prior to that, you could smell the orange groves at night. A simpler better time...
_

Grocery store prices are the same or less as the midwest
Fast food prices are the same
Dive diners are the same
Moderate/chains are the same
"Nice" places are the same

Only the most elite, esoteric "places to be seen" are extravagant.... but then they can be stupid expensive anywhere in the world.

Traffic - we drove home to San Marcos from Santa Barbara on New Years day. Took the 101 South to 5 South and hit Hollywood area at 1:00 pm. No traffic!!! WTH?? Entire drive took 2 hrs 37 minutes and that included a 10 minute stop at Subway in Oxnard. The same drive has taken me as long as 5+ hours.

Agree with ^Eric. I travel quite a bit and find that prices follow quality pretty much the same wherever I am. The only two exceptions to that is anywhere on the Las Vegas strip and in Tokyo where everything is about 2-3x more expensive.

I think that Eric was referring to food prices and Todd meant food quality/selection(?) My other city is Minneapolis and I find food prices to be higher there than CA., if anything. Not much, but noticeable to me since I eat out a lot.

The selection of good quality/cheap food is always better in big cities if you know where to look. Although Minneapolis and St. Paul have some great ethnic food, (corresponding with immigrant populations represented as is always the case), + that part of the Midwest has the best beef anywhere in the world and some truly great, old steak restaurants that are institutions.

CA. has the best/freshest produce and best food in general, IMO and IME. Glad you enjoyed yourself here.

I think that was the misunderstanding. Globalization has equilibrated food costs to a fair degree but I think that in CA it tends to be easier to get fresh produce.

I was referring to diversity and quality of food. I've been to a number of places in the US and have yet to see the diversity of ethnic foods that exist in LA anywhere else.

Try NYC some time.

LA, where else can you buy Ethiopean food from a Korean, cooked by an Salvadorian?

That's not the indoor ocean you have there? :)