I recently moved to California. Before i moved, people asked me “why are you moving there, its so bad?”. Now that I’m here, i understand it less. The state is beautiful. There is so much to do.
I know the cost of living is high, and people think the gun control laws are ridiculous (I actually think they are reasonable, for the most part). There is a guy I work with here that says “the policies are dumb” but can’t give me a solid answer on what is so bad about it.
So, what is it that California does (policy-wise) that people hate so much?
It absolutely has a lot to do with Right wing/Republican propaganda, California, Chicago, and New York represent everything they hate so they constantly use both states and that city as negative talking points.
One point they constantly make is that New York City is a crime riddled hellhole, meanwhile NYC has one of the lowest crime rates in the entire country, and one of the lowest murder rates, it’s just a massive city with a massive population and everyone there has cameras so when stuff happens it goes viral. Also the Red States tend to have much higher crime and murder rates.
All in all this is usual conservative/right wing tactics, they constantly want to isolate and segregate themselves from other ideas, and aren’t afraid to take over where other people live to exclude the people already living there. This is why Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Utah have similar campaigns about “don’t California my state” and by “California” they mean don’t bring your “liberal/socialist/Communist/woke/progressive/democratic” outlook to their states, because they don’t want to be responsible for cleaning up the racism and various other problems that the red states seem to have adopted as their identities.
Also I know quite a few conservative Californians and New Yorkers that recently moved to Texas and Florida, and as conservative as they thought they were they actually talk about moving back to where they came from because of how it is in their new states, except for the fact that they moved to the new states because they can afford so much more than what they could in California.
Overall my point is, if you consume right wing media then you are conditioned to hate blue states, and particularly those blue states are Cali, NY, and the city of Chicago as well as DC, I’m not saying these places are without flaws, but I am saying that the propaganda and disinformation about those places has amplified the hate towards those places and their residents.
I believe this is true. Progressivism is just one thing I like about the state. It’s also gorgeous. Big Sur, San Francisco, Yosemite, sequoias, numerous vineyards, craggy beaches, and scenery that can transition from valley to plains to desert to mountains in just a couple hours’ drive.
My conservative family still asks if I’m safe here in Seattle because they “hear so much about it on the news”. They still think Seattle is just always being with protests and the libbrerl government is just running the city into the ground.
Which Seattle and most cities have problems, all cities have crime, but no more than usually. It’s just that people live in cities. Per Capita crime in a big city can and is around the same of a rural area, but people don’t think in terms like per Capita.
But fox news loves to spin that to keep rural people afraid, keep them thankful for their backwards laws and ideas. Because what really happens when you move somewhere like Cali? You meet people from different backgrounds and religions and suddenly your views might be challenged a bit
Crime in rural areas is, on average, higher than in cities, per capita.
Vermont is safer than large cities, but that’s never what the right wingers are talking about when they say rural.
California is the target of conservative fear mongering.
There’s a large amount of perceived haughtiness from the residents of California. They have a lot to be proud of though - it’s a great state in a lot of regards.
Full disclosure, I’m Canadian but travel to San Diego often for work.
Downtown San Diego is not as I remember it from before the pandemic. It’s quite clear to me that California is struggling with a massive mental health and addiction issue. The cost of living compounds these issues and amplifies the worst in people. Even “normal” working class folk are quick to anger and explode at the slightest inconvenience and people just do not give a shit about each other. I pin it to everyone being stressed out because they live paycheck to paycheck and the future is always uncertain.
Things that I think could help: universal healthcare, increased public housing, and the execution of the sackler family.
Long time resident of California (SoCal in particular), can confirm haughtiness. I’ve grown increasingly prideful of my state for holding strong on specific human right issues.
You’re also right about the increasing disparity though. It feels like stratification is getting stronger and stronger each year. The Beach Cities area in particular, from my experience, where they’re building a bunch of (very expensive) flats. California has had a history of states shipping homeless/refugees to us and that doesn’t help our increasing number of state-grown displacements.
