10 Reasons Why Los Angeles Is Better Than New York

The East Coast–West Coast didn't die with Biggie and Pac. The war rages on, at least for New Yorkers, but Angelenos? They just want peace, prosperity, and their 15 minutes of fame, man.

Maybe it's because Los Angeles natives are too laid back to fight about how awesome their city is (they'd rather just revel in it), or maybe it's just because they don't want New Yorkers moving in and bitching about how it doesn't meet their high standards, but it seems the Angelenos repping for their city are often overshadowed by the anti-Los Angeles venom. But, we're about to change that.

Here are our reasons Los Angeles is better than New York. Spoiler alert: The city's only draw isn't just lots and lots of tacos. Although, it certainly is one of them.

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Tacos are not just a delicious convenience food in Los Angeles; they're a lifestyle. On virtually every street corner and after epic nights of drunken revelry, Angelenos are tempted by the mouth-watering tastiness of perfectly grilled carne asada (grilled beef, for you gringos), al pastor (pork), or pollo (chicken) tacos smothered in homemade guacamole and spicy street salsa.

It can be argued that pizza is the taco of New York City, but when it comes to delicious Mexican food, Los Angeles is the clear winner based on authenticity and availability alone. Los Angeles has four times as many Mexican residents, and a search for the word “tacos” on Yelp yields 2348 results. In New York, there are only 1244.

For the fiercely devout subset of weirdo foodies, there’s just as much ethnic diversity for them to painstakingly detail and blog about in Los Angeles than in New York City. But, while amazing food in New York easily becomes expensive, L.A.'s high-density Thai population has created a phenomenal, inexpensive haven for the Drunken Noodle lovers. Lower rents in Los Angeles also allow up-and-coming chefs like James Beard-nominated Josef Centeno of Lazy Ox Canteen and Baco Mercat to work their magic at lower price points for food lovers of all financial ranges to enjoy. Eat that, Gotham.

Whether you are a Pabst-swilling, ironic-mustache-donning hipster or a sales executive party boy, in Los Angeles, you can get a lot more bang for your lazily-earned buck when it comes to your abode.

A perusal of our treasured national resource craigslist shows that the average price of a one-bedroom in both cities are enough to put a dent in your Whole Foods budget, but NYC's brutal rents take the cake.

Artsy 20-somethings with earnest convictions tend to flock to Williamsburg and Silver Lake. When comparing the two boroughs, consider these two equally amazing one-bedrooms. The first is a 630 square foot apartment close to trendy Sunset Junction in Silver Lake, while this spacious spot in Williamsburg is gorgeous and claims to be one block from the L train, which makes it not only cool-looking but convenient. Perfect, right? Except for the fact that it's $2450 more than the Silver Lake apartment.

West Hollywood yupsters have it even better. For $2000, you can live in a recently-listed gorgeous 900 square foot English Tudor. Meanwhile, the same old-school charm in NYC's West Village, like this gorgeous re-worked brownstone, comes in at a pricey $3038.

With all the money New Yorkers are losing, they could be starting a retirement fund, a savings account, traveling more, or investing it into an overpriced car, which is what most people in Los Angeles would do.

This might seem counter-intuitive to the general consensus that cars are pollution-causing, environment-ruining beasts of metal mayhem, but if you’ve ever spent a steamy New York summer day stranded underground while waiting for a dank, disgusting train, the idea of a clean, air-conditioned car is that much more appealing.

For Angelenos, cars are like microlofts that serve as an on-the-go kitchen, music-appreciation pod, and mobile closet. Just ask any Cali girl how many changes of clothing she has in her trunk. No need to dress for both night and day when you can turn your backseat into a make-shift boudoir.

Sure, an official travel profile reported that there were 6.7 million vehicles that registered at the California DMV and, of course, everyone knows traffic can be awful. But, the average commute time for Angelenos was 29.6 minutes compared to the 34.9 minutes that New Yorkers are sharing fluids with unwashed strangers.

You can do that in L.A. too, but it’s your choice, and it's generally done in the privacy of your own vehicle.

Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Miley Cyrus, and basically everyone rollerblading in spandex short shorts on the Venice Boardwalk is totally stoned out of their mind. Why? Because there’s no paranoia about getting hot boxed a la Amanda Bynes in her NYC apartment (the volatile actress allegedly threw a bong out her window and claimed it wasn’t hers.) But, in Los Angeles, you don’t need to shatter your best glass piece to escape the law. All you have to do is tell the cops that you are legally allowed to smoke because you are “medical.”

Medical marijuana not only helps the economy, but has a plethora of health benefits and fewer side effects than most of the drugs pushed out by Big Pharma.

Getting issued a card for medical marijuana is virtually effortless in California. You just need some basic human plight like insomnia or anxiety, and you can pick up an appropriately-titled strain called Strawberry Haze or Blue Dream at one of the 135 legal dispensaries across Los Angeles County.

New Yorkers love to say that Los Angeles has about as much culture as a Big Apple subway rat. But, that’s a pretension-based exaggeration because Los Angeles has over 300 museums and 80 stage theaters. New York roughly 200 museums and, sure, it has Broadway, but Los Angeles is the center of the entertainment industry. With the majority of film and television production companies calling L.A. home, the entertainment industry doesn't just influence the culture within the city like Broadway does, it impacts art and culture throughout the world.

There are also iconic concert venues like the Hollywood Bowl, gorgeous Art Deco theaters like the El Rey and the Wiltern, and Eastside venues like The Satellite where many Los Angeles-based rock stars had their come-up. Just like New York, many major record labels are centered out of Los Angeles, but no one can argue with Angelenos having access to way better terrestrial radio stations, including KCRW. What Los Angeles is lacking in a literary and publishing culture, they make up for with well-curated small bookstores like the Last Bookstore in Downtown Los Angeles, Skylight Books in Los Feliz, Secret Headquarters in Silverlake, and tons of amazing used bookstores like The Iliad in North Hollywood.

