I’ll confess, I’m getting bored: Los Angeles has been an adventure, but after eight months of being on America’s West Coast full time, I think it’s reaching a natural conclusion. I’ve tried getting into real estate, music, acting, modeling, and now dance…and none of it has really worked. I wanted to find friends, and new social connections, and some path to a lucrative business or occupation…and nothing has presented itself.
One key problem is that to be happy in California I’d have to live right on the water…in classic picture-perfect California housing like you see in the movies and television shows. That’s something that exists…but only in a rarefied few places, and the only hotel that fits that description is in Hermosa Beach and charges $500 per night. After the Palisades Fire they even invited me to stay in there permanently, which was really nice of them, but the rub is I just can’t pay $15,000 a month (at least not forever; it was fine for a short time, though). And the landscape of long-term rentals you’d get a lease for is even bleaker: anything that strikes me as worth living in tends to run at least $10,000 per month: if I wanted to hold out for what I really wanted, I’d be talking somewhere around $30,000 a month. Which I can’t pay either.
But even if I could pay it, what would I be getting? The classic California blonde who’s young, lives at the beach, and actually goes outside and does anything remotely interesting in a public setting seems to be an extinct species; having hid out in the South Bay, in Hermosa Beach right on the Strand, for quite some time I’ve observed the population, and there just isn’t anyone who fits that description anymore. I see plenty of women who look like they used to fit that description 20 years ago, but no new ones to replace them in the younger age brackets. Instead all I see is brunette gym rats and Mexicans (no hideously fat or very ugly people, in all fairness to Angelenos, but the fact is that’s just not good enough).
When I got my makeover into a tan platinum-blonde thing I was being made over for a world that no longer exists. Though I find I do fit in well in my hair salon in West Hollywood…but there’s no beach in West Hollywood. And while there are creative and artsy and interesting people there, it’s not a place I could live very easily; the transit in Los Angeles is awful, walking is unpleasant, and driving a car is a hassle unless you retreat to the South Bay cities at the very closest (if not somewhere like Santa Clarita, which is even further, and much hotter and uglier)…and even then the parking situation is such that you’re not prone to explore anything that’s not somewhere you don’t already know. But even what I have seen that I haven’t already gone to doesn’t really look all that appealing…and by their own admission the social scene and the arts and entertainment sector and everything that makes a city worth living cratered during the pandemic and it’s never recovered since. I feel like a barbarian strolling into post-apocalyptic Rome: better than what he was accustomed to in the wildlands proper, perhaps, but even the barbarian soul can tell something has fallen, that something needs to be made great again.
And no, Donald Trump is not going to help us do that: the recrudescence of the Trump regime in vastly more lawless form than the first term has me seriously concerned, and even more concerning is the utter spinelessness of the Democratic Party and even our judicial system to stop a man who is obviously an incipient dictator. When the experts on fascism start to flee your country…maybe you ought to take heed.
Meanwhile, the neo-fascist government in Italy is pioneering their own frontier in lawlessness by retroactively stripping people like me of citizenship, who are by all indications Italian by birth but have not had that fact officially recognized. If this decree-law is ratified by parliament and is allowed to stand, it would close by door to claiming Italian (or indeed any European) citizenship by right of descent (jure sanguinis). Fortunately courts in Italy have historically taken a protective stance toward people’s entitlement to citizenship, including in some very recent rulings, and the consensus among Italian legal scholars is overwhelmingly against the new decree, and with the few supporters offering very weak arguments. So likely the entire edifice will be thrown out (at least as far as it applies to people already born, i.e. who legally were already citizens; future births is another question).
But as someone who was barked at at the US border checkpoint at Dublin airport to get in the line for non-Americans until I shoved my US passport in the officers’ faces and is routinely treated as if I don’t really belong in this country, it’s severely disappointing to find out you have a second citizenship and if you get it recognized by the government of the day it’ll likely only be under duress from the judicial system. That’s not the sense of belonging I was hoping to achieve.
