California, Why Are You Like This
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2024
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I keep hearing about California Forever, but sometimes it seems more like California Never -- a state where everyone wants to live, and no one really can. So I went to San Luis Obispo to explore what it is that makes this state so beguiling, and so maddening, at the same time.
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- Lifestyle Centers: • What Makes Lifestyle C...
- College Towns: • College Towns Are Awes...
- Drive-Thrus: • What Makes Fast Food D...
- Stroad Bingo: • What Happens When You ...
- CityVisit Playlist: • CityVisits
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Resources:
- / banluisobispo
- www.bluezones.com/2012/03/les...
- www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
- www.travelandleisureasia.com/...
- www.fastcompany.com/90775162/...
- sanluisobispo.municipal.codes...
- californiaforever.com/
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Images
- Thanks to the ITE Western District Student Leadership Summit, the University of Washington ITE chapter and Shen Photography for use of photos from the summit!
- 360 Panorama of SLO By Gregg M Erickson - Own work, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
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The NordVPN sponsor segment is wildly incoherent. DDOS attacks as part of a ransom scheme? DDOS attacks are resource intensive to execute and all they do is overload your internet connection so that you get knocked offline for as long as they're still sending loads of traffic at you. Most people will never experience this because bad actors have no reason to do that because it practically never results in gain for them. Ransomware is something different entirely and VPNs do nothing to prevent that. Hide your IP address when you're at a coffee shop?? (It would be the shop's IP address, but I digress) If you're connecting to a website or service and you don't trust the operator of that service to know your IP address, you should not be using that service. In terms of privacy and security, HTTPS is secure by default. If you see the little lock icon at the left of your URL bar, you are using HTTPS. Commercial VPNs don't make you more secure, but when you use one, instead of your ISP knowing about all the websites you visit, the VPN service will know about all the websites you visit (but in either case they can't see any of the data sent to or from your device over HTTPS.) Their one genuine benefit is using them to appear to be in a different country, i.e. to watch Netflix shows that aren't available in your country. I am just a guy with an infosec background tired of the fearmongering to sell a service that is not actually useful for most people. I know they probably offer a pretty penny for these sponsor segments, but I hope you'll look into what I've said before you accept more money from them. I wouldn't have taken the time to write this if I didn't like the channel, and I hope you'll want to appear more credible than in this particular ad read.
As a proud native Californian, I paused the video after this one line and said "That's about right!" Now I'll watch the rest.
I'm just going to point out that VPNs don't improve anyone's actual security. They can be useful for content localization when the content providers don't block the VPN IPs, but that's about it. The packet level data is only encrypted between you and the VPN server, where it has to be decrypted before being forwarded to the actual destination.
So you are hiding your IP (only sorta, there are ways around that too), but that's about it.
@@junkerzn7312And I don't see how any VPN could possibly block malware. 99% of web traffic should be on https, which is encrypted, so the VPN has no idea what files are going thru it anyway. It's just a blob.
Did you meet up with Not Just Bikes while in town?
=
“California. Undeniably beautiful, but undeniably maddening at the same time.”
So much truth packed into 10 words.
Schrodinger's California?
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomerthink a little more Lovecraftian
the longer you look at California the worse it hurts your head
For some reason I had to double check you had the right count, and you did.
Could condense it further into haiku:
California:
Undeniable beauty
And madness, always.
@@LexYeen oh
The next generation of traffic engineers being city nerd fans? I feel very good about that.
SLO traffic engineers are members of the Anti-Destination League.
If only engineers had the power to not do what the people who pay their salaries specify.
@@stevengordon3271still it's a step in the right direction for engineers to be thinking about these topics
Honestly I have hope for the future, good urbanist policies and anti-car dominance rhetoric are spreding like wildfire these last few years
I took transportation engineering classes in grad school like 20 years ago. No one was asking the questions these kids were asking. It was amazing.
At a certain point, there's so many signs people don't read them anymore. And they make visual pollution.
Yeah, does anyone read or care about those California Prop 65 signs?
Traffic Engineers think more signs will make things better. Its ridiculous how serious and technical they think their job is. They design painted lines and AASHTO signs call outs. Politicians love the paint because its cheap compared to actually fixing a street. Lipstick on a pig.
Yes, sign clutter is a well-understood thing (unless you live in California)
if you make the text all-caps it demands more attention. simple fact. just make all lettering all-caps. pay no attention to legibility studies
@@kgbartellegmailMotorists operate large wheeled cars and trucks. Motorists have an attention budget which cannot be exceeded unless one wants (and no one does) safety to suffer. For every sign that goes in, one should come out. I could go on.
“Gift shops that sell nik naks for married people who hate each other” 😂😂😂
We've all seen them
I resemble that remark. LOL@@CityNerd
I was in the main Santa Monica pier souvenir shop. It had Trump 2024 coins and dollar bills, right next to the register. A few months ago. I visited most souvenir shops in DC, all stores filled with Trump souvenirs and hats, even those small street stands had Trump merchandise. I think people are sick and tired on how democrats are destroying the country. Thanks Joe Biden and your lackies, you are unifying the people in a big way, to kick out Dems out in next election 😂
Now I want a "First 10 things I'd ban if I was in charge" video from City Nerd. 😉
1. Minimum setback requirements
Cheesecake Factories
Parking minimums and drive thrus hopefully
Gas powered leaf blowers, apparently.
I'd watch that video.
I mean, I watch all CN's videos, so I wouldn't *especially* watch that video, but I would watch it.
What's the beef with axe throwing places? There's one in my downtown, it's pretty fun. BYOB too haha
I'm reminded of a New Yorker cartoon from decades ago that showed two couples talking on the sidewalk of what had once been a quaint New England fishing village but now was entirely filled with frozen yogurt shops, tee-shirt shops and kite stores. One of the men is saying, "I liked this place a lot more before people like us ruined it." That was my experience of Carmel in 1989.
I don't think you'll find much of that in Carmel these days; rent is way too expensive for anything but art galleries, boutiques, and restaurants.
