Happier Abroad Forum Community

@Mercer @dancilley @WanderingProtagonist

I want to start a post to discuss California. I'm from Tennessee which is boring and miserable. In fact you could probably die from boredom in TN. I always thought California was a really cool place to live with tons of stuff to do (beaches, mountains, etc) and the good weather but apparently some of the above people say California has a lot of problems. Also, @Winston has told me that he loves California. But I want to open this up for discussion the pros and cons of California....

kangarunner wrote: ↑

December 11th, 2022, 10:10 pm

@Mercer @dancilley @WanderingProtagonist

I want to start a post to discuss California. I'm from Tennessee which is boring and miserable. In fact you could probably die from boredom in TN. I always thought California was a really cool place to live with tons of stuff to do (beaches, mountains, etc) and the good weather but apparently some of the above people say California has a lot of problems. Also, @Winston has told me that he loves California. But I want to open this up for discussion the pros and cons of California....

I think anyone trying to be positive about this State is just in damn denial and I honestly pay them no attention. All that shit about CA being great was true YEARS AGO. CA today is nothing like how it was before unless you like the idea of overpaying for every damn thing, high ass taxes, cost of living that's causing literately everyone including people with good jobs to be closer and closer to ending up on the street, a shitty ass annoying corrupt asshole for Govenor (Galvin Newsom) who wants to do away with gas cars and force everyone to drive electric vehicles which won't even be remotely possible. High crime and endless amount of homelessness that will make you even envy poverty in Brazil. CA was only cook in the 90s and all the earlier years. It started declining bad by 2008 but it hasn't been the same state in years, plus a whole lot of people are leaving and getting the hell out of here, especially people with money. Now it's mostly just poor people who can barely even make it.

This is why Newsom got all pissed and call people fleeing to Florida "losers" because the people with money is leaving including some businesses. He thought he could turn CA into a rich person only state by trying to price out all the poor and middle class people so CA will just be all wealthy people only. But those people are the ones leaving the State since they hate him and the shitty hardcore liberal politics. Don't even get me started with SF, they actually have a map that will warn you where not to walk because so many homeless people are shitting on the ground. America is just declining everywhere, except it's much worse in democrat states it seems. That's not to say that Republican ones are paradise because they aren't. If you plan to move to CA, you got to have money, lots of it. Otherwise you'll end up having to work more than one job, relying on roommates, family (if you got any), etc. It's not a state you can do the whole "Independent" thing in, this is why even guys my age (36) have to still stay with parents, or they live with a household full of people they have to share the rent with. The solo life is impossible in a state like this, almost everyone in CA is low income depending on others for survival.

Edit: @WanderingProtagonist is right in all the stuff he said based on a quick read of his post above, but that applies mostly to the bigger cities. Not sure which he's in, but yeah.

Fast answer for now (I can be back later with more, because I have been there a lot):

If you wanted to actually live there it's pretty iffy, but I enjoyed travelling there a lot, not only in the vastly more palatable 80s and early 90s, but also in the early-mid 2000ish era.

I was in Los Angeles quite a bit as a boy in the 1980s but obviously those days are long gone, but it was cool at the time, but all the girls I know from there who are still down there HATE it now. Even the ones who married rich/affluent men and live in comparatively nicer areas than I've ever been able to afford living in myself hate it, LOL.

If you like rural little towns on the coast, it can be cool in some spots, but personally I'd only want to travel there as a nomad. (If I wasn't into boats so much, I'd be some kind of RV nomad I suspect.)

I'm honestly not sure where I'd go for as the best place if I was forced to stay in the USSA, but since I'm so into boats all-in at this point I supposed it'd just be marinas up and down the Left Coast, and there are many interesting ones up and down Californian coastlines, but almost everything there is more of a PIA and more expensive.

Compared with South East Asia though (especially Vietnam that I like the best) and Thailand, damn, it's pretty dismal in comparison!