There are paths to Europe; if you’re financially self-supporting you can go to any number of countries in continental Europe and stay there as long as you want; visas allowing this are readily available. English-speaking countries don’t offer them (the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand don’t), but in France, for example, if you can prove accommodation, health insurance, and as little as €1200 per month in income…you’ll be granted a visa for a long-stay visit. One year, renewable annually as long as you meet the criteria.
Better yet, you can establish residency, and if you learn French to conversational level, and integrate into the culture of the country, you can naturalize as a French citizen. For someone of even modest independent means (such as me) the process is straightforward. And if you need to or want to you can convert your visa status from within the country; for example, if you find a job offer and want to convert to a work visa or you have a business idea and want to convert to an entrepreneurial visa you don’t have to leave the country and then re-apply from abroad (yes, the US makes you do that if you’re immigrating; yes, it’s stupid; no, they don’t do that on the continent).
Why France? Because I have ancestry there, the naturalization process is simple and relatively quick, it’s centrally located in western Europe with an abundance of places to choose from to live, it’s culturally and artistically rich, and, most importantly, I’ve visited it two times now and I really liked it. First the south of France last summer: the Riviera into Toulouse. And now as of last month I’ve visited the French Alps; Chamonix-Mont-Blanc to be precise, and I loved that. Frankly I really liked the Côte d’Azur too, but Chamonix was next-level.
Even more intriguingly, Chamonix, while very expensive by French and even general European standards, begins to look cheap compared to Los Angeles, or indeed anywhere in America worth living in. €1500 a month gets you a really nice spacious residence in the city center with a balcony in Chamonix, with a view of the French Alps, walkable to shops, and with (by US standards) great transit connections by to anywhere you’d want to go. From cursory research it seems even €800 a month gets you a decent, if small, space…and you still get a balcony.
Yes, Los Angeles on paper isn’t all that expensive; perhaps $2000 a month. But you’re getting a much worse place in a much worse area in terms of qualify of life, and you won’t be anywhere near the water…and if you’re not next to the water, what’s the point in living in Los Angeles? It’s ugly, hot, and full of weird, ugly, low-class people when you get even modestly inland. Frankly to enjoy the same quality of life you’d get in Chamonix you’d be paying at least five times more in Los Angeles, perhaps ten times more.
Is it worth that? As the French would say: “non!”.
True, there’s more work opportunities for me in Los Angeles…or are there? As someone with no normal work experience, I don’t qualify for any of the sea of listings that seem to demand you already have been doing the same job for 20 years beforehand to be hired…and even then I’d be earning enough to sustainably live in some dingy small apartment in Hawthorne or Torrance. Who wants that? Anything that earns more is either something I’m not qualified for or is a commission-based sales position…which I wouldn’t be good enough at straight away to make the sort of money I need to live in LA.
Maybe it’d be different if I could still make the best commute in the world, from Hollywood down Sunset Boulevard at midnight toward the ocean, if I could still drive Topanga Canyon and see the Valley from high above at sunset, and if I had all my stuff in that house in Pacific Palisades…and I could still see my favorite part of the South Coast intact like it was when I first met it that fateful road-tripping day in February 2023. But like my hopes and dreams for being anything as an American in America…it’s all up in smoke. My heart just isn’t in it anymore.
In fact even dance just isn’t doing for me what it used to; I find participating in the group classes my training makes free of charge to be a tiresome chore. Even in Hollywood it’s boring stuff with a pack of elderly middle-American types…and frankly that just isn’t what I want. And realistically I won’t be getting enough customers to pay the bill of living there anyway.
It’s to the point that when I was with my favorite escort in Europe (yes, spendthrift me hired one; no, I’m not apologizing for finally having a travel companion like I always dreamed about) all I wanted to do with her was hug her tightly…for over a day after we first met again. I didn’t used to be like that. I only had a short time in the Chamonix area, but what I saw left me very impressed…and wondering why I even bothered trying to ski in the United States at all.