When I lived in Southern California (which is very different from other parts of the state) in the early 90s it was exactly like that. And when I have visited. I always tell people to watch it because a lot of people are really quick up take offense and anger in public and they never believe me until they see it, which they have on each trip back.
I love other areas of California, it’s beautiful, but Southern California always felt like a pressure cooker to me.
San Diego used to be a lot worse in a lot of ways. Honestly people have short memories. Admittedly, downtown is starting to look like 80s-90s downtown again, in a lot of ways though.
I can honestly say that there are a lot of terrible people out there, but in my experience San Diego always manages to come together when it matters. And honestly, in most day to day interactions, the vast majority of people I interact with are pretty nice overall.
I mean I lived in Anaheim in a terrible part of town on the early 90s with no car and a 40 minute bike ride to work, it was inevitable that I was going to have some bad experiences (robbed at gunpoint, crazy lady with rabid dog living in front of my building, getting screamed at and having stuff thrown at my by passing cars because I was on a bike, etc).
My coworkers (kitchen work in a big hotel) were great, it was just when I was going to and from work I’d see a lot of crazy stuff.
In later years, going back, I just found people were on a hair trigger. Like I was with two co-workers (was there for something like a work conference) in a store buying beer and these two guys were in costume so my buddy (from the Maritimes) said “those are awesome costumes” and these two guys went nuts on us.
Profanity, threats, it was wild. We just apologized and they were telling us to go f ourselves as they left.
Or I went to sf with my wife about ten years ago and she wanted to stop at a gas station in the city to use the washroom. I was like “just keep your focus on the cashier to get the key and I’ll wait outside the bathroom”. She told me I was being paranoid. Before we even got out of the car two dudes got into a fistfight and a cop saw it and tore in return the lights and siren going.
Just stuff like that going on all the time. Meanwhile, a few hours away you have paradise on earth.
Totally. It’s definitely area dependent. I was speaking to San Diego as a whole, more than downtown specifically. I personally wouldn’t go to downtown SD by myself, to like walk around. But, I never would have since I remember it back in the day.
Just like you didn’t go to certain neighborhood here unless you had a reason. My husband doesn’t remember SD like that, so whenever someone invites us to one of those neighborhoods (which most have been heavily gentrified now) my first reaction is always like uh….fuck no.
Shit even parts PT Loma/sports arena are are getting pretty awful again. Sports area was okish for a while, but there are SO many encampments in there now.
I think every downtown in every city in North America is pretty bad right now. I’m not anti-city but poverty, drug poisoning (like cutting drugs with crazy stuff that makes taking them very unpredictable), and general disorder are really stacking up in every downtown. I live in a large city in Western Canada, the downtown is really not ok to hang out in even during the day.
For various reasons, I am familiar with the situation in many other cities and they all seem to have similar issues. The city here put out water dispensers for people to use and then criminals started to gate keep them, charging money to access. I just don’t know how to stop that besides putting a cop or two by each one but police here continue to use their inability to stop this crisis as a way to get additional funding each year… Sigh. Not really sure why I’m ranting like this, it’s just really frustrating.
I don’t doubt that at all. It’s hard for everyone. SD and CA big cities as a whole are the destination for a lot of homeless/unwanted either willingly or “forcefully”. Largely because of our temperate climate and “liberal” policies, so we see a lot of it that we wouldn’t, if people didn’t explicitly come here for that reason.
I was mostly trying to comment on how SD was vs how it is now. It’s definitely MUCH safer here than it was in the 80s/90s. Early 90s was bad here, but people don’t remember, or more likely, are transplants and weren’t here for it.
