I mean when it comes down to it, southern California is definitely more well known for giving an experience of "warm sandy beaches" than it is for "life in the big city", this is why I feel like LA falls flat on giving a "city life" experience, and the beaches of LA are nothing to brag about, though Venice Beach can be kinda cool, but it is a bit of a sleazy place. I have a huge fondness for riding subway trains and for pretty looking vintage style apartments with fire escapes, both of which LA has a small amount of, but very small amount. I mean "warm sandy beaches" is not really my cup of tea, but I can totally understand how it can be for someone, and if you want the warm sandy beaches experience of living in southern california I would suggest living in places like santa barbara, Malibu ($$$), Orange County ($$), or San Diego ($), San Diego has a small city feeling to it but it's too laid back for my tastes. Quite honestly the only really solid reason I can see for someone wanting to live in LA is to work in the film industry, and it really is a big industry and you can get pretty far if you meet the right people and play your cards right, as well as giving the effort and dedication required.
As for my employement status, well... I tend to get some dirty looks from some people when they find this out about me but I come from a family that is decently well off, so I don't have too much money problems, though I'm definitely not happy or fulfilled to live this way and especially lately since I'm getting a little older (24) I've been putting much thought into what I'm going to do to make myself feel fulfilled, feel like I accomplished something and just overall happy. I could definitely stay in LA and continue to try to take myself further working in film production, but with the amount of douche bags that work in the industry and how I'm just not enjoying this city as much as I enjoyed Chicago I just don't see it as worth it for me. Working in film/entertainment can really be great for some people though, I just don't see it like that for myself.
Now as for London, much like bagochina/seedless's experience living in NYC I basically did jack shit, and rent is fucking expensive as FUCK out there, imagine getting an apartment in NYC and instead of paying what you would in dollars you pay it in sterling pounds. Even the shitholes start at approx. 1000$ a month american money, for like a studio, go on gumtree.com (UK's version of craigslist) and see for yourself. There's many things you just don't really have much of in the UK that you take for granted living in the US, like 24 hour places to eat or buy groceries. Everywhere is basically straight up closed on Sundays. As you can imagine the weather sucks much more than it does in Chicago, and the skies are gray all the time. London does have an amazing pub/nightlife kind of scene unlike anywhere else I've seen, especially in places like Camden Town. Basically if I had continued to stay in London the only job I could see myself landing was in the back kitchen of a dodgy food establishment, I mean yeah I could've gone to school over there, but the education system over there just doesn't give as many oppurtunities to the average joe as it does in the US, unless of course you're going to one of the class establishments like city college of london, or oxford/cambridge. London is expensive as fuck, and the rich tend to be very rich, and the poor tend to live off of the generous socialist European welfare that they give out. The fact that everything is so expensive means that you can definitely make a shitload of money in London if you play your cards right, and this money would in practical terms be worth much more if you decided to take it back to the US. I feel that London can be an ideal place if you're looking to work in industries like finance, banking, stocks, generally a lot of things that require a degree and credentials. You can be Okay working in places like restaurants or hotels, but what they say about the English working "class" isn't for nothing. Having a college degree and credentials also makes it much much easier to get a visa to work there as well, and basically guaranteed if you have like a master's degree or a phd. So in the end I took my future into consideration, and the factors that made me move back to the US are
A. It's much more expensive for me to fuck around and not do much over there than it is in the US.
B. If I was to go back to school and get an education I would get much more out of it to do it in the US.
The beautiful thing of America is that you can make someone out of yourself even if you're a nobody, even if you have to go to community college and work hard and apply yourself, even someone who has risen as high up in life as Colin Powell went to a community college at one point, look it up if you want. In the UK if you're a slacker and looking to turn your life around you basically have to go back to their version of high school and work yourself up, the downpoints to this is that it's A. in my opinion degrading and B. it takes more years to get the same level of credentials you would acquire if you wanted to do it in the US. There are some very solid reasons as to why people flock to America from all over the world looking for something better, I am actually pretty against people coming here illegally and taking the low paying jobs from people that are struggling that were born and raised in America, I think it's total bullshit when people say illegal immigrants take the jobs that no one else wants, there's plenty of people that were born and raised here that are struggling!! I am all for people coming to America on a student visa from all over the world and all walks of life and working hard and doing intelligent things and overall contributing and making the US a better place. Even the president Barack Obama agrees with me in that the world is a changing place and the best way to move things forward and get out of the economic decline is education and people just working harder to do jobs that are more technical/cerebral and it is a shame that the US ranks lower in education than a whole number of countries nowadays. I think much of what this has to do with is the American culture and all around laziness that people have all around us. I mean I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago which was pretty quiet, and for me as a 16 year old kid it was a pretty boring place, and at that age it was pretty easy to forget about the bigger picture and just hang out with my friends and smoke pot and whatnot (not that I got anything against smoking pot or that you can't be a pretty fucking succesful person and still do pot or in rare cases even other drugs). If you take one trip to downtown Chicago, you will see plenty of people working in the skyscrapers wearing suits and having cocktails with beautiful women at many of the classy joints down there. I know many people like to talk shit of white collar workers and whatnot, but it begs the question: What the fuck are you doing with your life?. You don't have to be a white collar worker to be succesful either, as I know from personal experience that paperwork can be extremely boring and mind-numbing. There's many things in America that one can strive for and get far at, like something creative: graphic design/advertisement, or perhaps making a shitload of money from the internet. We live in an age where it takes more smarts than ambition to accomplish great things, it's not as easy as getting a job at the gas station like it used to be in WW2 days, even if you want to be a mechanic nowadays you have to finish a certificate program. I feel like American society was a lot less lazy and oversaturated in the WW2 days than it now also. Like I said I'm against illegal immigration, but lets say someone from the slums of Pakistan was able to make a decent amount of cash from the internet, and they took this money and used it to enroll and get a student visa in the US. Even if this guy doesn't even have a high school diploma as is often the case in many poor countries, he can get a student visa and be in a program that teaches english and gives a GED. You're not allowed to work on a US student visa except for helping out on campus for 20 hours a week (I've known some people), but this guy could continue to make money off of internet advertisements and eventually work his way up to becoming a legal resident of the us (or marrying a US citizen which would be the easier way). I would be happy to have someone like this in our country who is willing to work his ass off legitimately and is escaping poverity. Hell I would imagine this guy to be a much harder worker than some fatass who likes to sit around and eat mcdonald's and watch TV all day... American Laziness, a problem that needs to be fixed or it will lead to the downfall of our country... and don't even get me started on the inner city neighborhoods and the allure of selling illegal drugs instead of going to school and trying to work up to a well paying normal job!
