Reviews & Comments
San Diego, CA
Tl;dr: San Diegans don’t seem to know how to smile -
8/6/2021I lived in San Diego in 2016. I left ASAP, and haven’t looked back (by choice, anyway). My company in L.A. still sent me back to SD on occasion for work before I moved to Texas.
Let's just say, I'm a much bigger fan of most of the rest of California, and most of the rest of the West, than I am of a self-overrated bubble of a giant city which still thinks it's a small town. Basically, own up to being a metropolis (e.g., LA/OC, SF Bay Area, Phoenix, Las Vegas), or be the best version of a smaller city you can be (e.g., Wasatch Front cities, St. George, Boise); San Diego does neither, in my view.
I'll start with the positives of SD:
- SD is a safe metropolis, even by international standards, let alone American standards - even with the homeless challenges that city is facing today. Apart from a few areas along the 805 Freeway, and some side streets in Barrio Logan and San Ysidro at night, I’ve felt as safe in SD as I do in many places in Europe (still not like Singapore-safe or even Berlin-safe, but pretty safe, to be sure).
- SD is a city that really likes its military presence, and is, collectively, thankful for the military’s service to our country.
- If you have a SENTRI pass, crossing into and from Mexico is a breeze, and reaching destination in Baja for a weekend getaway isn’t a big issue.
- Anza-Borrego is a gem of a state park, amazing place.
- Balboa Park is one of the best urban parks I’ve seen in the world, and possibly my very favorite place in the area.
- Imperial Beach is a true, old-school Southern California beach that is neither ghetto (anymore) nor overcommercialized/yuppified.
- On the other hand, La Jolla Cove (the opposite of Imperial Beach basically) is just heavenly.
- Proximity to L.A., Palm Springs, Arizona, and relatively easy flights to much of the US and Mexico (by accessing the CBX to enter the Tijuana Airport).
- Some great local universities, especially UCSD, but also SDSU, USD and PLNU.
Yet, none of those upside factors were enough to keep me in SD.
In short, what I didn’t, and still don’t, like about SD:
- Traffic: Not LA/OC, Bay Area, or even Houston bad overall, but the 5 Freeway from downtown and north is just unacceptable—and getting rapidly worse.
- Radio selection: What gives, SD? Yeah, Even Tijuana stations play more contemporary Mexican music, and obviously L.A. is the entertainment capital of the world and that is reflected in its media quality. SD reminds me of Australia and New Zealand in this regard, stepping back 20+ years in time to when “Blessid Union of Souls” was a big deal.
- Homeless situation: Not L.A. or Bay Area bad, but increasingly bad, especially around the vicinity of the beautiful central library and Horton Plaza. Actually rather sad, and I pin this problem more on California state policies than on the municipal governments in SD County.
- Cuisine: There are some good restaurants there, sure, but the general quality and scene is not as wonderful as the locals think they are. Go to a host of other cities around the world, even the U.S., and enjoy higher-quality cuisine with better service and the same or better prices. Even Mexican food is better in L.A. and the Bay Area, let alone Asian cuisines (the L.A. area has the San Gabriel Valley and Westminster/Garden Grove). Carne asada fries aren’t anything special, y’all.
- Road rage: Some of the very worst I've seen, with plenty of impatient, reckless, too-cool-for-school a-holes in their leased Beemers and lift-kit pickups. Not as bad as Houston, where I also used to live, but more noticeable in my experience than much larger cities like L.A., London, Paris, Sydney, and Singapore.
- Unprofessionalism: Shockingly unprofessional, and even brazenly rude companies, who blatantly mistreat candidates during the interview process, let alone employees during employment. I’ve never seen a place where so many good people, hard-working, efficient, and intelligent, are fired from their jobs for arbitrary BS—and this is considering that the general work climate in the rest of the US is already toxic as it is. (Thankfully, I wasn’t fired in SD, but I got a transfer back to L.A. which I requested.)
- Wages: Commensurate to the cost of living, they’re AWFUL. SD employers know they can be psychologically abusive (as aforementioned) and pay what the market dictates, which is a low wage relative to the cost of living. Natives want to stay in SD because they can’t stomach the idea of ever leaving for L.A. or the Bay Area or anywhere else. 20-something ditzes from Indiana, and 20-something recent discharges from the Marines from Mississippi, want to live their “California dream” in SD, whatever it takes. Employers know this; so, a job that might pay $85-100k in San Francisco or $70-90k in Los Angeles or Orange County will pay only $45k-60k in San Diego. Said SD wage might be the same wage as, or only slightly higher than, it would be in Indianapolis or Biloxi, but the costs of living in Indy and Biloxi are obviously way, way lower. Employees line up in droves to take these jobs, and deal with the BS of the jobs just to live in SD, until they find another job that pays more (again, in SD, still poorly commensurate to the cost of living) or just move back east.
- Insularity and being overly prideful: This is an odd one, but it’s true. You’d think that given SD’s proximity to L.A., on the Mexican border, and as a transient city for people from all over the U.S. wanting to find their “California dream” or fulfulling their military obligations, that San Diegans wouldn’t be so defensive about their city. Nuh-uh. Criticize anything about it, and I mean anything—even the increasingly bad homeless situation or increasingly bad traffic with the most sensitive types—and your name is s**t in a social circle, neighborhood, or workplace pretty quickly. Imperfections are ignored in SD in a manner so blatantly closed-minded that I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world, except maybe the rural American South. “We’re not L.A.! That’s all that matters.”
- Rudeness and aloofness of the locals: If I had a nickel for every outright blatant jerk I’ve ever met in SD County, and I mean anywhere from Escondido to Imperial Beach, I could buy a house up in Beverly Hills. As for rudeness: From the aforementioned road rage, to blatantly insulting coworkers and bosses for no reason, to outright rude customer service staff, to witnessing my fair share of pushy customers in any setting from nice restaurants to Walmarts, many San Diegans are openly aggressive and miserable. Not a majority, but a great many. As for aloofness: I would say that a great majority of San Diegans, even if they aren’t exactly rude, are still aloof, distant, and very disinterested in the people around them except their “bros” and pals, and are quite unappreciative of random acts of kindness (yes, I’ve seen this, too).
One thing I acknowledge, the people I met who are above the age of about 55 and grew up there, or who otherwise moved there before the '90s, are generally pretty decent folks, as I remember. Those folks, however, seem to be a minority in the metropolis. It seems that many younger or otherwise more transient San Diegans, of whom I met a great many, are the ones about whom I’m describing my negative experiences.
Overall, even Los Angeles, Orange County, and Houston (which I didn't care for at all) have friendlier people overall than San Diego.
Houston, TX
re: I'm sick of Houston and Southeast Texas!<
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6/5/2021You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I left Houston for Fort Worth, which isn't all that much better. I'm plotting my move out of Texas within the next year. This state is hyper-self-glorified mediocrity, kind of like a glorified Oklahoma.
Houston, TX
re: Houston, TX: A Great Place to Live
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6/5/2021"[T]he city has a strong commitment to be the best it can be for its citizens. In this area, they are outstanding."
Ummmmmmm...what!?
Houston, TX
Haphazardly generic, with giant dash of ghetto -
6/5/2021I lived in the Houston area for almost three years, and more or less hated every second of it. I'll keep my list relatively brief...which is to say, it'll still be long, as I have a lot to cover, but at least I won't drone on and on with every single point.
Pros:
- Underrated local culinary scene, in terms of food quality.
- Strong job market in fossil fuel-related industries, healthcare, real estate, and, increasingly, tech.
- Well-paying jobs, among aforementioned sectors.
- Some inner city neighborhoods such as Rice Village, Montrose and the Heights haven't completely lost their personality and character. Sadly, there are few such neighborhoods for such a giant metropolis.
- Dozens and dozens of cultures and ethnicities represented.
- Memorial and Hermann are nice parks.
- Decent cultural institutions (e.g., Menil, MFAH).
- Rice and UH have beautiful campuses.
- Texas Medical Center is truly world-class in terms of healthcare-related research and development.
- A growing local brewing scene.
- Hidalgo and George are good, maybe even great, county judges in Harris and neighboring Fort Bend, respectively.
I actually did okay meeting good people I could relate to in the Houston area, whether through work or online. But the culture, haphazard low-density sprawl, and horrible summer weather made socializing an unsustainable challenge, much more so than in other places I've lived. Which leads me to...
Cons:
- I laugh hysterically when I read about Houstonians being kind, helpful and polite. Southeast Texans are absolutely some of the least charming people in the US.
- Completely, aesthetically unattractive city, in terms of manmade and natural landscapes.
- Awful, selfish, short-sighted, impatient drivers who pull maneuvers I haven't seen even in Boston, NYC or Latin America. Wow, just wow! Especially you, Cody, Miguel or Karen in the F-350/Silverado/Tundra/Suburban/Escalade.
- Generally trash culture that actively promotes anti-intellectualism and shuns any real sense of community pride. It's like Rice and UH don't even exist in the minds of most locals.
