Yesterday afternoon we walked down the street to the local flea market to check things out and along the way I began to wonder about some of my recent comments. The last few days I have ripped on downtown LA pretty good, sharing my opinions on things I see wrong with the area and what needs to be improved.
Yesterday a reader left a comment (thanks Eric!) asking about our decision to live downtown when we could have had some of the ‘things’ we are complaining about if we lived somewhere else. It’s a great point and one that I may not have fully explained in our Learn About Us page.
We made two trips to LA to find a place to live, one in January and another at the beginning of March. Our original places to look for housing included Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and downtown. Living in downtown LA rocketed to the top of the list when we spoke to everyone around the area for a few reasons.
- Proximity to H’s work: This is a very busy time for her, exciting but busy. The idea of commuting 30-75 minutes twice a day didn’t make a lot of sense considering how much she was going to be at the office early on. The ability to walk five minutes to work and the flexibility to pop over then whenever she had to was quite appealing.
- The excitement of a changing downtown: Being in the middle of a rejuvenation is exciting. We love the idea of being in and around the hustle and bustle of downtown and everything that goes along with it.
- Familiarity: Getting to know the rather small area considered downtown is easier than taking on the entire greater Los Angeles area all at once. It is a big enough adjustment going from Chicago to LA that we figured we could live downtown for a couple years and if we liked it we would stay, and if not we could move. Simple enough.
Which brings me to a self-observation: it isn’t that downtown LA is bad and things are backwards and nothing makes sense – it’s just different to us. Downtown LA is not downtown Chicago and we realize that. The general prevailing attitudes of those that live in the core, the civic leaders and the residents is quite different on a lot of levels. Not bad, just different. It is that difference that we are getting used to.
It is the balance of living and experiencing something new to us and something new to downtown LA itself.
We love you downtown LA, we really do.
But it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to get on our nerves along the way.
i think the criticism has been great. if you can’t criticize the things you love, then do you really love them? as long as you don’t expect downtown to change overnight to meet your expectations, you’ll be just fine here.
and it will be fun to read your excitement when you do finally stumble on more of the hidden gems in downtown.
Thanks for the encouragement!
I don’t think we expect things to change overnight, rather we just hope they change in time as downtown reinvents itself.