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.

LA Whole Foods

So, Ash, I'm going to write this like it's a letter to you.  Really, your name is just a proxy for anyone who reads it (which will really likely just be you but whatever!)

So there's a few things we need to resolve before moving to Whole Foods, I mean LA!  Which Whole Foods will we be working at?

There's a West Los Angeles store (11666 National Blvd

Los Angeles  California  90064).  I guess the best way to learn about these stores is to check out their Facebook pages.  We all have the same sales fliers!

So I didn't know how else to find reviews and that kind of stuff, so I posted a comment on their Facebook page:

        I didn't know what else to ask them, but I wanted to make it sound like I was in a hurry and casual at the same time.  Hopefully I don't only get a response from their social media person, or from people telling me the store they work at is the best (even though that's what I asked).

       What were the other stores we were thinking about again?  I'm having trouble finding them here.  But, I'm going to look at the craigslist a lot.  Bookmark it!  http://losangeles.craigslist.org/  I'll put in a good twenty minutes here every day.  

        I also bugged Raechel about putting us up in late June for a preliminary reconnaissance mission:

                               

          So I like doing screen captures.  But basically I'm going to just update this thing every day with developments from whatever and whatnot.  I think the Silver Lake Whole Foods might be opening right when we get down there, coincidentally.  I'm not having any luck finding an actual date for it though.

          

            Reviews for every one of these stores are good, and like any other business they don't tell you anything.  Five star reviews make each store sound like the best one ever:

            

             So the 3rd street store doesn't suck I guess.  But then one customer says the whole place smells like fish!  I don't know about you Ash, but I want to experience how badly it smells in person before I trust a reviewer who doesn't even have a profile picture.  Area code for this one is 90036 by the way.

             

             Glendale store reviews don't help much either, as far as working there would go.

             

            A store that carries expired items sounds like my kind of store!  I'm leaning toward this one so far.
           
            Another finding: Pretty fun little thing that tells you about what's going on in Silver Lake.  I'm really hoping that Silver Lake store opens right when we get there, it will have been meant to be.
         

            Some of these stores have pretty weird positions available, Ash.  There's a job called "Cashier Assistant", a department called "Housekeeping", and Juice Bar jobs!  Also, there's this one:

            

 General interest sounds funny and here's a list of it's requirements:

Nice.

Anyway from now on:

Monday:  Updates from the weekend!

Tuesdays:  Craigslist Tuesdays!

Wednesdays:  Apartment Search!

Thursdays:  Whole Foods investigations

Friday:  Other opportunities in LA/General LA stuff to be excited about