Opinion of Orange County, CA

[Sbane]

The coast is beautiful (as close to paradise as you can get I suppose) and I like Irvine as well. Even though the city is basically owned by a corporation....but let's ignore that. I certainly wouldn't mind living in that area again. Then there are places like Yorba Linda which is full of the worst sorts of people on earth...so neutral on balance.

[Sbane]

FC. Very beautiful. Great freeways.

Only the toll roads could possibly be described as "great", and those of course have the fundamental problem of requiring tolls. In any case, when the second positive thing that comes to mind about a place is the freeways, it probably doesn't have much going for it.

You have quite obviously never traveled down the 5 from LA into OC. It's a huge difference. It suddenly turns from a 6 lane mess to a bigger, nicer 10+ lane freeway with barely any traffic outside of rush hours.

[Sbane]

The "morass." I live on the hill to the right.

To be fair to Xahar, the vast, vast majority of Socal does not look like that.

That Freeway pic Xahar is not in OC.    I know because signs in OC point to LA, or Santa Monica, not Sacto.

The freeways do clog in spots sometimes in the OC, but nothing like in LA County.

The 405 in OC from Irvine to Westminster is pretty damn bad. I had to make that commute for a while. But of course it's nothing compared to what the 405 is like near the 10.

[Sbane]

I've never seen I-35W look anything like that unless there's an accident or something else holding up traffic. That pic is awful and indeed representative of why I'd never want to even visit there.

Socal in general?

[Sbane]

Pretty much, yeah. It's kind of similar to Florida in reasons why I don't like it, even if all the olds takes Florida down a further notch.

Yeah, I have noticed the similarities. Of course I like South Florida as well so.....

Anyways, you would have way more places that you would enjoy living in Los Angeles than you would in Miami. Of course the rents are going to be quite high. But I think you would be quite happy living in an up and coming neighborhood in Hollywood. And I don't know if you care much about crime but Los Angeles is much safer than Minneapolis.

[Sbane]

Don't know if the actual county is anything close to how it was portrayed in the series. I only remember that most of the shows characters seemed to be Democrats, while the county is heavily Republican.

HELL NO!!!!!!!!! That show is crap and so is that related show on MTV with Laguna Beach. In that area Laguna Beach is actually quite Democratic. It's 80% white (very white by Socal standards) and voted about 65% for Obama. But other than that the coast tends to be Republican but socially moderate. And there aren't as many fundies/racists as you will find in inland OC or the IE (Riverside, San Bernardino).

[Sbane]

Don't know if the actual county is anything close to how it was portrayed in the series. I only remember that most of the shows characters seemed to be Democrats, while the county is heavily Republican.

HELL NO!!!!!!!!! That show is crap and so is that related show on MTV with Laguna Beach. In that area Laguna Beach is actually quite Democratic. It's 80% white (very white by Socal standards) and voted about 65% for Obama. But other than that the coast tends to be Republican but socially moderate. And there aren't as many fundies/racists as you will find in inland OC or the IE (Riverside, San Bernardino).

Wiki helps. The show plays in Newport City. It's quite rich, like in the TV series. How about voting trends ?

Newport swung quite heavily to Obama. And it swung back hard in 2010. It's that sort of a place. Balboa peninsula have smaller houses and more rentals and has a quite large student population from UC Irvine. It barely voted for Obama, I believe. The rest of the place is rich suburbia but again, pretty socially moderate. If California votes on Gay Marriage again this year, that sort of a place will swing the hardest towards the equality side. It also voted against legalizing Marijuana by only a slightly larger margin than the state. Nearby Huntington Beach was right at the state average and Costa Mesa actually voted for it IIRC.