I LOVE LA!!!! but so saying, i also moved away from LA myself and don’t intend to go back there (famous last words…) except for brief visits.
but:
1 – the community is warm and caring. very very very caring. and it’s also diverse. very very very diverse. so the issue becomes how to love and care and also make sure not to fall in your own standards. and lots of people succeed, but as laguy said, go in with your eyes WIDE WIDE open.
2 – there are superb mosdos for both boys and girls. i went to byla, and it is the most amazing school on the entire planet (ditto smile99!), with the most caring hanhala, rabbi bursztyn is a tzaddik and my second tatty…really. again, the students are very diverse. there are girls, a lot of them, that go to the best seminaries, and unfortunately, there are girls way on the other end of the spectrum. my sister goes to the ‘chassidishe’ high school, for the reason that that one’s not so diverse. the very frum persians and chassidishers, and some very frum yeshivishe girls also go there. it’s also a very very good school. the elementary schools are also very good, and somehow less diverse, but i guess that makes sense. there are very good ganim there also, private playgroups, etc.
calabassas is a great yeshiva, teh type does vary from year to year, my brother went there. then there’s ygla, yeshiva gedola LA, which i see very good outcomes from in general. i don’t konw it so well. and there are smaller, less known, but equally good yeshivos peppering the scene.
it’s also very strong on kiruv.
3 – takeout food and restaurants = yum yum yum!! plenty of kosher restaurants with good hechsherim, obviously not as many as bkln, but yeah.
4 – living cost is VERY high. definitely two incomes are almost imperative.
5 – pritzus. that is the biggest catch in the whole deal. the la brea/fairfax community itself, is a residential area and therefore, doesn’t have the billboards discussed. BUT – A. it’s bisected by a main street, which certainly does have priztudige billboards up. i actually lived on the corner of that street and another, and i had to keep the shades of the window facing thataway, closed for a couple of weeks because of the billboard staring into our house. B. it’s ‘enclosed’ by melrose, la brea, and fairfax, all main streets, melrose being the absolute most pritzusdig of three, but all of them pretty bad. la brea’s not as, and that’s where at least three of the mosdos of LA are. C. as for the goyim walking around, i don’t think i agreee with whoever said they’re not so bad. they’re pretty pritzusdig. LA is in HOLLYWOOD, i don’t know why people expect differently.
this is one of the main reasons i moved away. i (a girl, yes?) walked through back alleys to get to school to avoid the pritzus. it was a bissel crazy.
BUT LA IS THE MOST FANTASTIC PLACE TO LIVE IN THE WORLD IF YOU CAN’T LIVE IN ERETZ YISROEL (bad case of chein makom al toshveha…) 😉