Right on, I get you. Thanks for clarifying and have a good one. :)
It depends entirely on where you visit in the city. Plenty of areas have zero issues. Downtown sucks, though. I’m more surprised you’ve ever enjoyed it there…
I think this is mostly due to the highly polarized political climate. California is the most populous state and it’s policies frequently end up spreading to other states and therefore is frequently focused on because if it’s major influence. This is similar to how Texas and Florida are in the news a lot for their more conservative policies. While there are people out there who take the time to inform themselves and make their own decisions most people are only able to parrot back talking points they hear from the news or their friends. I suspect your coworker is one of those people and probably leans conservative so all he hears all day is how California’s policies are making housing too expensive and it’s too “woke” etc.
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As California goes, so goes the nation. Conservatives don’t like this.
If it wasn’t for the high cost of living, I’d move to California as well. Still hope I’ll make it there some day.
Funny enough for the right wingers that don’t like the gun control in California, it was first brought in because Reagan was fearful of the Black Panthers who were openly carrying fully legal assault rifles and those white politicians couldn’t handle that second amendment applying to black gun owners.
Poor republicans are butthurt
Same reason people don’t like Florida. Lots of targeted negative media coverage. Conservatives think California is a shithole where homeless people are everywhere and people don’t get arrested for robbing a store at gunpoint. Non-conservatives think Florida is full of hard-core Trumpers who want to ban all gay people from existing and is like a redneck 1984.
Reality is more nuanced. Both states are very large populations with a diverse makeup. But nuance is hard to convey in headlines. I personally live in Florida and love it, even though I hate DeSantis with a passion. The people here make up for the shitty politics. And the pendulum will inevitably swing back to the other side.
But nuance is hard to convey in headlines
This 100%. I’d also like to bring up that population distribution has a lot to with it. Across America, rural communities tend to agree with each other and urban communities agree with each other. A person living in Miami and someone living in LA would probably agree with each other politically than someone from LA and someone living in a rural community in North California.
The main issue comes from whether or not the majority of the state’s people live in cities or the countryside. I live in a mid-size city in TN and almost everyone I know, including our
governormayor and local leaders, are very left-leaning. But because most of the state lives outside the cities, it doesn’t really matter. Sorry, this comment turned into a rant haha 😅deleted by creator
Whoops, meant mayor. No, fuck Bill Lee for a hundred and one different reasons
Yeah wtf is this dude smoking? Bill Lee isn’t on the Trump or DeSantis level(yet). But he’s wayyy right leaning. Outside of Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville this state is as red as it gets.
Yeah meant to say mayor, I corrected it in the original comment haha my bad
Is there an alternative to DeSantis?
Not this last governor election but the one before it was a close race between DeSantis & Andrew Gillum. Gillum lost by a very small margin although some months after the election he was caught having sex with a male prostitute in a hotel room smoking meth. This was obviously unpopular, especially since he espouses family values and is married with kids.
The next election DeSantis won more or less unopposed and the electoral map of Florida looked like one of Reagan’s maps where he painted the whole country red.
DeSantis’s popularity seems to be dropping like a rock, however. A) he’s trying to challenge Trump, which has been a bad idea for any Republicans who want to be elected in the last few years B) he’s engaging very heavily in culture war which is financially hurting Florida and people are starting to see it
He’s trying to fight Disney, one of the main reasons Orlando is a major city. He’s passing anti-illegal legislation where Florida has some of the highest rates of illegals and Latinos in the country - essentially guaranteeing price increases and inflation for all sorts of manual labor intensive services. Ie construction, landscaping, etc
And of course housing prices are skyrocketing with Florida having the highest inflation in the country, topping 10% last year.
And while Floridians are struggling to pay rent, his messaging is focusing on “anti-wokeness” and he’s turning down federal aid money.
Essentially DeSantis had a chance to be relevant nationally and he’s throwing it all away while also pissing off his entire base in Florida. He thought he was untouchable and his overconfidence, I think, is backfiring.
So going forward what will happen in Florida? It’s hard to say. If there’s a good candidate from the Democrat side, they have a chance. However Gillum did stain the Dem reputation for a while in Florida.
