March 2009 Archives

In response to someone searching the following question and finding my site:

How easy is it to move to LA?

Well, that depends on where you're moving from. I moved from Colorado without the help of an employer or the military and I don't think it was too difficult. I had a friend move to LA from Boston with the help of an employer and he seemed to do it without terrible difficulty.

The first and largest hurdle is of course cost. Doesn't it always come down to money? See my previous post about what I spent here. Saving was difficult for me as my wife was in school and not making a whole lot of money. I ended up teaching part time at a community college (in addition to my regular job) and having all the extra income go directly into savings.

I guess the second hardest part before we even hopped into the moving truck was finding a job. It's extremely difficult to get someone to hire you in Los Angeles while still living in another state. Fortunately, I really lucked out and found someone who was into taking chances and saw no problems with hiring the kid from CO. My friend who moved from Boston didn't have so much luck initially. I moved out here a few months before him and he called up to ask if he could use my LA address on his applications. That way it already looked like he was a California resident and the potential employers wouldn't see him as a high risk hire. If you want more clarification on this point leave a comment with your email and I'll get you an in depth response.

Third? Finding a place to live. Again, see the post I mentioned above. Be prepared to slum it for at least 6 months while you get to know the city and the parts that you like and don't like. If you have any questions about parts of the city leave a comment with your email and I'll definitely get right back to you.

Another irritating part of moving to LA was dealing with all the naysayers. I can't tell you how many people told me I was going to hate it. "Too much traffic", "Shitty people", "Too much pollution", "It's earthquake country!". The naysayers went on and on. My biggest piece of advice? DON'T LISTEN TO THEM! Follow your heart and just try and not do anything too stupid.

I guess to sum it all up: If you can save a little money, find a job and a place before you move out here the only thing standing in your way is one long drive or short flight.

See you soon?

I wanted to quickly post about the coolest thing to happen to me since our move to Los Angeles:

A month back comedian/writer Dana Gould was on the Adam Carolla morning show and did his little bit about Batman and Robin chasing down the joker but Batman had to force Robin to pull the batmobile over because he has terrible diarrhea (see the last 5 minutes of Adam Carolla's latest podcast). I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever heard (replacing Patton Oswlat's favorite Christmas memory) and immediately made Nicole listen to it (who wasn't all that impressed). Anyway, to make a long story short, Dana is a parent of one of Nicole's kindergartners and I made her tell him how funny I thought his bit was.

Fastforward to last weekend at the school fundraiser event and there I am meeting Dana Gould and having him tell me that he was so glad to hear I loved his bit and that I'm a man after his own heart. Then, he tells me his friend is a cartoonist and actually drew up Batman on the commode and that he was going to get me a copy. On Monday Nicole came home with an envelope containing not only the Batman drawing but also Dana's latest DVD! How fantastic is that?

I love LA.

Rarely can I go to a restaurant (or order takeout) and get the same thing. I usually like mixing it up, even if I really liked something the last time. However, when I eat at Bossa Nova I have to get Willy's Favorite Burrito or else I get depressed that I'm missing an opportunity to get the most delicious burrito on the planet.

I'm not going to write a review on the restaurant as that's already been done well here: LA.foodblogging - Bossa Nova. But, if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend getting Willy's Favorite Burrito. I give it two thumbs way, way up.

Whoever Willy is, he's frickin' awesome.

I have received all the validation I need for starting this website. A comment left yesterday stated:

thank u for this post. i am comeing and i hope to be prepared.

Posted by anthony | March 15, 2009 11:48 PM

Wow! How fantastic is that? Thank YOU Anthony! I'm glad you found my post useful. And Dan, you totally called it.

I am so happy to help even just one person. This website can end a success.

Speaking of help; I discovered movetola.com tonight. What? Pay $50 an hour (up to $750) for advice and friendship? Alright, so the job placement (if legitimate) is totally worth some kind of fee but I really think half the fun of moving somewhere new is finding the things you're interested in. I'm totally into live music. I doubt Christiana who runs movetola.com knows that Spaceland in Silverlake has free live music on Monday nights (don't worry, the advice here is totally free).

Maybe I'm being too hard on her. After all, she does have a long list of success stories with nothing but people gushing about her.

Here's to movetola.com AND MyMoveToLA.com helping people!

My whole life California has received a bad rap because of high gas prices. Well, to be completely honest, the gas prices here aren't much higher than in Denver (especially when you compare areas like Cherry Creek to Beverly Hills where there really is no difference). Gas stations here have one key difference: Free air and water (to customers [who buy even 5 cents of gas]).

For anyone with a leaky tire or overheating car (of which I've had many) free air and water is a blessing. Yeah, gas station attendants here may refuse to give you change for a dollar nine out of ten times but hey, that's a small price to pay to pump up that low tire or fill up that busted radiator for free.

This is a direct response to a google search term that drove traffic to my blog (thanks google analytics!).

How much money should you have to move to LA?

I can't tell you exactly how much you will need. I can only tell you what I had.

In short, I saved about $4800 for our (which constitutes me, my wife and a 20 lb crazy dog) move from Denver to Los Angeles. I rented a truck (and a trailer for the car) and tossed everything we didn't/couldn't sell into the truck and then headed off west on June 22nd, 2008 (my 25th birthday).