@@kevinpoole1543 How do art galleries even make money. They must be fronts for organized crime and money laundering.
Those places would not exist if there wasn’t a market for souvenirs and taffy.
Hey, it's SLO. I went to college there, and it was quite expensive even 25 years ago.
The "Manhattan-like" parking restrictions are absolutely necessary. Even with them it's hard to park downtown _(outside of the big parking structure in the middle of downtown),_ but the town is small enough that you can just walk or bike there from pretty much anywhere in the city.
The residents pronounce "Higuera" as hi-GARE-uh not hi-GWARE-uh, or at least they did 20 years ago.
The best part of SLO was summer. Cal Poly is a pretty big school in a small town. When I lived there the city population was 45,000 and the school had 20,000 students, so about 15,000 people left in June and the whole place was quiet and beautiful with fantastic weather.
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention City Beautiful. The guy who runs that channel is a professor at Cal Poly and most of his videos feature the city in some way.
I lived in SLO for 2.5 years in the 90's. Correct about Higuera pronunciation. Rent for a two bedroom apartment ran $550-$750, and totally affordable on my $8/hour wage (for half the apartment). I heard from friends that the rents shot up quite a lot after I moved out, but by then I was living in Silicon Valley, so it was still cheaper.
For some reason, people outside SLO pronounce it San Looie Obispo. That's even less close to the Spanish.
"Higuera" is still pronounced that way, although even that that pronunciation is anglicized. Coming here from Tucson, it was surprising that it was not pronounced correctly, which is "he-GER-ah". (edited for spelling.)
I graduated Cal Poly in 2014 and most people pronounced it “he gare uh” so I’m not sure where he got his info 😂
@@jasonsoils5901 I definitely heard "High GARE uh" when I lived there. So irritating.
@@julietardos5044 yea so annoying when people pronounce things in their own language 🤣
As a native Californian, I genuinely feel that so many of the state's biggest issues could be solved if the state and local municipalities prioritized building more housing and good urban infrastructure. Housing costs, homelessness, traffic, and air quality would all improve dramatically if we actually had plentiful housing and a decent way to go about our daily lives without a car.
NIMBY's get drunk on housing valuations and selective schools. They won't give an inch on any change unless forced to. As housing prices skyrocketed in Austin you saw the same thing. Because housing valuations are closely tied to schools, one attempt to shift zoning around to address school overcrowding is met with violent opposition. Houses could easily drop $200k just from having the zoned high school change.
A decent railway network, public transit... Right now it is ... not that nice to walk through select Californian cities, like Fresno.. Even their downtown gate is in an industrial zone.
There is tons of new buildings/housing sprouting up all over the state. The problem is they’re unaffordable. Who can afford a $2500-4000 1 bedroom apt? Even a 2 bd at that price is ridiculously steep. Also, there are plenty homes that sit unoccupied because property investment companies and venture capitalists sit on them Safire years so they can turn a profit. Where I live in the heart of the East Bay, housing prices have not gone down. Rentals barely budged even though there are more For Rent signs than I’ve seen since the early 1990s. Changing the laws to restrict or regulate greedy investment firms/property
management companies from doing whatever the hell they want is really what’s needed. And the banks are also to blame because they set the market price.
A lot of issues could be solved if you ended ballot initiatives.
Government via regular referendums is a really bad idea and so often
There's a place for them now and then but they are just such a bad idea.
Maybe if you show up to the local county and town hall meetina, you can get the ball rolling.
Off topic, but for any Cyberpunk fans out there Morro Bay is the real life location of Night City. Basically the whole San Luis Obispo area gets cleared out and abandoned due to violence and instability in the 1990s culminating in an event known as the "Morro Bay Massacre". The bay then gets renamed to Del Coronado Bay in order distance itself from the event, Coronado City is founded by businessman, Richard Night, and then is later renamed to Night City. The bay looks completely different in universe due to terraforming/land reclamation.
To make this more on topic, I've felt like since the first time it was announced that billionaires buying up a bunch of land in northern California to build a supposed utopian city felt a little too Cyberpunk adjacent for my liking
huge fan and Slo resident, i even remember seeing a building with "LOS OSOS" in neon in the game.
I’ve seen memes about California being the Cyberpunk template. And the accompanying hate about it
that's my genuine fear, the entire development is just going to become a cash cow investment plot for people who are already stacked with a bunch of real estate and it won't solve anything, just exacerbate the existing problems.
@@uss_04have you seen urban san francisco lately? the meme is real. cyberpunk is here. it's just not evenly distributed yet, and it's not the version we wanted.
Huh, I've been to Morrow Bay but I had no idea. It's such a weird place. It's 50% actual small town, and 50% purely a fake tourist trap with no actual local economy outside of selling tourists those shirts with paintings of a wolf on them.
I can definitely imagine a handful of utopian billionaires just sort of buying it up and redeveloping it into a whoopsie cyberpunk dystopia half way between LA and SF.
My wife, kids, and I have lived in SLO since 2010. Not mentioned, but San Luis Obispo was the first city in the nation to ban smoking inside restaurants 👍
First city in the world, actually, and not just restaurants -- all public buildings.
True, and I was there. It was thought bizarre at the time. 😂
I love you CityDaddy
*CityZaddy
City Queen, Daddy, Mommy, Baby
hes everything
CityDad
CityKing
I like the idea of following a nerd he's cool 😎
As a native spanish speaker, I didn't know that "San Luis Obispo" is somehow a controversial name lol
@@Smithy88888being hispanic, I grew up only hearing the cities pronounced in Spanish phonetic and I didn’t notice there were some people who didn’t
Engineers...
Luis is not that hard. It should sound “loo-IS” like Louise, not “LOO-is” like Lewis.
Wait so how do y’all pronounce it? I always thought it was San “louie” obispo
@@saskialolita"San Luis Obispo", como la gente civilizada
Whoever told you that's how locals pronounce Higuera was punking you. Nobody pronounces the "U". "Higaira", not "Higwaira".
I wouldn't be surprised since I've heard people calling "limón" laimon.