Covid brought a lot of “anti-vaxxer / anti-lockdown” migrants so the Republicans have a good ~400k highly politically motivated new voters. However like I said, the Republicans policies are hurting Florida economically and that’s never a good way to win elections.
There really isn’t a left or centerist champion in Florida right now to my knowledge, but two people to keep an eye on might be the former agriculture commissioner and the new mayor of Duval county.
They watch a lot of Fox Entertainment.
I don’t live in California but visit the bay area frequently for business. Here’s a typical experience:
Depending on travel budget, I’ll either stay at a motel for $400/night, or a regular hotel for around $800/night. It’s not my money, but it’s still ridiculous to need to file a budget exception to stay at a Motel 8.
When I arrive in the evening, I try to watch Netflix but the cellular bandwidth is so shitty I can’t even watch at the lowest resolution, and the hotel wifi isn’t much better. I boot up a wifi scanner and find nearly a hundred different base stations in range all stomping on the spectrum, so I just play Switch for a while and go to bed. When I get up in the morning, I go down to the free breakfast which is plastered with Prop 65 signs indicating the food served at the establishment is known to the state to cause cancer.
On the walk to the convention center, I have to sidestep multiple people strung out on who knows what. A person riding by on a bike yells “FUCK YOU” to all passers-by, including myself. Multiple vans with oversized LCD screens advertise a variety of AI and Blockchain startup “solutions”. One company has set up a 20-foot display on a parked “van” opposite the convention center to advertise to conference-goers despite being unaffiliated with the conference. Conference staff call the police but apparently the van has a permit, and it’s public parking so there’s nothing they can do.
When I arrive, I’m stopped by staff because I’m carrying my own demo machine. They tell me their union contract requires that all hardware setup must be handled by contracted staff. I leave my machine in the area they designate, and fill out the form indicating it must be ready in room 1005 by 2pm for my presentation.
After attending several morning sessions, I walk to find lunch. A local sandwich shop doesn’t sell Diet Coke or Doritos, but they do have cucumber water for $8. I decide to go to CVS for my Diet Coke fix, but almost every product is locked behind a door. Overhead speakers announce “Security, walk the floor” as several people enter the store, casually stuff their pockets full of M&Ms, and walk out without paying. Nobody stops them, including the security guard who just watches them until they leave. I decide to skip the soda.
When I return to the conference center to prepare for my presentation, my demo machine is there but is not connected to any of the room equipment. The contractors who plug in the machines are apparently different than the ones who move the machines, and they are on strike.
On the way back to my hotel, someone asks me for money for a bus ride. I ignore them, but they begin following me. I tell them no but they follow me back all the way to my hotel, where a security guard turns them away.
I get my bags and head to the airport. My driver thinks he’s in the Indy 500 despite being in stop and go traffic. It’s about 78 degrees and humid inside the terminal - The AC is off because PG&E is having capacity issues due to wildfires, which were incidentally caused by downed lines (owned and poorly maintained by PG&E).
This feels like a copypasta
It may seem like it, but I promise this is wholly original, authored by me just now while taking a shit.
Shitposting?
Precisely.
The company I work for is based out of San Diego (I’m from the deep south) and they fly me out there occasionally for work. I also lived there for about a year a little over 10 years ago. Downtown San Diego is somewhat similar to what you mentioned but the rest of it is basically paradise. Granted, I couldn’t afford to live there (especially the paradise parts) but none of the stuff you mentioned has been a problem to me as an out-of-towner.
I rented a car so I can’t comment on taxis, but I’m willing to bet that’s not a California specific thing. In fact, if you’ve ever been to Seoul or Busan you would probably wish you had a California driver. The nice hotel I stayed at was around $250 a night I believe and it was around some nice shops that I visited for food. Never saw anyone steal anything and don’t recall seeing stuff locked up (at least not nearly as much as I do where I’m from in the south).