It just so happened that during the very last week of June in 2008 the US happened to see some of the highest gas prices of all time. We stopped at numerous desert locations to fuel up and paid around $5.00 per gallon (for 85 octane!). It did help that we received about $200 in shell gas cards from friends and coworkers before we left (not added in to the $4800).

One thing we really lucked out on was that we found our apartment in Koreatown and they were desperate to have as high of as an occupancy rate as possible (because they were trying to sell the apartment building) so they were offering sick move-in specials. We moved into our 700 SF studio apartment for $99 plus July's rent of $890 (we got the last of June for free) plus the dog deposit of $500. In total that added up to $1489 (which is a great deal in LA).

Then came all the DMV business of getting the car and scooter registered, getting CA drivers licenses, getting Nicole's last named changed and a smog test (which our car failed because of the catalytic converter). We had to get a new cat converter that ended up costing us $1600 (that we charged to a card) plus another $300 for the regular DMV (and name change) stuff. I shouldn't forget to mention that we had expired plates when moving out of Denver because our plates expired the week we were moving and we didn't want to pay the registration fees twice but ended up getting ticketed while parked on the street for expired plates (another $50). Also, you might want to think about all the time you're going to lose if you're paid hourly by waiting in line at the DMV.

The most important thing I want to note is that I did have a job before moving which required a flight to LA before the move that cost $280 for a ticket, $300 for a hotel plus another $250 for a rental car and gas and then food expense (I think I ate lunchables almost exclusively).

To sum it up:

$905 for job interviews
$800 for the rental truck
$450 for gas
$1500 to move in
$300 DMV
-----------------------------------
$3995 Total

I would recommend you have at least $3000 when you hit the road for LA and be prepared to slum it in the hood for at least six months.

It's all a small price to pay for a fantastic adventure.

I try hard to keep this blog an honest and respectable read. Sometimes cool things happen that might make me sound pretentious or "Hollywood" if I post about them so I usually keep them to myself. Without a doubt my only celebrity interaction is just a result of my (our) job(s).

Anyway, at the risk of sounding douchebagish, I'm going to quickly say that the coolest thing to happen while moving to West Hollywood was being welcomed to the neighborhood by Ioan Gruffudd. I've decided that part of the intent of this blog (as well as my blog started in college) is to help me remember all these little events that make up life's wonderful adventures. Had I not moved to LA I would have not been welcomed to the neighborhood by Ioan and I'd probably still be in Denver. Only now I'd have no job and a mortgage we couldn't afford.

And that is worth remembering.

If anyone reads this silly blog and takes anything from it it's that you should follow your heart. I knew coming here wouldn't be easy and I was totally prepared for failure but something more was waiting for me here in LA. I threw caution to the wind, told my wife to shut up and packed all our crap into a truck and drove west.

I've learned more about life and architecture (my profession for anyone that doesn't know me) in the last seven months than I ever could have learned in Denver in five years.

Thank you LA for being so good to me.

Nicole and I were scootering around yesterday (enjoying the 80 degree March weather) and even though our budget for eating out has already been blown this week we decided to stop and get a bite. We were initially scootering around the touristy part of Hollywood Blvd but decided it would be much too expensive to eat there so we headed on down to Sunset and then east a few miles. Eventually we came to a Los Angeles institution known as Zankou Chicken on the corner of Sunset and Normandie and figured it was probably a good place to eat inexpensively.

Turns out we were right and for under $20 we were stuffed with Armenian grease and had food to take home. The food is great but the service is terrible. It's one of those joints where they act like you're wasting their time with your order. They take your order at the register where we were greeted with a "Yes please?" and then told that our order (and apparently no one elses) would take 15 minutes. Our order also included a beverage which apparently comes with the food when they call your order number and not before. When Nicole asked for the drink she was greeted with a blank stare by the young girl behind the counter who didn't say anything for a few moments and then asked for our order number (which I had taken to the table).

Anyway, to sum it all up: Zankou Chicken, good food, great price but prepare for the abuse.

Below you will find pictures of the sculpture located on the stairs leading up to our apartment building.

You don't even need my 14-year-old-male sense of humor to think this is funny (but if you have it you might just die laughing).

Now I understand this is West Hollywood (the center of the center of the center of the gay universe as I'm told) and all but c'mon! Do I really have to be visually molested every time I come home?

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
by Reyner Banham 1971

I can't count how many google and library searches I did trying to find a book just like this one. For whatever reason people just don't talk about it. Ok, so it is 38 years old and small portions of the literature no longer apply, but it is still an amazing book on Los Angeles.

I had long heard Adam Carolla complain about how all the street and neighborhood names in and around Los Angeles are of Spanish/Mexican influence and this book explains why. It is not as Carolla says, "to confuse the poor immigrants" but because many of the streets and neighborhoods are named after the Spanish or Mexican ranches they now occupy. I find this amazing!

Also, Banham talks about the modernist structures built in Los Angeles in the early 1900s before the modern movement even came!

I'm only just beginning the book and I already don't want it to end. If you want to learn about what Los Angeles is and why it's here I highly recommend checking out Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.