Hillary Mann ’13 gives you the skinny about living in L.A. in her latest post-college city guide installment.

Los Angeles, California

Metro Population: 12.8 million (3.8 million in the city of Los Angeles)
Unemployment Rate: 11.3%
Cost of Living: 137 (100 is average)
Major Industries: Entertainment, international trade, technology, business, tourism, agriculture, aerospace, and petroleum
Average Price of One-Bedroom Apartment: $1,346
Average Climate: Winter – 58°F, Summer – 82°F
Professional Sports: Dodgers (baseball), Kings (hockey), Clippers (basketball), and Lakers (basketball)
Closing Time: 2 AM
Best Known For: Hollywood entertainment, year-round sunshine, traffic, Santa Monica beaches
Best Foods: In-N-Out Burgers and a large selection of ethnic restaurants

Why We Chose It:

No city in this great nation combines old-time glamor, the vivacity of entertainment, economic prosperity, and nearly 365 days of pure sunshine quite like Los Angeles does.  Affectionately dubbed the “City of Angels,” Los Angeles was established in 1781 by a group of Mexican settlers and is now the second largest city in the United States.  The city of Los Angeles sits amidst over eight suburbs that are linked together by an extensive network of approximately 600 freeways.  The city’s reputation as an international center of business, international trade, entertainment, culture, media, technology, and education draws many people to Los Angeles for work, particularly young professionals and families.

Los Angeles stands as one of the leading international economic hubs with a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $831 billion, making it the third most lucrative metropolitan area in the world (after Tokyo and New York).  Thirteen Fortune 500 companies are based out of the Los Angeles metropolitan area (Health Net, CBRE Group, Occidental Petroleum, Live Nation Entertainment, Walt Disney, Avery Dennison, Jacobs Engineering Group, AECOM Technology, Reliance Steel and Aluminum, Edison International, Mattel, DirecTV, and Molina Healthcare).  Over thirty institutions of higher education are located within the Los Angeles city limits, with the most well known being University of Southern California, University of California Los Angles (UCLA), and Occidental College.

With the rankings that this city receives by numerous publications, it is no wonder that many college graduates choose to relocate to Los Angeles.  Forbes recently named the City of Angels as the eighth best American city for singles.  Bloomberg BusinessWeek cited Los Angeles as one of the top 50 Best Places to Live in the United States.  The magazine Travel and Leisure ranked Los Angeles as the second most stylish city in the United States, in addition to having the fourth best weather and fourth most diversity out of any American metropolitan area.  In the Global Cities Index (measures urban areas’ economic impact and significance), Los Angeles is sixth.  Additionally, the City of Angels is number thirteen in the Global Power City Index.

Why You’ll Love It:

Many say that New York is “the American city,” however it can be very well argued that Los Angeles is the true deserver of this prestigious title.  The City of Angels is defined by the plethora of cultural, economic, and social opportunities it offers its citizens.  The nearly perfect weather helps to sustain the jovial atmosphere that marks the Los Angeles metropolitan area (and southern California in general).  Additionally, the American ideal of a “melting pot” is truly supported by Angelenos’ extensive range of political, socioeconomic, racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds.

Los Angeles is an urban center known for its neighborhoods.  Generally, Los Angeles is divided up into ten main areas (Downtown Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Northeast Los Angeles, South Los Angeles, the Harbor Area, Greater Hollywood, Wilshire, the Westside, San Fernando Valley, and Crescenta Valley) that are comprised of a total of over eighty individual communities.  Some well-known smaller communities include Venice, Silver Lake, Westwood, Los Feliz.  Venice is a beachfront district located in the Westside area of Los Angeles and most famous for Ocean Front Walk, a nearly three-mile seafront featuring performers, vendors, artists, musicians, and fortune-tellers.  Famous attractions in Venice include the Abbot Kinney Boulevard (a street lined with shops, restaurants, galleries, and bars), the Venice Farmers’ Market, and Venice Beach.  The Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake is known as the hub for the creative and hipster type and is also home to a large segment of Los Angeles’ LGBT population.  Additionally, Silver Lake features some of the most reputable modernist architecture in North America (ranging from very affordable housing to extremely expensive homes) and is more known for its residential status as a neighborhood (rather than its commercial standing).  Notable residents of Silver Lake (both past and present) include Katy Perry, Eva Longoria, Ryan Gosling, and Ed Helms.  The neighborhood of Westwood is on the northern part of the Westside and is the home to UCLA.  Westwood is the site of many movie premieres and has no shortage of cultural attractions (specifically, Art Deco Crest, Bruin Theater, Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, and the Hammer Museum).  The neighborhood of Los Feliz is famous for its celebrity residence and large, expensive homes.  In addition to lavish places of residence, Los Feliz also boasts the Griffith Park, Griffith Observatory, Greek Theater, and the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens.