I went to Pacific beach, didn’t see anyone (noticeably) on drugs and ate a wonderful dinner and ran around on the beach at night with some coworkers. We also went to a Padres game (they lost) and had a blast. Parking sucked and was expensive. There were a good bit of homeless people packed downtown and it wasn’t nearly as nice as it was 10 years ago. The worst thing about it is it’s super expensive and things are really far a part and car centric, but I don’t know any place in the US that’s not really like that.
However, I absolutely believe every thing you said. I don’t doubt any of it. In fact it sound vaguely similar to my experience in San Fransisco many years ago. California is a massive state, like, super duper big. Some parts are better than others but overall I think it’s a pretty sweet place if you could afford it. There are definitely places I’d choose to live over California but it wouldn’t be too far down the list.
The bay area has degraded significantly in the last ten years. There are ardent defenders claiming it’s not that bad, but it’s one of the few places in the US that you can regularly see human shit on the sidewalks.
I was homeless in SF and Marin County a while back in the early eighties. Spent many years in southern California. Now 20 years in Georgia. That was a lot of back story to say I was expecting crazy and annoying homeless people and feces everywhere when I went back on vacation three years ago. I couldn’t find anything like that, to the point we took a few walks specifically to search it out.
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You sound like you are reviewing all of california like its a hotel/motel. I just would like to say that i work San Fransisco, and you are correct. it sucks. I drive 120 miles away past sacramento every weekend to escape that place. but smaller cities and towns in california can be very nice.
As a tourist from Canada, my wife and I drove through parts of the US for about three weeks in 2018, and we absolutely hated California. It was our least favourite part of the trip. It is clear that LA is struggling with massive homelessness. The roads were the worst ones we encountered on our road trip. The beaches were littered with garbage, to an amount that we just found disgusting. They were also incredibly overcrowded, though that is what happens in heavily populated places. We went to Disneyland, and that was nice. However, we did cut our California stay short and moved on.
Now, I don’t have many places to compare California to, as we were only in about four states. However, we have travelled extensively in Canada, where we have been to most of the provinces. We enjoyed the states and provinces we have visited. However, California is definitely in our no-no zone for vacations.
Again, this is a tourist perspective. I do not really know what it’s like to live there.
You visited the worst parts. No wonder.
Try Yosemite, Oakhurst, Morro Bay, or Monterey.
Went to San Francisco and California in general for the first time this past May. I’ve grown up in the suburbs on the East Coast with a very conservative family.
They were all losing their minds when I told them I was going to go. They were convinced I was going to get 16 times a day.
The city and state as a whole was absolutely beautiful (visited Yosemite and got engaged). There was so much to do that I had never experienced as someone who grew up in the suburbs. There was only one time we felt a bit uncomfortable but we were aware of the situation and had plans to get out if need be.
We rode public transportation (the horrors!) the whole time without any problem.
I know it’s not perfect by any means but to me the problem is fear mongering by the likes of Fox
California is cool, I just don’t like LA. It’s dirty, crowded, has traffic 24/7, and everything is expensive just to name a few reasons.
Granted i only spent 10 days there in March last year (our air bnb was in Silverlake), but I fuckin loved it. Not so much Downtown, didn’t spend any time in Hollywood either.
It’s all nonsense created by right wing extremists. California is an amazing state for a huge, long list of reasons.
The people here are amazing (not you, LA) and we have some of the most beautiful beaches, coasts and forests in the world.
I’m not sure how this hasn’t been mentioned yet but a lot of the Midwest doesn’t like California because it feels like there’s a migration of californians who have been priced out of California moving into the Midwest who both bring their left leaning policies into right leaning areas and buy up so much property it drives housing even higher.
and buy up so much property it drives housing even higher
It’s easier to blame Californians than the investment firms that are the ones actually buying up the housing inventory.
I dono if its easier, but its much more visable. You dont run into the investment firms at the grocery store, or talk to them at your kids shool or sports events etc.