Seriously…the resorts are actual resorts and far better quality than anything you’ll go to in America, the mindset is more compatible with the way I think, the prices are much lower than the highway robbery that’s been normalized in American ski culture, the towns are actual towns and are far more beautiful and have more to offer, and at far lower prices than somewhere like Jackson or Aspen. Chamonix is even closer to the Riviera than the California coast is to anywhere that’s all that skiable (yes, there’s technically Big Bear or Mount Baldy in Los Angeles, but the closest truly reliable place is Mammoth Mountain…which is so far north you might as well be in Tahoe, ugh).
And, better yet: there are plenty of classically beautiful young women and children who are blonde and chic without apology. Why this is the case when southern France probably has about as many (North or Sub-Saharan) African types as LA’s west side has Mexicans I’m not sure, but I find that I get along with the Europeans much better than I do with any of the American types (even Californians). True, if I wanted an abundance of blonde youth I’d need to look no further than Utah, and, I’ll confess, the Mormon Blonde is a fine specimen…it’s just not for me.
In America, they’re all that’s left. Europe calls: to the point that when I was over there the other week…I felt like I didn’t really want to come back. Honestly, that really is the decisive factor for me: last summer, I still had hope that I’d find something in California, but now that I’ve found nothing and California has destroyed my childhood treasures in the Palisades Fire…my heart isn’t in it anymore. I have little to go back to.
True, I’d like to amass a fund that would help support me better when I expatriate, which demands I go out to work and earn cash quickly…but actually netting any money is going to be very difficult in Los Angeles unless I’m in a living situation I’d really rather not be in. I’ve run the numbers: even a position paying $70,000 a year base salary would be barely making it. With the investment income I could bring to the table to qualify for a lease.
On the flip side, in a place like St. George, Utah, I’d only need to earn $30,000 a year, and together with my investment income I could qualify for a fairly nice apartment. In a part of the area I’d actually want to live in. That (unlike parts of LA that aren’t right next to the beach) are not godawfully depressing! And even positions paying $15 an hour full-time appear much easier to qualify for and come by in St. George than in Los Angeles: something like hotel front desk clerk would be both accessible and viable…with plenty of opportunity for (rapid) advancement, including in global contexts. Heck, for a position like at Hilton that the fact I’m a Hilton Honors Diamond Member might actually be a decisive advantage.
And after rent etc. I’d still be netting enough money to replenish my brokerage accounts, even with a job like that in Utah. So the path seems obvious: I’d need to shoot for the moon to even have a chance at scraping by in LA, but all I’d need to achieve my goals in southern Utah would be a regular entry-level job.
And in the meantime I could continue to visit my favorite hair salon in West Hollywood, even pop into the beach from time to time: at 400 miles it’s only one day’s drive. And southern Utah is indescribably beautiful compared to any town in southern California’s interior that offers any jobs.
Once I have everything scoped out…I can go to France. Perhaps even later this year. Saying goodbye to America altogether at this point feels like a refreshing adventure. And who knows? I might not be prohibited from employment for long: my dream dance studio that I’ve been telling you about was always a Europeanized concept of the California Dream to begin with.
Where better would it play than in a place like Chamonix or some other town, either mountainside or beachside, where the idea of a social community event space focused on arts, entertainment, dance, and the integration of young people into high culture would seem to fit right in and be welcome, even if it included a wine bar, a cafe, outdoor integration, and living facilities for the owner (i.e. me!)? A prime location for that in California would be virtually impossible to get zoning, permits, and licenses for alone, and even if you could the cost would be murderous to a new businessman like me. But in even expensive parts of Europe, small spaces with affordable rents and plenty of foot traffic abound…foot traffic that someone like me could convert into customers. I’m expert at making inviting spaces and charming people one-on-one…but the culture of California where you have to invest tons into online marketing to let people even know you’re there just befuddles and confuses me. Plus, I’m not really Californian enough to fit in in California…but I am Californian enough to lend anything I do in Europe an exotic California appeal. It seems I’m a more European sort of person anyway, so as the sort of Californian they can understand and relate to…maybe I’d do well over there.
It’s a brainstorm, but when I run the numbers, they all actually could work, and without baking on some pie-in-the-sky windfall that for someone like me will never come.
Sure, there’s no escape for the cheap, but even as I pointed out in the post itself: if you like the cheaper place better, why not just go there?
Why don’t I just go there…