Yes, the food is awesome, way better overall than San Diego for sure. Even people that live in the city will stand in line for Claim Jumper or Red Lobster, fer crissakes.
Not a big fan of the OC sprawl, for one thing. Our county has it, too, but not to that degree. And I hate to say it, but my interactions with a lot of people from there are not that off from the Real Housewives… Just don’t care for the vibe, other than right along the coast. Even then… Lots of fake boobies and spray tans.
And we grow more of everything (and the ONLY place a ton of stuff is grown - 40 billion dollar/year industry) plus, my favorite tech thing since I was a kid -
We used to drive over that on the freeway and my dad would say - “The Atom Smasher!”
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Because LA is a dystopian city, and and SF utopian?
Godzilla is coming! He can lay waste to my city anytime 
As a happy resident of both SF and LA, I’d expect the dystopia is due to the fact that LA would easily descend into chaos in a post-industrial environment. I mean, they have to ship in their water, remember? An urban dust bowl wouldn’t be far behind.
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Does anyone remember when Tokyo was supposed to be the future? New York City used to be the future, which is why King Kong climbed the Empire State Building, but after World War II the future moved to the suburbs, and that meant Southern California. It makes sense in a way. The name California originated in a 16th century science fiction novel popular with conquistadors. When they found their ideal land of the future, they named it after the land in the book.
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Plenty of Dystopian events in San Francisco: Ray Harryhausen had a giant octopus attack one of our bridges (almost certainly the GG), The Hulk upset some flowerbeds on Lombard Street, was referred to in passing in The Stand as a bad place to be, at least one of the Day After Deep Impact of ArmaCore movies did some damage to the Bay Area…those latest apes caused a traffic jam (damn them)…
Plus localized events like mayoral/supervisor assassinations, Towering Infernos, various quakes and fires…crazy street people, Google buses and the people that complain about them: I fail to see the paradise aspect.
(OK, OK…I do at times…but LA does not have a monopoly on ugly urban misery; not by a long shot.)
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For most of my life…Tokyo HAS been the Future. I saw things there in my youth in the late 80’s/early 90s that was (tech wise) 18 months to 2 years ahead of the US market…but then Apple and the playing field didn’t just level…it tilted.
Culturally, there is no place in the world quite like Japan. Yesterday I happened to turn on the TV as Blade Runner was starting…I haven’t watched it in 20 years and was amused how the gritty street scenes skewed toward the Japanese. In 1982…it seemed pretty obvious.
Things have changed considerably in 32 years. The century of China has just begun, and while heretofore they have proven themselves to be excellent mimics as opposed to innovators…that may very well change too.
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I think it’s telling that this binary portrayal of the utopian/dystopian halves of the state began apparently in the late 1940s, during the height of Los Angeles-based noir fiction and films, as well as the rise of L.A. as an endless traffic snarl choking in crowds and particulate vehicle emissions. All my life it’s been tough to imagine a future Los Angeles as being remotely utopian. It’s sunny and hot and sprawling, irrigated by stolen water and populated by guileless dreamers and those who would prey upon them.
My Pasadena home was built in 1909 and my daughter’s elementary school dates back to 1889, but they’re both noteworthy for their age in that the vast majority of their neighboring structures were built after World War II. Outside its indigenous cultures, Southern California has a relatively short recorded history, and this lack of historicity seems to invite fraudulent, fly-by-night entities to briefly proclaim themselves emblematic of the culture. We don’t have anything like Westminster Abbey, which has stood for over a thousand years, nor do we have anything like Harvard University, which will soon be approaching the end of its fourth century of operation. I don’t mean to imply that San Francisco or the rest of Northern California is older or wiser than Southern California; after all, European culture first came to most areas of the state through the missions founded by Junipero Serra and his gang in the mid 18th century. But young as it is, San Francisco has a presence that seems firmer and more far-sighted than that of Los Angeles. It’s a real city, the second most densely-populated one in the United States, and its landmarks give off an air of permanence (the Golden Gate Bridge, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Presidio, Coit Tower) that is utterly absent with most Los Angeles landmarks. Hell, as recently as 1978, the iconic Hollywood sign looked postapocalyptic in real life:
And I think that we just keep renewing these area stereotypes in our minds and our artistic creations with every passing year. I agree with Kristin Miller’s premise about Northern California’s identification with countercultural and optimistic mindsets when it comes to tolerance and sustainability and all that. But I also think that the realities of these areas and our collective perceptions of them reinforce each other. L.A. is a fraud, built in the desert without its own water and wholly dependent on attracting wide-eyed hopefuls from out-of-state to prey upon.
When I put together Badass Dragons of the Wasteland, our goofy postapocalyptic RPG set in and around L.A. after a combination drought/famine/zombie apocalypse/nuclear war, using L.A. as the backdrop was an utter no-brainer. Laziness, I suppose. (You wouldn’t believe how much Other People’s IP I’ve appropriated for this story, so there’s a lot of laziness at work there.) I could have set the story somewhere else, after all. The Mad Max movies used Australia, Fallout 3 used Washington DC, Escape From New York used a torched East St Louis to stand in for New York City. But L.A. seemed like a comfortable home for the vehicle-based desolation I had in mind. It’s very easy to imagine a ruined, desolate L.A., not just because of the movies and books that have portrayed it so since the dawn of noir cinema, but simply by living here, even on a particularly nice and friendly day. The next day could very easily bring us another devastating earthquake…
…or riot…
…or wildfire…
…or things might just get a little damp.
All too often our sunny, warm, mild-mannered city seems to actively hate us, and to want to douse us in Black Flag like a common roach infestation. I never get that feeling in the northern half of the state.
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The whole place got nuked in Pacific Rim, and the third x-men movie had the big final battle take place in the bay iirc.
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the Jewish one with three science degrees.
No, I’m with you. On the list of US cities I’d rather not live in, L.A. is far from the bottom.
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I think the issue is that the memes haven’t kept pace with reality. People who aren’t familiar with LA are still thinking of the LA of the Rodney King riots – not the current LA where downtown (and even Compton) are becoming interesting and hip neighborhoods. Meanwhile SF is becoming like Manhattan – overpriced so that you can’t afford to live there, and you may not want to because the interesting shops and restaurants that made the place attractive in the first place are being forced out because they can’t pay their rent.
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You, sir, have no soul :).
Apropos nothing, here are some more actual locations. When Spock beams down, he chases Khan through the lobby of Creative Artists Associates headquarters in Century City. You can see the Twin Towers reflected in the facade and in the background. Then they’re magically Downtown running down S. Grand Street past the Wells Fargo Center to California Plaza… The engineering section of the Enterprise was also shot in LA, specifically at the Budweiser Brewery in Van Nuys. Now that’s what I call showing a utopian future…
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Because Angelenos have to “ship in their water”?
As opposed to what? San Franciscans don’t exactly get their drinking water by collecting the sparkly morning dew, you know.
Does the name “Hetch Hetchy” ring a bell? Next time you’re in the area, check out the Pulgas Water Temple. Previous generations of San Franciscans weren’t quite so clueless about where their water came from.
They don’t grow their farmers’ market organic fruits and veggies on locally-harvested artisanal rainfall, either. The Delta and Central Valley farms only exist because of SWP-imported water.
Large coastal cities in mild Mediterranean climates have been living on imported water since the Romans invented aqueducts.
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Hollywood may paint a utopian San Francisco in their Sci-Fi movies, but William Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy certainly did not.
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