Stores in LA

Glendale:

Important Glendale info:

http://www.pacificlistings.com/apartments/hollywood-west-hollywood-the-grove-silverlake/

Gogo Rocket

So they're going to tell me what I need to change and stuff.  I'm reasonably confident this will help.

Celebs who live in Cali

Alec Baldwin is coming with us!

27 signs you live in Silver Lake

      Celebs who live in Silver Lake:

• James Franco
• Drew Barrymore
• Chris Pine
• Zachary Quinto
• Chris Parnell  (I think I'd recognize him)

I found a particularly critical post about Silver Lake on UrbanDictionary:

Research has led me to believe Echo Park is cheaper.  There're conflicting reports about Los Feliz, I think the book said it was so expensive I didn't even consider it.  

      

June Trip!

So I've been researching all sorts of things in regards to our trip in June. This blog has some really great tips as to when to buy airline tickets: http://www.farecompare.com/travel-advice/tips-from-air-travel-insiders/

We should shoot to buy our tickets no earlier then mid-late March so I'm thinking the very start of april will be a good time frame to buy tickets. The airlines usually start discounting tickets 3 months out from the flight date.

I've also been comparing a TON of different sites and airline websites. So far southwest is the cheapest ( about $320). The blog also said that tuesdays around 3pm is the best time to buy tickets because most airlines will do sales just for tuesday afternoons, though it also said the southwest airlines sales are usually early Tuesday mornings before most other airlines.

Let's keep an eye on Southwest and meet up on a tuesday morning at the end march/start of april and get our tickets then!


I also check prices for other airports close to LA but LAX has the cheaper flights. The rental car will be a little more money there though...

More more more

"While still centrally located on the Westside, the area known as West LA tends to be less expensive than nearby Westwood, Brentwood, and Santa Monica.  Here, the streets are more urban, dotted with convenience shops, gas stations, and strip malls, many of which could use a new coat of paint."

There's a city called Tustin, so I kind of want to live there.

It's where the A is.
Plane tickets have been stuck at $368.00 since we first checked.

The Kayak thing does say to wait:

Airfare is $150 cheaper if we fly from Chicago

It might be worth it to take the train to Chicago and fly out from there

More Whole Foods!

 This is the list of stores within 35 miles of the Brentwood location:

And here's the map of nearby stores:

 

Pretty sure Ted was blowing smoke when he said Midwest was the largest region.  There's no way we have more stores in the Midwest than California.

      The West LA store is super close to Culver City, which I think was still one of our possible options.
      Unfortunately, Echo Park and Silver Lake are here:
     

Which means the only reasonably close store to them is Glendale.

 Ugh someone made this guy at Colectivo wear a beardnet and he looks as sad as a dog with a cone.

Well, that's all I've got for today!

Research Trip is 146 days away!

Checklist (to be amended at later dates!):

1.) Inventory all of our stuff!

2.) Buy plane tickets for June 24th trip

• Look for places to stay (coachsurfing?  AirbNb?  Groupon hotels?)
• Schedule appointments to meet with different Whole Foods managers (West California, 4th and Fairfax, Glendale, others?)
• Figure out rental cars and talk to Melvin!  I'm talking to her now this will be updated quickly

3.) Rent UHaul Truck and Hitch (expensive?!)

• Look at other places?  I think we should probably just stick to UHaul.  We have to figure out an August date before renting one, though, so this part will have to wait a little while

4.) 

Going to LA

I like to start Indiegogos, so here's one for our LA trip:
Indiegogo for LA!
My mom will probably give us money if no one else does.

I looked at Streetadvisor a bit on Echo Park, I think that's definitely just our spot to go to:

I should probably be worried about crime, but I think I'll just take a kung fu class or something.  I've been meaning to start jiu jitsu at Neutral Ground.  I think maybe instead I'll just get a safe and lock all of my precious belongings in there every night?  Nah, I'm naive, I'm not even going to be thinking about the crime at all I don't think.

More stuff from citydata.com:

So yeah we probably have our work cut out for us on our June trip.  Sounds a little bit like the horror stories you hear about Riverwest, though, and I never had any problems there.  Taco Bell ad on the side of this page is tempting the crap out of me.

Ok that's it for today!  I think the debate is between Silver Lake and Echo Lake, though, huh?  

The (San Fernando) Valley

So people online and via Twitter keep suggesting that this place called "The Valley" is cheap and awesome.  It's actually called San Fernando Valley. Also, Culver City.

Got a book in the mail, and more!