As for the right pronunciation, it might have been a typo or just how you guys pronounce it, but the H in Spanish is mute. So the right pronunciation would be more like "iguaira".
@@_Ve_98almost. It'd be more like "ee-geda"
I would say the "right pronunciation" of a town is how the locals pronounce it. Which is like the first person said, "Higaira"
Definitely. I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way.
@@rubic0n Been going there since 1965. Lived in Avila and Pismo Beach 1973 to 1978. 1978 Cal Poly Grad.
Still have a vacation home in Pismo. Somebody punked him. Higuera is Hi Gerra and has always been.
Literally listening to a gas-powered leaf blower from a block over while you say they should be outlawed. 💯
How will the migrants make money landscaping??? Battery powered tools don't stand up quite yet to gas
The worst
Why, it's not leaf season?
Dude, you missed the greatest draw of Morro Bay: sea otters close enough in the bay near The Rock that you feel they're there posing for you!
As someone who grew up in San Luis Obispo County, I wanted to point something out about the parking garages. San Luis Obispo is a hub for activity for the entire surrounding area, which is mostly very rural. When I was growing up, it was the cool place to hang out (and I’m sure it still is). The parking garages are needed because people will drive in from 50 miles away to spend the day in SLO and patronize the local businesses, and they need a place to put their cars. This is probably also one of the reasons that SLO’s downtown “punches above its weight” for a town of 50,000: it serves the entire county. I recognize that given this channel’s urban focus this may not have occurred to anyone, and I thought it was worth pointing out.
Then a park and ride system from the edge of the town would work a lot better than having one massive car park in downtown. Have the car park along the main arterial or highway connection, then a regular bus service to bring people to the town. There is never a reason to have downtown parking garages.
@@kitfagan2027 The problem is a town this size isn't going to support transit with frequent service, and no one is going to park in a park and ride and then wait half an hour for a bus to show up. It just isn't practical. This isn't Manhattan.
@@kitfagan2027 SLO is a small town, not a big city, the downtown only really consists of a few streets; the parking structures are on the outskirts of the downtown, up against the residential zones that surround it. Getting rid of them wouldn't make people park miles away and try to take a bus, it would just make more people park on the street in the neighborhoods that surround the downtown, where parking can already be an issue, especially as you get closer to the downtown, simply because it's a college town and you have multiple roommates living in many houses. You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist; but it's a moot point because the downtown business association basically runs the town and they'd never allow the city to get rid of the parking garages.
@@costakeith9048 oh nooo people would have to take the BUS what a travesty
@@Zoulstorm But they won't take the bus, they will park in the surrounding neighborhoods and walk, creating parking issues for the residents every Friday and Saturday night.
The offset bike racks are made locally in SLO by Rod Hoadley at Peak Racks. Very cool guy, and you'll absolutely see his racks all over the county and beyond. Rod was willing to donate racks to a bike repair program at my local high school several years ago and has really done a lot to promote biking as a transportation mode!
I loved using the large set of Peak Racks outside of Mission Cliffs climbing gym in San Francisco! The density of bike capacity is great!
Peak Racks can be seen in front of Mission Cliffs climbing gym on Google Street View:
maps.app.goo.gl/9GjM1UqQ7A9uaUt27
ok but why do that with such terribly designed bike racks
@@tommihommi1 These bike racks allow you to lock a u-lock through the frame rather than the wheel so it's much harder to steal. It's much more secure than conventional front-end bike racks.
@@cable_n good bike racks are a hoop that is anchored into the ground with concrete, allowing you to attach the bike with many different types of locks, through front wheel and frame together.
These crappy bike stands are trivially easy to break, so if you only lock your bike to them through the frame, it doesn't matter how good your lock is, the bike is gone
@@tommihommi1 yeah for sure- I absolutely agree. I've seen the SLO bike racks cut once or twice and I think the hoops are way more secure. But they're way less space-efficient and more expensive, and it's not as feasible for a college town imo
in an ideal world we'd have more of those hoops, but the current bike racks are a whole lot better than anchoring your bike using only the wheel or a crappy cable lock
The argument you hear from locals in coastal towns is "everyone in the world wants to live here, so adding housing will just induce demand and ruin the place without lowering prices."
It's honestly hard to know how to respond to that because it's kinda true. A lot of tourist destinations get loved to death. Even the Federation, which has full space communism, doesn't let everyone live on Risa. ;)
4:30 as someone that went to Cal Poly SLO for college I can tell you right now the U is silent in Higuera, they pronounce it like High-gair-uh.
Lol right. We definitely don't pronounce it the Spanish way admittedly, but I don't know anyone who pronounces it like High-gwer-uh.
I've lived here for six years and this is the first time I've ever heard "highgweura". No one says it like that.
This dudes out to lunch on this entire video. If he thinks it sucks here so bad he doesn't have to visit again.
I've lived her 18 years and never heard that.
I said the same thing. Pronouncing it "High-GARE-Uh" may not be the original way to say it, but at least it's better than that.
My hometown of Placentia, CA banned drive-through restaurants for decades, resulting in us having one of the only In-N-Outs without a drive-through lane. The interior of it is enormous. More seating than I've seen in any other location.
The city eventually relented, but you can tell which fast food joints predated the removal of the ban.
That city has the most unfortunate name. Just one letter off from an afterbirth.
@@kevinpoole1543 Been hearing that my whole life.
It's derived from Latin to mean "a pleasant place," but yeah.
You could do a whole series on my comparatively small suburban hometown. It's culturally and economically split between a WASPY north and a Mexican Catholic south. It's had some bizarre initiatives come out of city hall to diversify the tax base, almost all of which have failed, and it can't seem to gentrify to save its life.
But the history of orange groves and packing houses is fun.
Santa Barbara has an active ban on drive-throughs, but there are some places that are grandfathered in, including In-N-Out.
Placentia is a terrible place but I did love going to that In N Out back when I went to CSUF.
@@MrBirdnosethe In-N-Out is not in city of Santa Barbara but unincorporated county... Chick-fil-A on the other hand
"Gift shops that sell overpriced knick knacks for married people who hate each other" - hilarious and sadly true. Good overview, I've long felt the same way about CA.