The major difference between Los Angeles culture and New York culture is that in New York, culture—sometimes quite literally—accosts you at every corner. In Los Angeles, you have to seek out culture coves, and create-your-own treasure map of places you've uncovered. The latter is adventurous, the former is pretentious. You choose.

Beach babe bohemians with golden skin, flowing locks, and Indian-inspired cotton maxi skirts that hide their “OM” symbol tramp stamp tattoos make up a huge part of the Los Angeles culture. These yoginis get their flow on at one of the hundreds of yoga studios available in the city, like Power Yoga or Golden Bridge. They detox their liver with juice cleanse deliveries or raw foods from places like Café Gratitude or Sun Café and they hit up Agape with that dreadlocked dude from The Secret, Michael Beckwith.

When people are constantly rubbing their crystals and judging you by your astrological sign, it’s easy to think that Los Angeles is sustained on a culture of spaced-out spiritualists with no basis in reality. But meditation, which is included in many yoga classes and Agape meetings, has been scientifically proven to help decrease pain, lower stress response in the amygdala, and help decrease cortisol, the hormone that creates stress. On top of the benefits of meditation and the cardiovascular benefits of yoga, eating raw helps you absorb more nutrients from the food, eating vegan decreases your cholesterol, and just focusing on being stress-free and alive, can keep you, well, stress free and alive!

This intrinsic part of Los Angeles culture might be motivated by superficial reasons, but in the end, self-care is better than wasting your energy on the typical New York lifestyle of long days at work and cocktails to calm down. Even if your Italian leather shoes are chicer than Havaianas.

Maybe it’s the consummate sunshine, the fact that gorgeous people flock to Los Angeles to “make it” on someone’s casting couch, or that Angelenos are inherently more shallow, but a 2012 study by Travel + Leisure magazine ranked Los Angeles #5 on its list of cities with the most attractive people. New Yorkers came in at #15—ten slots uglier than Los Angeles.

Sure, New Yorkers are stylish, but no urban beauty regime can compare to organic food, your choice of hills to hike, waves to conquer with your board, and an open-minded attitude about plastic surgery.

But is it just going under the knife really what makes Angelenos so beautiful? US News only listed 51 recommended plastic surgeons for Los Angeles, while there were a whopping 128 recommended for New York City. According to Forbes, the per capita amount of plastic surgeons is about the same, but expenditures on cosmetic goods is a lot more for New Yorkers, who spend about $21.7 million on hair coloring and $5.6 million on cosmetics compared to Los Angeles $7 million and $4.2 million respectively.

Who’s vain now, New York?

Do you want to live to work or work to live? In Los Angeles, employment is more “fluid.” A lot of people have gigs that they’ve created to sustain their mind and soul—whether that’s a professional dog walker, an organizer, a life coach, or an entrepreneur who runs his business poolside, in flip-flops. The culture in Los Angeles is a lot more open to people who don’t want to give up their daydreams and work for the “man.”

Forbes reported that Los Angeles is the largest growing city for entrepreneurs in a mélange of industries, including entertainment and tech. While New York still has higher numbers in both areas, the climate for start-ups in Los Angeles is a lot more rebellious and well-connected.

With close proximity to the techheads in Silicon Valley, the superstar endorsements of the Beverly Hills elite, and the freewheeling producers driving their mid-life crises purchases down Mulholland Drive, entrepreneurial Angelenos have a lot more access to funding opportunities. In 2012, L.A. start-ups raised $847 million total with many companies getting approved for loans in the millions.

Resplendent with fertile fruit trees, lush flowers, and a ditzy, sleepy buzz in the air, Los Angeles is like a teenager coming out of puberty and reconciling with adulthood. In between the up-and-coming Downtown Los Angeles culture and the burgeoning public transportation system, Los Angeles is coming into its own in a way that New York did a long, long time ago.

Los Angeles may still be maturing as a metropolis, but it has the potential to become a city more modernized, ecologically-sound, and culturally-diverse than any other city in the world.

For all its rich and varied history, New York City is almost too dense to re-imagine, but Los Angeles still has plenty of wide-open spaces, both vertically and horizontally, to play with and expand upon. Los Angeles is bigger at 503 square miles compared to New York’s 468 square miles, but it has way less inhabitants: only 3.82 million, compared to New York’s 8.245 million.

Much of the beauty of Los Angeles is all that wide-open space. Hollywood backs up onto the Hollywood Hills and the canyons which separate the city from the suburban sprawl of the Valley. Everywhere you go in Los Angeles, a toned, tan MILF, her latte, and her dog are on a “hike.” West Hollywood has Runyon Canyon. Right next door is Griffith Park, a 4,310 acre urban park that has been called the Central Park of Los Angeles, but is actually dramatically larger and much more mountainous than the 840 acre New York City refuge.

Quickly gentrifying hipster areas like Silverlake and Echo Park boast the kind of topography that would make anyone with a stick-shift car nervous, lots of hidden stair trails, a giant reservoir, Elysian Park, and the newly-revamped Echo Park lake. Just 20 minutes west (if traffic is light and/or in your dreams) are the vast coastlines, including the delightfully seedy Venice Boardwalk, the tourist-corrupted Santa Monica Pier, and the pretentiously elite but amazingly gorgeous beaches in Malibu.

Living in Los Angeles is like living in one giant gym minus the gross dudes staring you down for the elliptical—more like staring you up in downward facing dog in the park. Unless you are boring and unimaginative, it’s impossible to feel trapped in Los Angeles. There is green, wide-open space all around you. Like the old standard says, “Don’t fence me in.”