Some advantages to Echo Park and Silver Lake are that they're close to Griffith Park, "the largest publicly owned park in the United States... 4,400 acres in the hills and features the Los Angeles Zoo, the Griffith Park Observatory Planetarium and Laserium, (the list continues but the zoo and planetarium were the two most exciting things to me).

Silver Lake is south of Los Feliz, which is the rich and "funky" community.  Silver Lake sounds expensive, though, Echo Park sounds better.

Here's what they say about Echo Park:
"This largely blue-collar, Latino community hugs the base of the hills."
There's a park called "Elysian Park", and the topography is kind of steep so there are stairs everywhere, like these called "The Avalon Stairways":

Kind of reminds me of a nice version of our East Side.  Also, Dodger Stadium is nearby, so sporting events make everything hard to get to.  I do not like the Dodgers, but they aren't very good so it's ok.  I'd still go to games to drink, just like I do for the Brewers.

There's still supposedly a Whole Foods coming to Echo Park, but the story about it opening was posted in May and there hasn't been an update.  Luckily we have just enough time that hopefully it'll open.

The best part about Echo Park?  "Housing prices in this urban neighborhood tend to be reasonable."
http://historicechopark.org
www.mta.net (for Metro/bus routes)



Studio City might be one worth investigation. Might.

The "Finding a place to live" section of this book is less fun.  It's pretty dense and I don't really feel like reading it much.  It gives you a lot of options and lists pros and cons, but I kind of just want them to tell me what's the best.

The largest banks on the West Coast are Bank of America, Washington Mutual, and Wells Fargo.  So, I'll probably transfer all of my money to stupid Wells Fargo once it's summer.

Bestplaces.net is a pretty cool website that compares cost of living and quality of life stuff from different cities.
It tells me this about West Hollywood:

For comparison, here's regular-ass LA:

For even more comparison, here's Milwaukee:

Sherman Oaks is expensive, it sounded good though.  I won't tell you the description because it sounded awesome until they started going on and on about how expensive it is.  The closer you get to the beach/ocean, the more expensive everything gets.  So LA really isn't all that bad compared to Venice, Long Beach, Santa Barbara, etc.

A store/city we might want to consider is Glendale.
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/glendale
It's the closest one to the Silver Lake/Echo Park area (at the moment):

Originally a Mrs Gooch’s Market, we have been serving the Glendale Community since 1985!

We take up a full city block on Glendale Ave between California and Lexington with plenty of parking, a lovely patio eating area and a park-like atmosphere.

One thing that has not changed is the unique upbeat energy and welcoming “family” feel that we’ve always had at the Glendale store, perpetuated by our dedicated and passionate team members! We are proud that people find us special and we invite you to join our extended family and find out why so many of our customers – old and new friends - choose our market as their favorite place to shop!

We have grown with the community and we now offer more than ever before! We welcome one and all from the surrounding communities such as Montrose, La Crescenta, La Canada-Flintridge, Atwater, Eagle Rock, Silver Lake, Los Feliz Village, Echo Park, Highland Park, Glassell Park, Mt Washington and many more neighborhoods who call our store their "home store"!

Lots of snooty customer reviews again, but the average is 3.8 out of 5!

I wish I had thought of charging that much for a watermelon!
Here's the "Bestplaces" writeup on Glendale:

The good reviews of stores are always "great organic food!" and the bad ones are always like "So Expensive!" or some rant about a bad experience.  We should probably add Glendale to our shortlist of stores though, even if it'd require a commute.







Next Blog:
Move.com

Neighborhoods and stuff!

Hey Justin! Here are some fun things that I found!

This website has things like: "Best Hikes with city views,"(Exercise!) "Best clubs in Hollywood" (famous people!) and "Street style in Silver lake" (Hipsters!)
http://www.timeout.com/los-angeles/los-angeles-neighborhoods

This website seems pretty cool and you can search for news by neighborhood. Neat!
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/03/the_best_los_angeles_neighborhoods_for_your_20s_30s_and_40s.php


Also, here is a map of the Metro system. We may want to consider being semi-close to one of the stops.

Here is the Metro website: http://www.metro.net/

And here is the L.A. transit website: http://www.ladottransit.com/

Yay for Websites!

That's all I have so far. I think my next research topic will be fun things to do. ex: getting a tattoo or cool yoga studios or best mexican food in the city (that seems pretty important to know). And stuff on the music scene so I can become a famous drummer. ( Tegan and Sara, if you read this, I'm available for all you drumming needs!) 