Another thing that’s SLO, the Coast Starlight. We know Amtrak outside of the East Coast is bad but taking a train from LA to SLO took seven hours while driving takes three. I guess functioning transit that isn’t the almighty beep-beep is also banned.
It's worse if you're going from San Diego to the Bay Area. That takes 12 hours when you can drive in 7. You often have to transfer to a bus then to another train.
Yeah it’s a 3 hour drive if you’re lucky. It’s taken me 10 HOURS to drive from OC to SLO before (8 hours of driving, 2 hours of break from terrible traffic). Just like it should take 5 hours on the train if everything goes smoothly.
I take the Surfliner a lot which stops over a dozen times between SLO and LA and if it’s not stopped by the cargo trains it will make it to LA in less than 6 hours.
I’m not surprised that the long distance train that stops a few times took that long because it always gets delayed by something. At least you’re not being nearly murdered by LA maniacs on the 5, 101, 405, 10, 134 when on the SLO train.
That's because of Union Pacific.
@@vpolite1 true and BNSF too to a lesser degree.
@@vpolite1 I’ve had the Amtrak conductors ranting at them for stopping the commuter train for no good reason. They sure like to flex their power. However it’s going to happen when there is one rail line right on the Pacific Ocean from SLO to Ventura.
I've lived in SLO since 1971 and you are the first person I've EVER heard say "Hi-gwer-a.
I googled "average home price for San Luis Obispo" and it's over a million dollars. How did California, a state as big as it is, mess up housing affordability so terribly?! If your state is only for millionaires, who is going to work in the trendy bars and restaurants that fill your walkable main street?
The students that don’t give a shit about kissing the customers ass because they don’t NEED the paycheck to survive.
my parents bought a house in fairfield when it was $300,000, now it's at least like $800,000-$900,000. Nothing changed, there has been no new developments, it's just more expensive. glad they've been working on the mortgage because otherwise there'd be no hope of getting a home there
NIMBYism
One thing is that lots of people have moved to the state over the last 30 years. Another thing is that California has hugely restrictive policies like CEQA that in practice empower NIMBYs. A third thing is that prop 13 means that people don't have to pay property taxes if they bought early and so they have no reason not to just hold onto land for forever.
@@bionodroid547 I live in FF - Gorgon Valley- Everyone always complaining about how expensive the housing market is. Are your parents pissed about their house almost tripling in value? Try upstate NY where you can buy a house for $80k and in twenty years it will be worth $80k. Cali is not for mopes or losers. High demand drives the prices up.
Volvo is owned by a Chinese company and built in China. It’s not a “Scandinavian car”
Yeah at least now. Used to not be that way... their old vehicles were pretty reliable.
Those bike racks are actually amazing! They allow for bikes to be parked close together, and have a metal loop to allow you lock both your frame and front wheel to the rack with a sing;e u-lock.
Agreed. I love using them for their space efficiency and security bar feature.
Best rack if you know you'll have a lot of customers using standard bikes with standard wheel sizes.
Yeah that was one of the more confusing things in this video. I love those bike racks.
It's best to lock your rear wheel too, as that's the more expensive one with the cassette, derailer and all. Fortunately you can just run the lock between the stays to secure it.
Lived in Santa Maria for a year and SLO was the little oasis of walkability in a desert of car-centric infrastructure. I literally drove almost every weekend and every Thursday there.
Literally have never heard anyone pronounce Higuera that way
Weed California mentioned!!!!
Love that place
I wonder if they allow outdoor smoking there?
I had to Google that! I'm Canadian and don't know these things. Apparently, there actually IS a town in California called the City of Weed :)
I bet the hippies really like it there.
@@brianglas7768 Maybe it depends on what you want to smoke :)
It was called that waaaaay before "🎄weed" was a thing. But, yeah, they sell a lot of t-shirts to tourists. Gets a laugh back home, I guess.
The bike racks are made by PeakRacks. They fit way more bikes in less space and have features like a vertical stagger to prevent handlebar tangles, and a locking bar to make them easier to use.
They're all over university campuses, too, because they're so efficient.
Mi Pueblo también se llama San Luis Obispo
donde esta?
There is not a SINGLE person in SLO that pronounces Higuera as "Highgwuera" or whatever you're saying. I don't know where you heard this but as someone who was born and raised here I've never heard it pronounced that way in 50 years.
How long did you spend here? I’ve lived in San Luis Obispo for 42 years and have NEVER heard a native SLO person pronounce Higuera St like you did. And many of us pronounce SLO the Spanish way.
I have NEVER heard ANYONE say "Hi- Gware - Uh" for Higuera... you had me good until this one major point.
Really hurt his authority, which encouraged a more critical viewing. In the last decade the city has grown a lot. He spent no time in the Foothill or Madonna areas, both of which have active construction so he saw "no cranes." It's in Madonna where the city is expanding it's residential density first, they just built acres of multi-family, multi-use homes there. Honestly, it seemed poorly researched.
I came here to mention this. I’m guessing he was talking to some of the college kids, who are definitely not locals.
@@travisemerson933 Agreed. SLO definitely has its downfalls. However, wish the current progress was highlighted in this video, and though it isn't super significant, there are now denser housing projects and new regulations allowing for the height restriction downtown to be increased as long as it is for high-density housing. Additionally, we have the new North Chorro greenway being built and a lot more protected bike lanes being built. SLO has a looong way to go... but I'd say we're stepping up compared to every other city in the county.
@@travisemerson933 I have no idea who this uploader is or what his gig is, but about half way through I started to think this is supposed to be a comedy channel. So, he goes to towns and does a sort of semi-serious review, but mostly he's picking out curiosities and blowing them way out of proportion for comedic effect. His affected speech is part of the whole "can you believe this ridiculousness?!" vibe.
As a city council you should see every sign you put up as a personal failure. Just design the infrastructure correctly and no signs are needed - particularly these made up, wordy signs that are uniquely crafted band-aids for problems the city themselves caused.