Okay sorry about that I was going off on a bit of a tangent, but you say you like my writings, and employement is a hugely important part of just about anyone's life.
Now let's talk about possibly my favorite place ever: Chicago!
Probably my favorite place in Chicago is wicker park! I like it because it's a very artsy kinda neighborhood, many "eccentric" or "hipster" types live there, there are many really cool cafes, bars, music venues, etc. They say silverlake is the "hipster" neighborhood of LA but I don't think you can compare that to wicker park, frankly it looked like there were more illegal immigrant families living in silverlake than hipsters, echo park made famous for many of the gangbanger scenes in "Training Day" is getting a bit hipster-gentrified nowadays but I still wouldn't see this as a good comparison to somewhere like Logan Square. I just feel like Chicago has more of those cool looking bar and novelty stores in those neighborhoods, and in echo park and silverlake there's like only a very few of them on a few busy corners and way too much residential HOUSES where many latino families live (not being racist), while chicago it's mostly nothing but the classic style vintage fire escape type apartments where all sorts of fun times and fun people with beer kegs await. I guess wicker park used to be a shithole but gentrification and younger kids with rich parents going to college and whatnot moving in there have made it a bit more pricy within the last decade, if you'd like to spend less on rent you can take note that the same gentrification process is happening in neighboring Logan Square right now with many "hip" bars and novelt stores opening, and if you go a little west from Logan Square you get into the westside where much of the open street heroin market in the city is at and white people are rare to see, as fondly as many addicts on the site talk of going there to score it's not the type of place to spend too much time at. Rent of course would be cheaper in the westside as it is poverty stricken but it is straight up a 90% black neighborhood where cops will generally stop you just because you're white and the only reason they see you being there is to score drugs, not to mention robberies, muggings, and breakings would be common in that area. But yeah wicker park is closer to the core of the city and closer to everything else all around so it is still my favorite neighborhood to live in the city. I've also had some amazing times with amazing people there..
Now if you're looking for a true "Chicago" neighborhood you have wrigleyville where Wrigley Field the home of the Chicago Cubs is at, this is also a very cool neighborhood with lots of cool people, though the people you find here will be more into drinking beer and watching some sports than the people in Wicker Park where the people would be more into making paintings and seeing rock bands or some shit. I mean, I still do like to hang out with some "bros" and watch a game every now and then, you will definitely still find some classic Chicago style vintage apartments with fire escapes down here. Wrigleyville is culturally like somewhere in between Wicker Park and Lincoln Park which I'm going to get to next. Oh yeah and wrigleyville is next to Lake Michigan!!
Lincoln Park is also a very pretty neighborhood next to Lake Michigan, rent is slightly more pricey here, and generally much of the youth of the Chicago "upper caste" live here who study at Loyola University and Depaul University which are both expensive private universities known for giving Law degrees. There's also a ritzy yacht club nearby where old Jewish investor types go to hang out with their trophy wives. One of my more preppy kinda friends had a job there as a bitch boy serving booze to the wealthy haha.
Oh yeah Chicago is also very pedestrian friendly, with a very solid underground rail system (The "L"), this adds to the social value, as sometimes I will actually run across somebody I know on a train or on the street walking past a bar or a friend's apartment, some of these trains run 24 hours but it can be a bit dangerous riding them at like 3am, muggings are common on the trains at those times. Tickets are cheap to ride the train in Chicago, $3.50 being the price for a round trip, and if you are a student you can get a U-Pass which gives you UNLIMITED access to all trains and busses in Chicago. LA is not pedestrian friendly much, you have to DRIVE everywhere, and parking and traffic can suck. LA does have a metro rail system but many of the stations are too far apart. Parking can be difficult in Chicago, but depending on the neighborhood not impossible, and you can really can be totally alright not owning a car at all in Chicago! not so much in LA. London has the famous "London Underground" system which was the first underground rail system built in the world, it is EXPENSIVE, and none of the trains run 24 hours, though the stations are well places and it is an efficient way to get around, I've never had a car in London. Riding through downtown Chicago on an elevated L train is just downright beautiful though, I reminisce fondly of taking the L in the morning to go downtown from Lincoln Park when I was going to college.
You can wikipedia a lot of these Chicago neighborhoods, and you can of course look on craigslist to look at the prices for apartments.
I've only driven through Colorado, I didn't stop and hang out at all, but there is some serious breathtaking natural scenery there! Well I've spent the night at one of the college dorms in Ft. Collins, very laid back vibes in Colorado.
A lot of the stuff I'm writing is really hard to explain unless you've lived it, but I am doing my best and if you have any more questions ask away! Looking at stuff on wikipedia, google earth, or google images is fun too!