The "My Friend Kelli" Update

Ok, so my friend Kelli has saturated me with information about California since I told her we're moving.

Some of the 26 things are this:
No seasons (so not -6 outside)
Everyone gets personal parking spots?  I don't understand that one.
MUCH BETTER FAST FOOD!  You don't eat meat, though, do you?
Street carts and food trucks!
We'll be healthier!  Which is hard, because we already work at Whole Foods.
Quirkier people!  Yes.  I need my own quirkiness to be encouraged.
And of course, I'll be happy.

Here's her advice:
Yay! So excited and happy for you!! LA would definitely be a crazy place to start, but a suburb might not be too bad. I live in Moorpark, which is about 40-60 minutes away from pretty much anywhere in LA. It's going to be expensive no matter where you go, unless you go north and even then the closer you are to the coast the more expensive it is. Lancaster/Palmdale/Little Rock are fairly affordable, but it's desert, and it's further from LA. (That's where I was born and raised, so I don't mind the desert air and seasons, but most people can't deal with it but for short periods, like for camping.) Definitely do your research, check out different, see what your best bet is going to be when it comes to availability, affordability, public transportation, job market, etc. (Public transportation is pretty much nil in LA. It's very popular in San Francisco, but LA offers almost nothing for short distances. There's the metro, but that's more for long distance journeys, and the local buses are...well, let's go with shady. Fortunately, there are plenty of places that offer free parking so if you have your own car it's best. If you *have* to pay for parking, there are some good daily deals. But seriously, we park to go to Venice Blvd and pay nothing, and at the pier it's like $6 for the day. Not too shabby.) Use city-data.com and Google maps (to find cities) and just look around. Find a city name that sparks your interest, enter it on city-data.com, and have fun with it! I had a blast when I was thinking of moving up north with my ex last year. It even tells you the average ages of men and women and what the ratio is. Pretty nifty I honestly think your best option would be a suburb, like Moorpark/Simi Valley/Thousand Oaks (plus then you're closer to me!) or even Granada Hills. Check out some of those to start, then work your way around LA. Granted, there are SOME cheaper places in LA, but those are likely going to be in the less desirable areas, where crime rates are high. Camarillo, too, is a nice little area, considerably bigger than Moorpark but a little smaller than Ventura. Let me give you a little bit of a layout of my area. (Refer to the attached map) Ventura County is where we live, with the cities being: 1) Ventura - or Little LA, as I like to call it, it has a decent night life, direct access to the beach, but same as with LA, if it's affordable, it's likely a bad area. It's cute, and the downtown area is fun. It has Seaside Park, where they have races every Saturday (dirt track baby, yeah!) as well as horse races, and it's where the fair is held every summer. 2) Oxnard - BLAH, don't move there!!!!! It's awful and smelly and crime-ridden. There's a *few* nice areas but mostly it's rich people living there, but you can still go to some nice beaches there. But seriously, you don't want to live there. Ew. Ew. Ew. EWW. 3) Camarillo - kind of a farming city, nice, busy, not a whole lot to do. 4) Moorpark - definitely a family-town, very laid back, growing but still maintaining its small-town feel. Not a WHOLE LOT to do, but that doesn't make it any less appealing for some reason 5) Simi Valley - which is like...oh, how to describe Simi...it was like Moorpark, and then drugs took over, and while it's not exactly unsafe, it's very white trash There's a bowling alley, though, and they have this awesome ice cream place called Sub Zero where they make the ice cream right in front of you with ingredients you pick out (or bring with you, like alcohol) lol yeah that's the highlight of Simi! 6) Thousand Oaks is sort of the ritziest one, it's right next to Calabasas (10) (which, if you don't know, is where the Kardashians and Justin Beiber live...ewwwww) but it's a nice place to visit and have a nice dinner, go to the mall, or The Fancy Movies, lol... 7) Ojai is nice, too, there's several (higher class) celebs that live there, and even Johnny Cash used to (his house is still there, it was even used in the film "Walk the Line"!) It's definitely a richer area, typically I only went up there for camping or to occasionally visit a friend for a few hours, and sometimes with my ex to go to his work. It's kind of small and there's really not much to, except camping. Usually people go somewhere else. 8) Fillmore is where I lived when I met you! It's growing as well, like Oxnard it's very Mexican-dominant, it's a bustling little train town, they use it to film a LOT of movies and even some music videos there. 9) Santa Paula...kind of a combination of Oxnard, Fillmore, and Simi Valley. It has its charms, like the buildings and downtown, but you don't really wanna stick around after the sun goes down. SO. I've worked in Santa Paula, Oxnard, and Ventura, and I've lived in Camarillo, Ventura, Fillmore, and Moorpark, so you can rest assured that my reports on these places are pretty well educated, lol. Alrighty. The cities with circles around them are just some other cities your might want to consider. I've heard not great/not terrible things about them regarding pricing, etc, but most people here DO live with either parents or roommates. It's rare to meet someone that lives on their own that's just an average joe and not a trust fund baby or independently wealthy. I've gotta go start getting ready for work now, let me know if you have any other questions!! I'm SO excited!!!! I can't believe you're FINALLY going to be here!