On my corner they revamped the side street and added a bike lane but due to bad planning they made it flush with the driving lanes at each intersection so at every light cars pull into it or turn across it. The city "solved" this problem by adding a sign showing a bus making a tight turn right into a bike. I'm not sure if this is instructions for bus drivers, or a warning to drivers, or a warning to cyclists, or just a prediction. A curb or some flexy plastic sticks would solve it but they chose a vague sign instead. It's funny because a bunch of other corners have the same problem but only this one has the sign.
What's the infrastructure design that replaces signs like "residential parking only with permit" and "garbage pick up this block tuesday and thursday all cars must be moved"?
@@perfectallycromulentRemove street parking entirely. Both signs are no longer necessary.
@@perfectallycromulentI can't imagine having to have a permit to park your car at your house.
@@Kriss_LWhy tho? Do you own the street outside of your house?
@@NeXtdra42 Then they'd need a sign prohibiting street parking.
Slo gives strong "happiness in mandated" vibes. Like, it seems pretty pleasant, if you aren't a nonconformist in any way.
It sounds a bit like Stepford
remember, Edward Scissorhands was at least partially inspired by the feeling of stifling enforced conformity generated by suburbia!~
It's one of my favorite places to be for a scant few hours every couple of years, for that reason.
I lived in SLO for several years during college. I definitely get the "happiness is mandated" sense from most of the locals. The student culture was very different, though. One of the great things that SLO has tried to ban for years is bike night, where hundreds of students bike in a loop in downtown in a huge mob once a month, blaring music and having a great time. They've tried to give tickets and even started putting cops on bikes to ride along with the horde, but nothing has been able to stop it.
@@michaeldalsin5644"bike night or bike fights" - SLO students, probably
Born and bred in California, I'll never leave. I love SLO, almost went to school there, but wound up at another Peoples Republic, Davis.
It's clear that nerdism is totally respected here - right? - so I'm going to ask, how come the expression isn't 'bred and born'? 😀
I visited Davis and was surprised how walkable it was. It really made a good impression on me.
@@robadr13 In this context, "bred" means 'raised, reared, nurtured". What were you thinking of?
@@SelfReflective 😅
I went to your talk at SLS! Thoroughly enjoyed. It was great to meet you.
those bike racks are popular (Peak Rack) because they're a based and built in SLO. personally i love them and they were great on campus
The whole California Central Coast area is very nice. In addition to Morro Bay, Avila Beach and Paso Robles are also close by and great to visit. Hot springs pools at Sycamore Mineral Springs Resort is also a nice place to relax after a busy day of work
Oasis Pool....
This video goes absolutely crazy mode
I've been visiting SLO for almost 40 years and I have to say I love it very much (I've been living in Austin all that time - you should come here and drag sometime) and was surprised at how negative you got on it. It is indeed an expensive place to live, and it is also a haven for the typical rich Californian. Your criticisms are probably mostly on target, but as you said, everyone wants to live there because it is so nice. My brother, who lives there, got in early I suppose, and has watched his house value appreciate to astronomical heights. Unfortunately, his adult kids are priced out of the town they grew up in and live elsewhere along the west coast. When I was there last year it was a little disappointing to see how many of the old places I was familiar with downtown were gutted by the pandemic. Lots of homegrown shops were either empty or bought out by national chains. I have a special place in my heart for SLO, but yeah, I guess it may not send the Urbanismometer sky high.
Why didn't you show the airport? I'm severely distraught that I didn't see it.
It’s a great airport. Received major upgrades over the past decade. More and more flights fly direct to/from SLO (SBP) via Alaska Air.
As an actual permanent resident of SLO I'm disappointed to see the town I live in so misrepresented. I've literally never heard people call it "ban Luis Obispo", and as a recreational and commuter cyclist it has superb bike infrastructure. Also, literally nobody calls it "high-gwera", where did you even hear that?
Slow town! SLO. Madonna Inn Black Forest Cake and coffee. Where else can you urinate in a waterfall in the basement and have the ladies peek in to see if the rumor is true. 78 Poly Grad but still come back 3-4 times a year. I worked in the Middle East for a few years in the late 70's and all I could think about was to come back to SLO and eat a burrito next to the fire pit at Taco Bell on Santa Rosa St near 101. Then soak in the hot pool at Avila Hot Springs. And get a tan at Pirate's Cove.....
i LOVE slo. lived there for 5 years for college. i was only paying like $750 a month for my own bedroom in a nice single family right by campus in 2021. all my old roommates were shocked by how much rent had increased when they looked for new apartments in the area. i feel really bad for current students at poly. i have no idea how lower or even middle income families will afford current rent.
i live in oakland now & it’s nice to see that rents have decreased in the last five years. there are cranes all around downtown, so i think things should only become more affordable. more cities in CA need to get their act together and start building
Current average per-room in a shared house in SLO is $1100+!
to make matters worse, on-campus housing in poly canyon village is increasing from 1500 to around 1700/month for 2024-2025. wild
4:33 I have never heard Higuera pronounced that way. I used to live downtown
I wanted to live in Southern California for probably the last 15 years to be closer to the accessible and beautiful nature.
I spent about six months last year looking at apartments/homes as far north as San Luis Obispo and as far south as Pasadena. The NIMBY’s and ridiculously high rent/taxes relative to transit/amenities finally turned me off of the idea.
Ended up settling on Albuquerque after spending a couple months there last fall. It’s not an urban utopia, but the nature and awesome people have us counting down the days to when we move in.
Are you going to live close to the rail runner?
A huge part of the affordable housing problem in California is caused by Boomers aging in place, refusing to downsize, mainly because of Prop 13 tax rates locked in. Walking through my neighborhood here in Torrance, I observed that it seems as though something like 55% of the houses are occupied by a single Boomer. That's a lot of land and house to devote to one person. My mother is one of these people and it makes me crazy. She inherited her house from her parents and intends to die here, never mind that an aging 3 bedroom house is a lot of work to maintain. But she pays very little for her house with its big yards by the beach as a result of Prop 13. Meanwhile, young families who score jobs at nearby companies like SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, are forced to either pay far more than they should have to to live in the vicinity, or endure a long commute. It's a big mess, IMO.
