My last two winters in Troy, NY were ugly. I took the job offer with McDonnell Douglas in SoCal mostly so I could try out living there. I honestly didn't think I'd stay. Just had my 30thanniversary with the company last week. Go figure.

Long Beach is an incredibly diverse city for better and for worse. My six mile commute to work is OK by car and ugly by bike. The major advantage of living close to the SoCal coast is that you don't see the air you're breathing as much as you do in some inland SoCal cities during the summer.

BTW, we have seasons here: fire season, landslide season, etc. Sometimes we have earthquake weather too. However, we mostly avoid things like tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards.

Autumn in upstate NY and New England is awesome though. Too bad it only lasts a couple of weeks.