San Luis Obispo High School’s mother municipality San Luis Obispo is often described as being the midpoint between Los Angeles and the Bay Area (San Francisco), California’s two biggest metropoles.
Los Angeles is the beating heart and cultural capital of Southern California–or “SoCal,” as cool millennials call it–and San Francisco is the same for Northern California (likewise, “NorCal”).
Both these cities have a lot to offer, but which one’s better?
Los Angeles.
Sadly, it’s almost not even a competition.
Don’t get me wrong, San Francisco is a great city–one of my favorites–but it has a much smaller “umph” factor than LA. There are many who disagree with me on this, but I always stand my ground and my resolve has never been stronger. I say, determined: Los Angeles is scientifically the superior city.
Let’s start off the comparisons easily with the topic of weather. LA is known for its very year-round warm climate and generally sunny days, having an average temperature of between the low 60s and the mid 80s. San Francisco, on the other hand, is typically quite foggy and chilly, averaging between the high 50s and low 70s. San Francisco’s cold demeanor doesn’t even let up in the summer. This is one of the reasons the San Franciscans wear lots of jackets and other coldwear, which is disgusting.
One cannot live in California without knowing about the incredibly high housing costs. The San Francisco and LA metropolitan areas are two of the most expensive places to live in the entire country.
But, like two ill-behaved children, one of them is worse in terms of cost and that is San Francisco. While a one-bedroom apartment in LA on average costs $2,220 a month–which is still insane–the same space in San Francisco costs an average of $3,426 a month.
The average LA home price is $674,140, while the average Bay Area home price is $820,00 and in the city of San Francisco itself the average rises to $1,341,791. Crunching the numbers, SF rental prices are 54% more stupid than those in LA and its housing prices suck 22-99% more.
Let’s put the numbers aside and talk about the cities’ cultures.
Angelenos are often accused of being “fake”: putting too much effort into looking physically attractive and displaying wealth, while generally being rude and self-centered.
San Franciscans, on the other hand, are often described as being more down-to-earth, polite, and not caring about looking good physically–being more “real.” But this is a lie; San Franciscans are the more fake people.
There is no denying that Los Angeles is obsessed with wealth and appearance. Its most popular industry is making movies and TV shows, LA culture is very much centered around glitz and glamor. People moving to LA happily admit that they hope to become a super famous actor and live in luxury. But there is a refreshing honesty in this. Stereotypical Angelenos aren’t trying to pretend that they don’t care about appearances and money. They are not liars.
Now, consider San Francisco. It’s main industry is technology, so people often go there to create start-up tech companies. These start-ups and the people who work at them very often try to show that they “aren’t like other companies” because their products are changing the world. These world-changing products are usually, at best, completely pointless–like a dog food bowl that also passively teaches kids Mandarin–or often very harmful–like brain-implant microchips. If one wants to further destroy the world with technology, it’s at least polite for them to tell the truth about it. Not to mention that San Franciscans are just as rich and fake and are just as eager as Angelenos to flaunt their status.
Los Angeles also beats San Francisco when it comes to size and diversity. The LA area is hundreds of square miles large and has room to fit hundreds of different neighborhoods and ethnic communities within its bounds. LA has both glitzy beach communities and inland mountainous towns. San Francisco does not; San Francisco is just San Francisco. Also, it has much less ethnic diversity because all its snobby tech workers keep causing the rent to increase and thereby push poorer traditional communities into oblivion and homelessness.
LA’s greatest quality is that it has a lot of “realness.”
Because it doesn’t try to pretend that it’s a futuristic Utopian city as much as San Francisco does and homogenize everything, it has a much more diverse and vibrant culture. It also has a lot more dinginess in it, but one cannot have the vibrancy of true humanity without also having its less savory human traits. SLOHS senior Quique Arjanel said of LA that it has, “Lots of bodily fluid,” but also “Good street art.” If that doesn’t sum up LA then I don’t know what does.
San Francisco does have a better baseball team (the LA Dodgers suck and I don’t like them) and cooler bridges–I can’t think of any cool bridges in LA. But that’s just peanuts compared to all the advantages LA has over the Bay Area. Anyone who’s made it here to the end of this article should stop what they’re doing at once and immediately move to Los Angeles.
Sources: Businessinsider.com Sfgate.com