@@Bojaxs yes. Albeit, it’ll only be useful for us if we want to go to Santa Fe on the weekend. Would love to see it connect to Las Cruces/El Paso one day
So, I guess you'll be moving next to a big factory discharging sewage into a stock pile in Albuquerque? Oh, wait... You mean you don't want that sort of thing in YOUR backyard either? But that would make you a... *NIMBY!!*
Oregon is also a good option
Over-regulation is evidently stupid but examples of under-regulation in the US, lets say Cancer Alley, result in suffering and death so i know which one I'd rather have.
this
That’s a false binary. It’s not a matter of over or under regulation, but it’s about what should or shouldn’t be strictly regulated. Regulations that protect the environment and people’s health are good. Over-regulating what type of homes you can build, and forcing single family zoning, is bad.
The hilarious part of the Spanish name rant is that usually the more Spanish sounding the name is the more high cost/white the area is. Basically every Santa ____ is like this. Texas also has this issue but way worse. Even knowing the name is pronounced dumb/wrong it's hard to get the habit out to pronounce it correctly (especially as a 2nd gen Mexican who didn't learn Spanish natively).
this happens basically everywhere in the parts of the US that used to belong to Mexico, too.
_gee, I wonder why._
@@LexYeen Spanish colonial development has excellent urbanism. Just look at any colonial town built across Latin America.
I’ve lived in LA for nearly a decade and because of how everyone says it, it still takes me a few seconds to remember it’s _Los_ Angeles, not Las, whenever I spell it out.
But with the O, Angeles either sounds weird with the Ann-gel-es everyone says it as, or you have to flip fully into the Spanish ahn-hel-es.
@@thehousecat93Don't get me started! I lived in LA for 20 years, and I never understood how Angelinos pronounce "Los Feliz"
@@ooogyman San PEEEEdro
Another crazy thing about SLO, is the Spanish/English redundancy place-names---like "Laguna Lake" and "Cuesta Grade". Really?! Also, no one pronounces it, "Hy-Gwerea"---those are tourists.
Funnily enough, this happens even in Spain. The Aran Valley is literally "Valley Valley".😅
Big fan of your videos and channel! I live in SLO and I appreciate that you were willing to be critical of our town, because there are a lot of issues that people here often gloss over, or are blissfully unaware of. It was interesting to me that our views on the bike and bus infrastructure were almost opposite. As someone who bikes more than I drive in SLO, I find it is extremely convenient and safe to bike around town. There are stretches of unprotected bike lanes on busy streets as you mentioned, but the vast majority of the bike routes in town are along low traffic local roads, are protected, or are entirely separate bike paths that allow bikers and pedestrians to traverse the tricky terrain in a way that cars can't. I actually feel our towns bike network is underappreciated and underutilized, as it really is excellent and they are continually adding new routes. I'm sure you have many other cities to visit, but if you ever come back, I hope the weather is more pleasant and you have the chance to get a feel for biking in town! The buses on the other hand are not always reliable, and the routes don't feel convenient unless you are going to downtown or Cal Poly.
I don't mean to attack you, you really said some very nice things about our town, and also pointed out some important issues about how our city treats our unhoused residents, but I would like to point out an issue I feel you only partially addressed. SLO really caters to the wealthy, in a way that is worse than even other parts of California where I've lived. There is plenty of new construction in town, but it unfortunately is primarily single family homes in neighborhoods akin to Orange County suburbs. The few new apartments I've seen are either borderline luxury apartments targeted toward wealthy young folks/students, or are in parts of town where you have to own a car in order to get anywhere. This all feeds into another significant problem, that our roads are not capable of supporting the significant and growing amount of car traffic. Aside from the fact that almost all new residents have to own a car (which feels more like a design feature than a bug), many low income folks have to live in the five cities, Nipomo, or Santa Maria (adjacent communities) which brings a significant amount of traffic that dumps from the highway right into the city.
Of course there is significant NIMBYism here, and I can only imagine it plays a major role in the housing and infrastructure issues that face the city. Still, we are in desperate need of affordable housing with access to bike and bus routes, and we need more bus routes and more frequent buses on existing routes if we want to continue to enjoy the parts of our city that rely on low-income workers (which is pretty much everything). I understand that development requires capital and low income apartments might not provide the largest return on investment, but the housing issue is a looming disaster, and even if it wasn't, our lawmakers have a responsibility to provide for all of our residents, regardless of income.
For what its worth, I would love to hear your thoughts on what growing cities like San Luis Obispo should be doing to address these issues. It seems obvious that there will be more and more demand for all sorts of services and infrastructure as the city grows. What should cities like this be prioritizing? What is going to benefit current and future residents the most, and how can we learn from other cities that either blossomed or wilted? Pretty vague question perhaps, but I'll be watching whatever you put out anyways. Keep up the great work!
Could we please have the name of the person that says we pronounce "Higuera" like that?
Klaus Von Schteiffenheim, resident of Hamburg here on tourist visa.
Wow. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed!
Seattle native here, but SLO is one of my favorite towns on the West Coast. It's charming, bike friendly, and walkable.
I'm curious if you investigated why SLO has a ban on pet rabbits. My hunch it is because many owners tire of the rabbit's "cuteness" after a while and release them into the wild, which is unfair to both rabbit and the environment. Discovery Park here in Seattle has been overrun with non-native rabbits, and there are now signs in the park telling people it is illegal to release them in the park.
And you show a parking garage in SLO, but how many surface parking lots did you see in downtown?
And if we're going to discuss weird ordinances maybe start in your hometown of Seattle where it is illegal to spit out of your car, hug while driving, carry a fishbowl on a bus. And don't get me started about jaywalking!
Maybe leave the California bashing to Fox News. They do a great job all by themselves.
One last observation. Mispronunciation of foreign sounding place names is not unique to SLO or California. My favorite: Versailles, Kentucky is pronounced Ver- SALES.