But if for some reason I had to live in California alone and couldn't go elsewhere, I wouldn't complain:
Various small coastal towns, the Redwoods (back when they weren't up in f-ing flames from wildfires), Mt Shasta (watch out for UFOs), are all pretty cool if you're into out of the way places, I suppose.

But yeah, like he said, if you're not loaded with $$$ to be in the nicer areas, it's really not a great place unless you really find your niche.

If I was forced to say on the Left Coast for life, I'd suppose I'd sail up and down the coast in the small rural coastal towns enjoying the rather dismal American gothic mystique, white and Latina women (who tend to be bored out of their minds by the local men), drinking beer, and just appreciating the natural scenery. I'd go Washington or Oregon over California in most places myself, but to each their own.

Everything is better in so many places abroad though! Happier Abroad is no joke!

I may have to do a road trip starting from San Diego and drive all the way up north to the California - Oregon border......Being from buttfuck Tennessee and wasting so many boring ass years in TN, I really missed out on a lot. I basically didn't have a life at all until 30 years old...

this was my dream to move to California since 2015 when I suddenly realized I don't like cold weather (I live in Glasgow)
but after reading your review op))) I don't know now

Well, it's a very far cry from beautiful Vietnam in terms of both desirability and costs (and I'd imagine same for Thailand or some of the other places you went), but if you are unfortunately stuck in America and can't leave yet, I do personally sort of like the Californian, Oregonian, and Washington coastlines. For what it's worth.
The natural coastal scenery is pretty, if you go at the right time.

Unless you wanted to focus on cities mostly in the south or central part and had the money to go to the nice areas, most of those places would probably only appeal to someone with an appreciation of "quaint" and slightly grunge (occasionally very grunge) small towns.

But if you actually went as far as the Oregon border, you might consider checking out some of the Oregon coastline and its little towns too. (I personally find the strange old port town of Astoria at far northern Oregon kind of fascinating in a weird gothic way, but certainly not recommending anyone go that far, unless you got into the whole grunge/American gothic coastal town road trip vibe and it actually looked good to you from researching it.)

gwele wrote: ↑

December 14th, 2022, 11:39 pm

this was my dream to move to California since 2015 when I suddenly realized I don't like cold weather (I live in Glasgow)
but after reading your review op))) I don't know now

The nicest areas with warm weather, probably in Southern and Central California, would probably depend a lot on if you had money.

California is sort of notorious for being prohibitively expensive in most places that are nice (unless possibly you were thinking of inland in one of the more desert areas).
You never know if you might luck onto some little-known place that's an exception, but from my impression if it wasn't expensive, it'd probably be dangerous. I loved parts of Los Angeles when I was little in the 80s, but those days are long gone.
The trend within the USSA has been steady flight of high-income people out of California, causing prices to rise where they go and buy up real estate (often which much local and political friction where the Californians end up).

The tropics (e.g. some of the adequately safe parts of Latin America and some parts of the Caribbean) I think would have more abundant choices of warm weather and in some of them would even cost less than California, I'd guess, though might depend on what kind of accommodation you had in mind.

That reminds me of one more thing:

I am not planning to spend much time sailing on the Left Coast since it's so much better elsewhere, but if I had to focus on it for some reason, I might have to check out Baja, California.
I haven't researched it since it's not part of my personal plans, so no idea if it costs a fortune like most beautiful places down there, or if it's at all possible to find a free anchorage, or what, but it looks worth a visit to me:


I had a dream about those rocky sea stacks once when I was little where at first I was on a beach with some large-breasted girls in bikinis (nice) looking out at those impressive sea stacks, then there was this weird opening of a secret pirate cave inside one of the offshore rocks, where some conquistador of some sort had both a secret tomb and a casket filled with gold coins as well as armored corpse, and then there was some kind of weird chanting and I saw strange parchment writing and the casket full of gold coins started filling with blood. Then I woke up. Far out!

One more pic of those offshore sea stacks at sunset: