Reviews & Comments
Santee, CA
very very suburban -
7/3/2006I'm not surprised it is a hotbed of the Klan (my husband calls it Santucky, which is rude to Kentuckians everywhere). Very rightwing, it seems that every other car sports a Bush-supporting bumpersticker; Duncan Hunter (on the conservationists' Worst Voting Record list year after year) is the House Rep. I'm a writer, my spouse is here doing an architecture degree, and we haven't found much of anyone to talk to outside of school in downtown SD; we can't wait to get out of here.
Overall, San Diego and its hinterlands are very conservative places, so we won't be hanging around. The prices for homes and condos are through the roof, especially downtown -- they predict a home price crash is coming soon, but the starting prices are so high, it won't matter much to us. I just gave spouse Places Rated 2006 for a birthday present: he's got one more year to go, so he's got to find somewhere we REALLY want to live while he gets his license.
Monterey, CA
The Secret Life of the Central Coast... -
6/15/2006... happens in September-November and March-June. That's when the sun shines (I never understood the line in "Lady Is a Tramp" -- "Hate California, it's cold and it's damp" -- until I experienced June gloom on this coast). The tourists have mostly gone home, except the savvy ones, and the locals come out with theater, concerts, dining discounts on Fisherman's Wharf and laid-back cultural events like Christmas in the Adobes and the First Night Monterey.
If you want to come join in the year-round fun (including fog on your 4th of July bbq), consider living in Seaside, Marina or certain parts of Salinas. East Salinas is pretty rough, very gang-oriented, but Oldtown is being spruced up daily. Seaside ditto. Marina was once part and parcel of Fort Ord, and does have lots of decent apartments, passable if pricey housing, and some new development. Expect to drop $400K+ for a decent house in any of those towns, and over $500K in Monterey or Pacific Grove.
Still, the coastal recreation and scenery is brilliant, the dining excellent and not wildly overpriced, and there's plenty of cultural goings on. The Naval PostGraduate School and Defense Languages Institute keep lots of young/intellectual life in the place. Mostly I liked it; if my spouse hadn't lost his job and our mortgage killed us, we'd still be there.