This video is the perfect example of how hard it is to describe LA. It's such a massive city made up of various regions that are completely different from one another. The east side, Hollywood, Downtown, South Central, The West Side and this is being reductive at best.
I grabbed a few of these to respond to but really depending on if you have a job right now and where you live LA is going to be very different for everyone.
I've heard a fair amount of talk about how dirty LA is and how bad the homeless problem is. We moved to California in February and I never went into LA (although we did go to Santa Clarita which was very nice) before everything shut down so I have no personal experience.
Yes the homelessness is a problem as it always has been, there appears to be a larger uptick in it as well but nothing significantly worse than it was before. There are so many reasons even with proper support this will continue, one of which being that homeless people head to fair weather climates like SoCal if they are able to make it here. California has a number of programs and social services far underserving these people but also far better than many other states.
If we're going to talk about the dirt that's just normal when the fires from the rest of the state have had ash so visible it was like ground level fog, you were able to taste smoke in the air for over a week.
Since LA is surrounded by mountains and hills it's geography makes it both less susceptible to rain and that also keeps things like smog and smoke in for longer. Without any new rain there's nothing to clean the air or the buildings and streets. It often looks kinda dusty come fall but the intense fires destroying so much of the state have exacerbated this.
I haven't really been out since the pandemic started.
I haven't heard people talk about how dirty it's been lately 🤷🏽♂️
Because it's not really much worse than normal except for the additional ash we received.
There has certainly be a noticeable uptick in the size and amount of homeless camps especially in the downtown and Hollywood areas. I don't notice public areas being noticeably dirtier than usual. I feel like business areas have cut back on their litter pick up as they have focused on other cleaning. The Vons near me had a lot of trash in the parking lot because all of the people who normally would deal with that are sanitizing carts. Things like that. I assume it is the same most places as tax revenues and business margins have plummeted.
On the plus side, I see almost 100% mask utilization when I go to the store for groceries.
This is less because there are more homeless from LA and more because people have had to head south from the fires, and the police in places like the valley pushing them south below the hills.
A friend of mine recently told me it's some Blade Runner type shit with black and red skies during the day.
That was for a few days from the fires, it's much worse near them in NorCal.
Homelessness and high rents are still big concerns. And we need that fixed like yesterday. But I still love this stinking town.
I also don't put too much stock in people being all "CA makes it impossible to run a business."
This. Also rents have been dropping because people who have jobs are leaving the city to work remotely from larger nicer spaces for the forseeable future. So many articles about why you should not be buying homes in the suburbs right now are because of the new surplus of remote work enabling city dwellers with the money to abondon it. Housing prices in the city have dropped in many places when it comes to purchasing, the avg home has considerably less bids on it and they are selling below what would have been the value a year ago.
Rent is much more negotiable depening on where you live. Too many buildings now are losing tenants and so they are willing to compromise on pricing and not raise rent from people who are actually able to pay.
Depends on what you mean by LA. I live in the Valley, and it looks and feels exactly the same as it always has.
This is mostly true minus mmore places are closing but this is not unique to LA and more bars/returants will continue to close without better Gov support. This is happening everywhere though, the valley so far has seemed to do better than areas liek Hollywood because they rely on tourism. Downtown is also suffering from so many clientel nno longer heading to work in the buildings that they can't afford to keep their shops open. The more residential area's like NoHo, Studio City, Los Feliz, Atwater, Venice ect are mostly doing alright and some places are seeing a increase in demand due to work from home for delivery and pickup service.
I live in Los Angeles, and I'm not a fan of it, but every city has its own problems. To my eyes San Francisco and New York have way more challenges ahead of them than Los Angeles.
I will always love the silence of San Fran residents when it comes to homelessness in LA. They know there is no where else other than their own city that having to avoid human feces on a regular basis is a thing. They pay big bucks for people to have to clean that everyday.
It's a solid snapshot of life under late capitalism. It's an ugly city both visually and deep in its soul.
What a worthless comment.
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