Comments by "Daniel Bradford" (@Falconlibrary) on "WHY is Everything SO MUCH WORSE Than Before?" video.

I feel your frustration. Not so long ago, that would've been MY rant. When I first moved to LA in the 1990s, I got an apartment 1.4 miles from work, thinking it'd be an easy drive. On a good day, it took me 45 minutes each way. Seven, eight changes of a traffic light before I could get through an intersection. I got a bike and made the trip in under 10 minutes, but angry/careless motorists hit me three times, nearly killing me the third time (one was carelessness, the other two clearly intended to hit me, the third one being a woman in a Range Rover who tried to slam me into a tree and actually bent the bike frame in half. LAPD didn't ticket her). Public transportation? A bus ride meant six changes of buses and the trip took me nearly two hours. After that, I walked, and every day, the same LAPD patrol partners stopped me. I asked them why they stopped me every day and one cop said "Because you're walking and that's a suspicious activity. Don't you own a car?" Miami has a long way to go to equal or exceed that level of crazy. My last five years there, I lived in Beverly Hills and never went anywhere. Groceries = Instacart, car stayed in the garage, walked to work (the BHPD doesn't consider walking a suspicious activity). This is why I've chosen to buy a house in a SMALL town with no traffic and nothing there but houses, a gas station, a Pizza Hut, and a grocery store. Will it be boring? God, I hope so.
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@overbuiltlimited I don't regret living in California. In many ways, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. But comes a time in your life when you just can't take all the jostling and noise. The film and tv industry does distort LA in many ways, some of them good (I never had an ugly waitress in my entire time there--every aspiring actress does that as their side hustle, although now I understand many are turning into OF girls). I decided to retire not because of the pandemic, but because when I did go to a store after the lockdowns were lifted, I saw thieves loading up grocery carts to overflowing and just rolling them out of the store while the employees watched. They told me they'd be fired if they tried to stop the thieves. Try that in Kansas and you'll get your ass kicked.
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@MichaelBordenaro Most LA bicyclists and scooter users ride on the sidewalk even though it's illegal because it's the only way they've got a chance. I don't know about Miami, but LA motorists hate bicyclists and pedestrians and actively try to kill them.
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I was involved in getting rent control passed in Beverly Hills, but we made sure to structure it so that landlords could recoup the cost of renovation--the idea was to stabilize the city, where a majority are renters, not freeze rent in perpetuity. We limited rent increases aside from renovation to the CPI plus two percent, but most landlords own their buildings free and clear, so no mortgage costs, and they're all able to make a decent profit. The one thing we weren't successful in doing is passing a vacancy tax--the dirty secret of Beverly Hills is that its real estate market is used to launder billions every year, and can't have that going away. What about a foreign owners surtax? If you're not an American citizen and you want to buy US property, you pay a premium for the privilege. I'd be down for that.
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@edmundmcgrath213 I'm not fed up with life, just big cities. When I was younger, the big city was the place to be, but at a certain age, you need a slower pace. I grew up on a ranch in Kansas and we only went into town once a month for supplies, so to me, that's "normal". It's not true that people aren't leaving California: It had a net loss of 500,000 people from 2020-2022, not a small number, and those people were leaving the Big Three (San Diego, LA, San Francisco). The 500,000 who left are also significant because they tend to be the better-educated, high-earning people who contribute more to the tax base. I find your assumption that I'm a misanthrope and suffer from "PTSD" to be insulting. Do you make assumptions about everybody's life and personality based on a single comment on a Youtube channel? Stay in West Hollywood, buddy, from what I know of WeHo, sounds perfect for you.
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@brianmatthews4149 Very few motorists who hit cyclists or pedestrians in LA are ever cited. They just claim the pedestrian or cyclist got in their blind spot. LAPD is very hostile towards anyone who isn't a motorist.
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@PkmnMasterHolly LA drivers have a lot of rage. Imagine spending $100,000 for a vehicle and then watching some nerd like me roll past you on a $300 bike.
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@MichaelBordenaro Do they require helmets in Florida for those? I'd wear one anyway, if I were you. Do they have dockless scooter rentals like Bird,Lime, etc? Those were very popular in Beverly Hills with the younger people, but the city banned them because users just throw the scooters down on the sidewalk, making it impassable for people in wheelchairs, the elderly, etc. I used to clear the sidewalks of the scooters on my morning walk (Beverly Hills has a large elderly population).
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