The Los Angeles Metropolitan area features a large system of bus routes, and subway and light rail lines across the entire county.  Los Angeles’s subway system is the ninth busiest in the United States, while its light rail system ranks in as the nation’s second busiest.  Despite the presence of public transportation, Los Angeles is famous for its nineteen freeways and eight highways, which aid in the city’s notorious reputation for its traffic.  Rush hour in Los Angeles occurs on weekdays between 5-10 AM and then again from 3-7 PM.  Despite the abundance of traffic in Los Angeles, the city still has a mean travel time for commuters that is shorter than other major cities such as New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.  In 2006, the average travel time for work commuters in Los Angeles was approximately twenty-nine minutes.

Like other major cities in the United States, Los Angeles is known for its cultural and entertainment attractions.  There is a total of 841 museums and art galleries in the Los Angeles area, which represents more museums per capita than any other city in the entire world.  The city’s most renowned museums are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.  The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile area in Los Angeles.  This particular museum is the largest art museum in the western United States and contains more than 100,000 pieces of artwork ranging from ancient to contemporary times.  Additionally, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art runs an extensive film and concert series.  The Getty Center is in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and is well known for its architecture, gardens, and views of the entire city.  This famous Los Angeles site sits atop a hill, which is connected to the bottom of the hill by a cable-pulled tram.  The Getty Center features “pre-20^th century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorate arts; and 19^th– and 20^th-century American photographs.”  The Museum of Contemporary Art has three locations within the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, which all consist of mainly American and European contemporary art made after 1940.   In addition to art museums, the city of Los Angeles has over 1,000 musical, theater, dance, and performing groups as well as many live entertainment venues in the greater metropolitan area including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Nokia Theater, and Dolby Theater.

Other famous cultural attractions in greater Los Angeles include the Fashion District in Downtown Los Angeles, the beaches of Malibu, Universal Studios of Hollywood, Los Angeles Central Library, Runyon Canyon Park, the famous Hollywood sign, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Will Rogers State Historic Park, and Mission San Fernando.

The nightlife in Los Angeles is one to be rivaled and is revered by people worldwide.  Los Angeles boasts some of the best clubs, bars, wine bars, comedy clubs, pubs and lounges.  Whether you’re into celebrity spotting, unwinding after a long week of work, dancing, or simply relaxing with friends, Los Angeles will have a nightlife venue for you!  For those looking to get away for the weekend, Los Angeles is a just a short drive away from San Diego, Mt. Whitney, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, Napa Valley, Scottsdale (AZ), Santa Cruz, Mammoth Lakes, Sedona (AZ), Santa Catalina Island, Las Vegas (NV), and Berkeley.

 Learn more about the City of Angles here

 Not Ready to leave Bucknell?  We didn’t think so!

Check out the Los Angeles Bucknell Club
175 alumni are in the area.

Check out B-Link if you want to talk to people willing to speak about career advice and job opportunities at such places as:

The Museum of Contemporary Art ‘97
NBC Universal ‘05
Apatow Productions ‘05
United Healthcare ‘92
PricewaterhouseCoopers ‘04
Kiva ‘00

Or in industries such as:

Medicine ‘92
Accounting ‘00
Military ‘09
Engineering ‘10
Media and Entertainment ‘95

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