I would rarely call my occasional ranting helpful. I usually talk about politics or movies and opinions I have and, really, that’s serving no purpose other than giving me an outlet to vent frustration (they’re making a new Judge Dredd movie and it had better not suck ass).
I have recently been house hunting for my second time in Los Angeles. I’m still working out the details, but it looks like I’ve settled on a place to live. In my almost two years living in LA, I’ve spent about half of that looking for houses. Literally. Last year I spent five months looking for the house I presently live in, and I’ve spent three months searching this time around. In all that time, I’ve learned many tips for where to look, how to look, and what you should run away from screaming.
So, to take a departure from my usual not-helpful ranting, here’s 11 helpful chunks of advice to any of my friends or you random strangers out there about moving to the monster that is Los Angeles, California.
1- Don’t Freak the Hell Out
Here’s the bad news: You’re moving to LA. It’s massive. It’s got gangs. People get shot for looking at other people and no other reason. Here’s the good new: It’s not all that bad, and for all the people who live here, there’s just as many places to live. You will never run out of places to look at for renting. I’ve met dumpster-diving hobos who have apartments. Seriously.
2- Use Westside Rentals
There’s a couple of basic laws to follow when house-hunting in LA that any LA resident will tell you, the most important of which is that you should use Westside Rentals, a regretfully not-free website that allows you to access a database of thousands of for-rent houses and apartments. You gotta pay for it, but it’s worth it as it will save you time. Driving around LA looking for “FOR RENT” signs isn’t an option. LA is freaking huge. When using Westside Rentals, I avoid listings that don’t have pictures of the places their hocking. We live in the 21st century… if the landlord can’t operate a camera to upload pictures to a website, they’re probably either too old, too poor, or too crazy to be dealt with (more on landlords in a second).
You can use Craig’s List too for finding apartments, but you’re playing with fire. You could find something great using it. Or you could find a black hole of lies and death. It’s like rolling a dice. With Westside Rentals, you at least have SOME idea of what you’re getting into. $30 bucks for three months is a small price to pay for that information and remember, if the listing is sparse on details, be cautious.
I think I’ve earned some kind of paycheck from them for this.
3- Landlords WILL Lie to You
That three-bedroom little townhouse you got your eye on looks great, doesn’t it? Westside Rentals had tons and tons of pictures of it and it just looks perfect. Then you show up to look at it in person and one of the bedrooms… is a closet. Literally. It’s a 4-foot by 4-foot closet. You can’t even lie-down in it.
Landlords and real-estate people are frequently full of shit. Never take their word for it. Remember, you are their customer. Don’t let them pressure you into anything or try to convince you that giant crack in the hallway can just be painted over. The crack might be there because the house has a foundation that’s split due to an earthquake and the whole building is ticking-away its last moments before it implodes.
4- Know Where the Hell You’re Moving To
As stated before, LA is freaking huge. And by LA, I mean LA county. The actual city limits of the place called Los Angeles is no-where near as big as you think it is. Thing is, the “city” never stops, seamlessly blending with other boroughs, districts, and other cities so the only way you know you’re someplace different is how the street signs have changed color. The most important factors to consider when moving is your job and your friends. You should try to live near your job, but that’s not always possible, and the way jobs are in this town, you’ll lose it and have a new one before your lease is up anyway.
Best thing to do if you REALLY care about not driving an hour to and from work every day is a central location. Look at an overhead map of LA. Look in the middle. That’s more-or-less where you want to be.
Now, you should also ask your friends or knowledgeable LA-ians about what areas are safe and fun and which are boring or will get you stabbed. And even in those areas are good and bad areas. Example: Los Feliz is a cool little area. It’s close to Hollywood without being Hollywood (tip: Hollywood SUCKS). However, even in Los Feliz, which is tiny, there are good and bad sections. So, how do you know?
5- Common Sense
Thanks to the Gods of Google, about 95% of Los Angeles is viewable via the Google Maps Street View. You can use Google to literally look at every square inch of LA. This is invaluable for people looking for places to live as you can not only check out that awesome-looking apartment you found, but you can make sure that it’s not an awesome-looking apartment that happens to be in a gang neighborhood (it DOES happen).
Look for graffiti, shopping carts laying around, hooded men on street corners, and (my personal favorite sign of a shit place to live) bars on people’s windows. Now, not EVERY neighborhood or street that has houses with jail-bars over their windows is in a bad area. But you can bet your ass every bad neighborhood is filled with houses with jail-bars. Using that logic, if your dream apartment has bars over its front windows, you might be dealing with a stabbing. Maybe, maybe not. No barred-windows, though, and odds are, you have nothing to worry about.
6- Be Considerate to Your Friends
If you’re one of those people with no friends or any plans to ever have friends, then don’t worry about this. For everyone else, if you ever plan to have visitors, looking out for their best-interests can make your pad either a happening spot on Saturday night or a desolate foreign land no one has heard of where you are the king alien dictator.
