^ Awesome, this is exactly the kind of experience I wanted to hear about. I'll be reading in detail and thinking this over. You hit the nail on the head -- I do love cars, and figured I'd kind of miss driving all the time over there. I spent a few months in Europe last year and when I got back home, the first thing I did was go drive around just for the feeling. And yeah, having lived in LA and the SF area for my entire adult life, I do kind of wonder how I'd adjust to New York. Thanks for the excellent feedback!

 

Don't do it man!

"It has seasons" my @ss. NYC has miserable weather from frozen slush to sweltering summer nights.

Dirty? You haven't lived until you see, and smell, Manhattan during a garbage collection strike.

Okay, I give NYC the edge on restaurants (near infinite variety) and museums. But I'm okay with what LA has to offer.

If you think LA road surfaces are bad you need to see and feel NYC pot holes. And good luck with owning a car. My mom lives in Queens and her parking space rent would get a one-bedroom apartment in many parts of the country. I lost track of how many times her car has been broken into. At least traffic density is not worse than LA's worst.

 

well... LA is a big place, if i was older i could see myself living in manhattan beach or something, but hollywood and santa monica are way overrated. not to mention annoying dodger/laker fans.

everything is too spread out and the 405 can be a parking lot at 12am no joke.

i've only been to westwood, hollywood, santa monica, and redondo/manhattan beach.

am i missing something that makes it better than sf?

okay fine, LA has pastrami burgers at the HAT, but thats about it.

 

live in LA/SF if you like good Asian food and hot Asian women. If all things Asians aren't your thing, go with NYC for the culture & freezing weather.

 

Did med school in NY. I still like CA more but definitively glad I had a chance to experience NYC for 4 years.
If you're still young and not yet ready to settle down, I say take the job and move. It's gonna be a good experience.

 

That's exactly what I said to myself when I took a job near Syracuse NY. "It'll be a good experience." It probably was, for the three years I was there, but the winters nearly killed me and I think I had seasonal-affective-disorder from lack of sunshine (coming from near SF). So I scurried back West and now I live among the unwashed masses near LA.

I lived in Manhattan (lower East side and upper West side) when I was just a teen. For kids, NYC schools were gladiator training grounds. I got out to CA schools for high-school and folks out here didn't know the meaning of real "racial tensions" but it was funny to hear them think they did.

 

I thought it was NY but I read somewhere that the most expensive place to live in the U.S. is the SF/bay area.

 

Grew up in LA. College in the Bay Area and graduate school in NYC. It took me a while to adjust to the east coast. What I enjoyed most was discovering the pleasure of walking around the city and discovering new places. There's so much to offer in such a small geographical area.

NYC, however, is NOT car friendly. In some places, it'll cost more to park than owning your car. And if you should decide to bring your car there and park in one of the garages, your car WILL get ruined. 99% of these places are valet park only and they do not care about your car. I heard numerous garage horror stories from my doorman about how these guys abuse cars. You may want to consider going without a car for a year or two.

Good luck.

 

I have spent a lot of time in NYC, and I would not want to live there. Certainly there's a million things to do, tons of places to eat, great nightlife, etc.. but for me, the constant traffic, noise and people get old. This combined with so many buildings and great NE weather makes me feel gloomy after too long. I like driving. I like relaxing in my yard and on my porch and experience relative peace and quiet. I like working on my cars in my own driveway. I live about an hour from NYC now which is perfect. I can go in whenever I want, but don't have to deal with all the commotion. Of course I wouldn't want to commute from here.

 

I'm a Dodgers/Lakers fan so that probably explains a lot

In all seriousness, I don't have many reasons for liking LA over SF. It's just that I like the LA atmosphere better, and having lived in the SF area for over a decade, it's just the same old boring stuff now. I think that'd be the case for anyone who's lived in one place for a long time though, so it's just personal preference, that's all.