Orange County vs. San Francisco Bay?

Just wait.

OC is a very conservative county in relation to the bay area and even L.A.

It’s tradition. Your experience may be entirely different.

NorCal and SoCal are just natural rivals. We’re supposed to hate the OC and the L.A. area, but I don’t feel that way, despite being from the Bay Area. I’d still rather live here than there, though :)

California works like this. San Diego, Irvine, easy living, clean. LA, SF. Fans beat each other up, fast paced you know, things like that. I think it’s easy living because, I’m not too sure that there is much of a lower class in Irvine.

The beach and weather are great. I guess you don’t mind the traffic. It is a very easy lifestyle in Orange County; if I could afford to own a place in Newport Beach I’d spend a lot of time there.

But beyond those things, there isn’t a lot to do there. No real art, no museums, no real theater, no real music scene. And the diversity is essentially middle to upper class whites, a prevalent but overlooked underclass of Hispanics, and an enclave in Garden Grove of Vietnamese exiles and refugees. I know that is a gross generalization, but it is close to my experience.

@zenvelo Well Irvine has a pretty good music scene, as in, the diy music scene. Check out UCI DIY. Student run. Acrobatics. But yeah, like going up to vist my friend from UCI, there wasn’t much to do except enjoy each others presence. I think you must be enjoying the slow pace thats for sure. :D Nothing wrong with that, but for my preference. I’d rather live in SF than SD where I am. Someone hook me up with a good rent deal! :P

Weird! I moved from San Francisco to Irvine 3 years ago.

I don’t think Irvine is a horrible place to live. My thoughts echo @zenvelo.‘s The main problem is the lack of night life—not a single bar in the city limits, and don’t try going to a restaurant after 9pm. Not to mention that almost every restaurant is a chain. There is probably not a single restaurant in Irvine proper that I would be able to strongly recommend. Lots in the surrounding areas, though.

There is also a relative lack of diversity, culturally and politically—OC is a bizarre enclave of conservativism along the coast.

And the traffic. Yikes.

There are a lot of nice things about living here, though. The beach and weather would be my top 2 picks as well.

The lack of things to do didn’t start to grate on me until about 2 years in. I started spending Sundays in LA, which helped, and will probably be moving to Huntington Beach soon.

@nikipedia “The beach and weather would be my top 2 picks as well.” Sounds like San Diego. But we do have a pretty decent Downtown that is expanding. Yea I noticed most retaurants are middle class named restaurants. Never really thought about it.. But they do have the original Sprinkles right? In New Port.

I love the OC. It’s paradise.

I have spent time in both, and I prefer the gritty diversity of San Francisco, as well as its natural beauty.

But I could live in OC too.

The only time I venture behind the Orange Curtain is for Disneyland. But that’s really it’s own world.

Just wait, the novelty of it will wear off and the pretentiousness will start to show…