And closer to home Sequim and Poulsbo are not pronounced the way they are spelled. I can give example after example so I'm not sure why SLO is singled out for shame.
9:15 love how you butched the pronunciation twice in 5 seconds
This guy has some stones complaining how locals say "Higuera" (who don't say it the way he says it), and how locals pronounce Spanish words in general, and then doesn't trill his r's for Chorro and Morro.
I love your channel, it’s my favorite content! One piece of feedback- some of the stuff you’re saying in the nord VPN ad is not true. Nobody can steal your google account because you log in to a coffee shop WiFi. Hackers absolutely cannot use your machine in a ddos attack because they have your IP. I get that this is part of the deal with sponsorship but I’d really encourage you to use language that’s more truthful with this one. Otherwise we’re just tricking people into buying a service they don’t need (reminds me a lot of car ads!).
Coffee shop wifi can certainly be compromised, but yeah connecting in the first place is going to be the main attack vector not MITM on the https. So that mitigation would be keeping your firewall and OS updated and passwords strong/not in some malware's database.
@@szurketaltos2693 Even if the WiFi shop is compromised your connection to Google is still encrypted with TLS. Even on a compromised network they can’t get your Google password. It’s possible to trick someone with phishing to give over their password (which happens all the time), but a vpn doesn’t do anything to protect you there.
What makes you think he's being any more truthful about the rest of his video? It's full of garbage.
I noticed that none of the downtown SLO footage in this video showed any residential structures, and I was surprised that @CityNerd never commented on the lack of mixed use structures. Use-segregated city planning & construction is a big reason American downtowns have to accommodate more vehicle traffic & parking, and is a missed opportunity to add housing where NIMBYs won’t complain.
the area surrounding portland is all going to massive multifamily housing developments - and what is conspicuously absent is community shopping.
yes he did. the section at about 10:15 covers the lack of housing.
The other thing is you can’t win on housing. Some people want more (we are working towards the state mandated requirement of enough housing for 56,000 people not including the 20,000 college students) and people who have lived here for decades say it’s too much.
SLO's city council has just started wrapping their heads around downtown residential density lately. You can tell there will be some upcoming rezoning work near downtown as the current council has been pretty pro-housing
I've lived in California for a few decades, and you've put so many things I've been thinking about in one video. I feel relieved and seen.
I'm from a tiny California suburb that has streets with notoriously "Spanglish" names that aren't really pronounceable in any language. We often had to help confused delivery drivers.
The last two atmospheric river years being the exception, most Cali coastal towns don't have the fresh water well infrastructure to support densification. Mendocino was so dry they had to set up porta potty's for bathroom use and had to truck in potable water. And, I remember Morro Bay was so dry when we were staying there, they had a moratorium on any new residences or development.
Carlsbad in San Diego County has a working desalination plant to provide water for the county. Could be the only, albeit expensive, solution for future water crisis in the coastal cities.
That and sewer water reclamation and treatment.
They seem to have plenty of water to have rice paddies in the middle of desert.
For the love of Dog, please don't used the term Cali.
@@brianglas7768 easy to do when you can spray for clouds from airplanes
A lot of people love to downplay the progress that California urbanism and transit has made in the last 30 years. But just consider that some 50k population beach town in California has better local and intercity transit than the most major American cities like Houston and Tampa.
It did 30 years ago as well. Overall, urban bus service in California has worsened since the 1990s, in all aspects: service levels, reach, and safety.
As a cal poly grad and someone who lives in the area this is a great video and really captures some of the oddities and short comings of the city. If you made this video a few decades ago there would have been less BOUJIE tourist crap downtown but I suppose that’s the same as anywhere else.
I actually use the Amtrak services to and from Grover Beach for work and it works reasonably well if you don’t have to be at work at 8AM which is not a given.
Fellow cal poly grad here, I agree everything he said was so spot on. It’s honestly impressive how well he grasped the strengths and faults so quickly. I graduated in 2016 so most of the boujie stuff was there when I was around, but there have definitely be marked improvements for locals and housing in the past few years which is nice to see, like the recent changes on Monterey by the mission and the new apartments there. It’s definitely a city that still has a lot to do, and I hope they don’t lose the charm along the way.
born in marin county,
raised without trains,
there ain't a lie in anything y'all say
Absolutely loved going to school in SLO. Great video!
I lived in SLO County for over 30 years. Your bits about pronunciation are humorous, and way off. San Luis Obispo is a great college town, but for sure has some strange laws and leaders. The county itself has great variety; the inland wine country, the coastal cities, and SLO. FYI nobody pronounces Higuera “Hi Gwera”, someone trolled you on that one.
I live in the Vallejo Benicia area in Solano county. A lot of people are skeptical About California forever and many bige there’s another angle like a hyper expensive walkable utopia for the rich. I feel like there’s a bit of irony here because their main office (I’ve heard) is in Vallejo which was one of the first cities to go bankrupt in the state. I feel a more affective way to spread “good urbanism” ideas would be for them to bring the money to the cities struggling to fund CIPs and pro urbanism projects/programs. Great video tho, if you ever come back to the Bay Area please visit Benicia and Vallejo.
Visit on 4th of July and New Year's Eve. Even in Crockett it sounds like a war zone.
No City Beautiful mention?!?!
I was equally shocked.
Especially since he did admit on the lifestream that he went on a cafe with Dave.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Monterey/Pacific Grove. Lots of biking infrastructure (18mile long path along the coast), a free EV shuttle within the "downtown" area, CSU campus adjacent, 20 min drive to Big Sur, and tons more. Still very car dependent but I think the area has a lot of potential.
Other than the rec trail, the Monterey Peninsula isn't what I would call incredibly bike-friendly (I grew up there), other than the fact that traffic is generally slow moving on most surface streets and you can take side streets as needed. I used to ride my bike all over when I was younger and I lived to tell about it. I doubt there are too many protected bike lanes even today. Not sure why you used quotation marks for "downtown" -- both Pacific Grove and Monterey have real small city downtown cores; Monterey's dates back to the late 1700s.