- Typical customer service: some combo of inattentive, brusque, miserable, and/or outright rude. Common with retail and healthcare, but even sometimes with dining out.
- Speaking of healthcare, in no other city I've lived in have I had such difficulty finding a GP, dentist, chiropractor, and other healthcare professionals that I liked, in terms of "bedside manner" and competency. Maybe so much for having a huge medical center...
- While the city/region might be multicultural, I noticed a lot of hostility from black and Hispanic people toward people who aren't like them, that I frankly haven't noticed in other cities.
- Even with the multiculturalism and liberalism (by regional standards), the whole Southern concepts of "traditionalism" (as nebulously ill-defined) and "gitcha a good partner and have yerselves sum kids" still reign supreme.
- Local park and bike trail systems are utterly underwhelming (apart from Memorial and Hermann).
- Regional beaches, especially Galveston, are disgusting. Not even a nice way to put it.
- Secondary streets are in bad shape in some areas, especially inside Beltway 8.
- Public transportation exists...but not really. One light rail line, buses that don't run on time, and buses that are, quite frankly, rode by plenty of the aggressive and/or creepy.
- No zoning in Houston, few aesthetic standards encouraged by other regional governments, property developers can build as haphazardly and cheaply as they want "becuz thur property raghts."
- Speaking of haphazard sprawl... It's disgusting that Cypress, Magnolia, Pearland, Friendswood, etc. have little to make them distinct from one another. Preservation of old-town character in the suburbs isn't a thing, like it is around D/FW, Chicago, and L.A. Sugar Land and The Woodlands have tried...but they don't have cohesive old-town centers, and the modern town centers they've built are kind of generic. Actual old towns that have become suburbs, such as Spring, Tomball, Rosenberg and Richmond, have really underutilized those opportunities, IMO.
- The sprawl is also incredibly low-density, not continually dense (relatively speaking) like it is around Chicago, L.A, S.F., and even Miami. Makes simply driving to Target or the gas station a tedious challenge (in addition to the insane drivers).
- Long drive away (2.5+ hours) from any other city of actual interest: Austin, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas, and New Orleans. And, with the possible exception of N.O., none of the others are that interesting after the first visit.
- Houston might be a major air hub, but flying to many other places, domestic and international, is more pricey than from Austin, D/FW, let alone the coasts.
- Speaking of airports, both Bush and Hobby are depressing, "low-rent" sort of airports. Even considering Hobby's expanded, modern security area. Rude airport personnel, too, even by US big-city standards.
- Flooding. I could care less that Houston is in a flood zone. You chose to expand your city there; haphazardly, without any real concept of land use and environmental controls. 2001 and 2017 don't seem to faze y'all. Only some of the far-flung suburbs like The Woodlands, Sugar Land and Fulshear seem to take this issue seriously by implementing drainage and retention standards.
- Pollution from local petrochemical facilities, and allergies such as central Texas cedar pollen and Saharan dust (that literally blows across the Atlantic and ends up affecting Louisiana and Texas), create a toxic respiratory cocktail for several months of the year.
- Crime and the "physiology" of neighborhoods: Yes, the crime rates around Houston might be lower, on paper, than in places like Chicago and St. Louis. However, it is the city's geographic spread over some 600 square miles, and the ensuing, lower-density demographic spread, that results in crime not being concentrated. Sure, you can expect to hear about drug deals gone wrong and carjackings in southeast Houston and Greenspoint, but you occasionally hear of those stories coming out of nicer areas like Midtown, Northwest Houston, the Energy Corridor area, etc. As cheaply-built "older" developments age, landlords care even less than before about those properties, and the upper-middle-class move ever outward for newer, shinier neighborhoods. The overall "physiology" of some "older" neighborhoods begin to deteriorate. I should also say that by "older" in Houston, I mean built before about 1996 (25 years ago). This form of gradual, creeping, suburban decline has even begun to inflict the periphery of Pearland, Katy and Cypress; likely unthinkable back in 1996.
- Summers. Enough said.
- Check this out: Pay attention sometime to the wide service roads parallel to the wide freeways and tollways. And, to the relatively short timing of stop light cycles. I actually think those psychologically "incentivize" people to drive faster, because they're comfortable doing so or they think they're going to miss a green light.
- Oh, speaking of tolls... Having to pay a toll to drive so many places.
- Service roads, too. They're actually inconvenient and impractical. I won't miss those when I leave Texas (as they are prevalent in most of the state).
And, really, other Texas cities aren't much better, in my experience and view, for their own variety of reasons (I'm living in D/FW now). I'm leaving Texas altogether soon and just couldn't be happier to move back to a region I've always loved, the West!