And she attached this map:

Shift/Command/4

This one should be pretty self-explanatory.  I'm basically just looking for the stories of people who have moved across country.  I found one of a guy who moved to Seattle on Reddit:

Most of the people are worried about meeting people in Seattle, which isn't something I'm concerned about at all in California.  I'm going to feel like I'm on vacation for the first 3 months or possibly forever, so that's not a practical worry.

Maybe we should go see Yellowstone on the way down.  I've been meaning to go there forever.  I guess we could put together an itinerary or something, but being on schedule is overrated.

There's a guy who jammed all of this shit in his car, woo!:

Trailer's might make me worry about my car, and a lot of people suggest getting a hitch added if you're going to use one.  I could go talk to the good people at UHaul.

            Some others are suggesting Sacramento as a cheap alternative to San Diego/San Francisco, but I'm still deadset on LA.  

                I don't care about moving in to government/biotech careers, either, so that's good.  I'm fine with Whole Foods, whatever it takes to make rent down there.  I'll probably spend a lot of time on Amazon Mechanical Turk, where you get paid for mindless repetitive tasks they can't quite program computers to do yet.

             My favorite piece of advice was this one:

             

            I asked my other California friend for California advice and I'm waiting for her to get back to me.  

           I found this thing about moving cross country and I'll look at it more later.  Lots of material to work through.

           Looking at some Craigslist stuff, there are some reasonably priced places!

           

           

Decent one in Silver Lake

The deposit is just a little bit insane, so we better save up.

Monthly Rent $1,725.00
Deposit $1,725.00
Application Fee $25.00
Pet Deposit $250.00
1 Year Lease

DAY 2

First off, I got a response from Raech!  But things will probably change a lot when it gets closer to the time we're going to go.  End of June, we're thinking?

I looked at reviews of the Hollywood store and they also complain of smells and uncouth cashiers:

Personally, I like the idea of working with people who are rude to customers in LA.  I have never heard anyone use "uncouth" lately, so that's a plus too.

Here's the pics of the Whole Foods via Google Maps:

3rd Street Store:

            Here's 3rd Street again.  

            

I'll tell you one thing:  This one was a hell of a lot easier to get a picture of on Google Maps.

Look at the cart situation.  What a shame.  It's difficult to get a better shot than that, actually, the building is connected to a strip mall.  There's a CVS next door and a wig store on the opposite side.

For some reason it let me go right inside of a place across the street, but it doesn't let you explore the inside of Whole Foods.

The Beverly Hills one has the coolest design of the three, by far.  Check this sucker out:

It's gigantic.  Takes up like a whole city block.

   But here's another scathing review:
 

I don't know, Ash, I hope that lady doesn't come in when I'm working and offend my customers.  They're paying customers so they can do whatever they want, we don't need some rowdy lady pulling the race card.  

In all truthfulness, I wish there was a better way to figure out exactly what the experience of working at each of these different stores was like.  Should I just call and tape record my phone call and ask them how they like their store?  I'm just imagining a Ted type of person getting put on the line for my impromptu interview and being like, "Yeah it's great."  I guess we'll just have to investigate when we go there.

Couple of other weirdo reviews from the Beverly Hills store.  The first one in particular.

So her name is Mary but she claims to be a simple man.  The part about it being quiet is nice.  Diana claims there's a dessert section but I bet that's plain old hyperbole.  From what I gather, there's a lot of weirdos in Beverly Hills.  I wanted to stop talking about this Beverly Hills store, but look at these reviews too.  One of them even has the audacity to name a shitty sandwich-maker by name!  Maybe I should call and ask if Fadi still works there.

OK I was ready to move on but then I spotted this gem:

These people can't be serious, right?  The bulk section has moths flying around!  Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Ash?  We go there and turn this place around?  No?  Ok, Beverly Hills is probably out.