For example, if your awesome apartment is in a bad neighborhood with gangs, it might be controlled access with underground parking. That’s great for you who lives there, as you always have protection from your 20 foot-tall walls and automated mounted machine guns. But when you host a poker night and your friends have to park on the street four blocks away, that’s four blocks of potential rape staring them in the face. They might not come back.
Also keep parking in mind. People have invited me over to their houses before and I have spent several hours looking for somewhere to park before I gave up and went home. Some neighborhoods (usually ones with tons and tons of apartment buildings) have AWFUL parking. Most areas in LA have bad parking, that’s a given, but some are truly, horribly bad. If you have a chance, drive around the place and look at the streets on a weekend. If you can’t find a place to park on a Sunday afternoon, it’s probably not a great place to live.
7- As Helpful as Your Friends Are, They May Be Idiots
Your friends are your most helpful tool. They can inform you what areas are great, what bars have the best beer, and what times to use the 405 (NEVER).
Your friends can also be totally incompetent and fill your head with lies.
If you have a friend who lives in a shitty neighborhood, they’re either going to be very realistic about it or they’re going to be delusional. “Oh, it’s not THAT bad. I’ve only seen, like, seven people murdered. Today. It’s a slow day.” If they’re delusional, they’re going to do their damndest to talk you into moving into their shitty neighborhood with them, mostly because they don’t want to be the only vulnerable person there (that old mantra with dealing with bears applies- you only have to run as fast or faster than the poor bastard behind you).
That also works in the opposite way. Your friend may be a rich sonofabitch and have a penthouse apartment near the beach. He may tell you (you being someone who has no clue what things cost) that paying $1,500 to $2,000 bucks a month for rent just for your share is TOTALLY reasonable. Lies. It’s true things are more expensive in LA than in most place in America, but paying more than $800 a month for rent when you’re fresh out of college is CRAZY.
They may also not be as familiar with LA as they think they are. I’ve known people who’ve lived in LA their whole lives and have never heard of Glendale. Glendale is a pretty big place. Lots of my friends live there. It’s on the map next to freaking downtown. How the hell have you never heard of it?
Oh, and Orange County (the OC) and Laguna Beach are not Los Angeles. If you can afford to live their, and you want to commute two or three hours to work every day, go ahead. Idiot.
8- Sports Nut? Get Over It.
You may be tempted to live near Dodger’s Stadium. Before you jump on the prospect of walking to baseball games, factor in that Dodger Stadium is located in a hilly, mountainous zone (so on a map you may be in walking distance to it, but in truth there’s a 100-foot cliff in your way), and it’s in what used-to-be gang territory. Recently, it’s been gentrified into hipster central, so it’s nicer but still not safe or “nice”. Also, consider the traffic problems you’re going to encounter and how many baseball games there are in a season. A lot.
You may be tempted to live near the Staples Center. You are a fool. The Staples Center is near Downtown. Two things live in Downtown- rich bastards with million dollar penthouses and death incarnate. If you can’t afford bodyguards or an entourage, you will be murdered. So if you don’t have that kind of cash, just deal with driving across town to the damn thing.
9- The Beach is Awesome… for a Price
I love the beach, and even though the California beach is freezing cold, I still love living near it. Santa Monica, Venice, and Culver City are all great places to live. Thing about the beach is… it’s cold (the wind blowing off the Pacific is alarmingly crisp). It’s expensive (those cliche LA surfer dudes are tech-bubble millionaires). And it’s probably no-where near your job or your friends. If you can deal with that, great. Just be aware of what you’re getting into.
10- Learn What a Hipster is, Learn Where They Live, and Avoid Them
Here, this is a wikipedia entry about what they are. Even better, watch this:
Avoid these creatures like plague rats. They tend to hang around Echo Park or anyplace trashy yet expensive.
11- Los Angeles Will Not Kill You and the Traffic is not THAT Bad
I think the best thing to keep in mind is that, despite all my warnings about gangs and death, Los Angeles is not a bad place. Great people live here. Even in the most terrible of neighborhoods, there’s good people to be found. I just recently joined a dodgeball club that plays in Highland Park. Ten years ago, if I had gone to Highland Park, I’d be shot for being white and breathing. Today, I play dodgeball there.
Yes, the traffic in LA sucks. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Get an iPod, get some audio-books, get an XM Radio, and learn to enjoy being in your car. The senior vice president of my company drives an hour and a half to work every morning. The SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT. And he deals with it without complaining.
Choosing the right apartment can help ease your traffic problems and make you feel safer. But in the end, you can bet your ass you will still need to drive through shitty traffic and bad neighborhoods in this town regardless. You’ll learn to cope.
Also, there’s no way to avoid an earthquake. And the “big one” will happen eventually and kill us all equally, without bias. Most of LA has accepted this and waits for it patiently.
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I hope this has been helpful. My Los Angeles friends will probably think I’m an idiot. See you tomorrow, folks.
2 Comments
January 8, 2009 at 2:57 am
Dodgeball??!!!??!!!?
January 8, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Wow – I can’t decide if what I read helps me or makes me more anxious! Am glad that you have “studied” this apartment thing. Also – as usual, you are so very funny!!!