@@kevinpoole1543 There aren't a ton of protected bike lanes but the expansion of bike lanes in places like Sand City are a nice way to get further into town and not just along the coast. I used downtown in quotations because both Monterey and PG have downtown's of a few blocks which is small for most of the topics discussed on this channel. I just think it's worth looking at how cities as small as Monterey and PG have built infrastructure in CA that isn't as car dependent as other parts. Especially considering the attention cars get in the area e.g Monterey Carweek, Laguna Seca, and 17-mile drive to name a few.
@@TheWelschman got it. I do find the small downtowns of Monterey and Pacific Grove to be quite walkable, especially as downtown Monterey is connected to the wharf area through the Custom House Plaza, which was a really smart urban design choice when it was created decades ago, along with the tunnel for Lighthouse Ave. It’s also interesting that the area around the plaza used to be a rundown remnant of old Monterey with old boarding houses and such, which weren’t considered worth saving when the area was developed and the older buildings were restored (now part of the state park).
I love California, but cost, crime, policies, homelessness, emissions… etc . This shit sucks, people are worried about the wrong things. Cities are falling apart… but they’re worried about EV’s taking over. I feel like major cities are 90% full of outsiders and all the natives are getting ran outta here. I love it here but shit is sad
Really??? You are dumping on San Luis? It's a great place to live because there are no cranes here. If I wanted to live in LA or NY in a 20-30 story building I would move there. BTW - my friend has a pet rabbit and he lives right here in SLO. AND it turns out that they are frantically building many multi story places right now and there is no effect of the pricing of RE.
8:52 This guy's humor is so low-key, I'm not even sure how much of it I'm actually catching. Love it!
SLODOCO makes the best blueberry donuts
You speak like you got something jammed up there real far & tight…..😫
😅
Californian here. Even the extremely native Spanish speakers will pronounce all the California names the "California" way. like San PEEdro. And San Ra-Fell. And most notable, Los Angeles. If we were to use these terms in daily vernacular, not-relating to the California landmarks, we would pronounce them correctly, for example "Pe-Dro"....but when saying Pedro is from San Pedro, we would say "Ped-Ro" is from "San Pee-Dro" lmao....Welcome to CA, it's how we do things here.
This is your best review of a city yet!
To be fair in California the people who speak spanish (which is a lot of people) do of course pronounce the spanish names correctly.
There's a saying of "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." CA politics and planning is utterly dominated by people who will only accept the perfect, and they would rather see everything collapse into over-regulated bureaucratic gridlock than slightly compromise on their conception of the perfect.
exactly this.
couple that with the rather right-leaning local governments in some places (orange county, parts of the central valley, various sundown towns - go look that term up if you're unfamiliar) and you have a recipe for disaster.
@CItynerd - great video, come to Boston. You have talked a lot about it in your videos and would love your take on the good and bad of the city.
Regarding cost of living (why I don't live in Portland anymore). I haven't exactly pencilled all of this out, but I have talked to architects and watched videos on this matter... A big part of the problem with building our way out of the housing crunch is that it always has to satisfy the investors. Cost of materials, labour, project management, and the cost of finance result in just about every new building being a 'luxury apartment', which is an oxymoron when you live in an industrialised cement box with one window and a loft 2 feet from the ceiling. I think the idea around building these apartment buildings is that they're going to draw people out of single-family housing, but as we can generationally see, that isn't exactly working very well. No one wants to live in 200sq ft for 250k$.
I personally prefer low-rent cities: they're more vibrant, the art is better, and the amount of economic pressure for everyone living in those places is less intense. I am hoping that renovation and repurposing will eventually be cheaper and pencil out, but I don't see it happening right now. At some point, it feels like housing is eating up way more than the 30% of people's budgets. For about 15-20 years, it ate up 50-80% of mine.
New content to watch during my lunch break today? Let’s goooo
Morro Bay has a really cool kite festival in the spring too
Hello great show.
At minute 3 and 30 seconds where you posted "Not San Louis Obispo". Which city is that?
Thanks!
You bet!
basically, every problem california has always leads back to ronald reagan
now that's an overpass banner I'd love to see.
Even if that were so, has no one since then had the opportunity to address them?!?
@@RickyJr46kinda hard to address the problems when the people in power are making money off the existence of said problems.
@@RickyJr46 America in a nutshell is "Works pretty well, except for some old problems that politicians are way too stubborn to fix (because they profit from them)"
People have tried, but when you have a governor that proclaimed February 6th as Ronald Reagan Day, you're not gonna get very far. @@RickyJr46
no skateboarding or roller skating is crazy for a bunch of blocks it's not even some historic square
counterpoint: NIMBYs and boomers love SLO
In fact it is historic. The residences on the next block over are protected Victorian homes
Towns like this could be so amazing if they just allowed enough housing. Just keep replicating what works in the town. More 2-4 story cute buildings with apartments on top. You don't even have to "destroy character" you just expand what's working.
It's expanding as you breath to 4 and 5 story structures in some areas and the prices are not going down. Far from it. Pretty soon our traffic will actually be traffic and this cute place is going to be ruined.
I guess the US housing market is like Arab oil states: They diminish production to keep up the price, and thus the profit is bigger in relation to the investment. If there were enough homes on the market, prices would be low, and profit would be smaller in relation to investments. So, it's all about profit margin. Not about a society ensuring that everybody may have a place to stay that doesn't cost three, four or one thousand times the price of materials and working hours. This is the same in all capitalist countries, even in Denmark, although here in Copenhagen it is not as bad as in most US cities.
come visit Helsinki, not just to see the city but to see expert bicycle and ped modeling, and safety officials
I once heard Roy Clark on the Tonight Show saying he was going to play a show in "Paso Roblays" and I thought "where the hell is that?"
Now, can you do Redlands?
SLO is where I got married! Last month at the Madonna Inn. I'd love to live there when I get older (I'm in SoCal rn)
Also, HOAs are privatized government. That's why conservatives like them. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Excellent video! Now do one on Sonora. And don’t forget to feature that creek that runs right through town next to those restaurants.
I love the Houston shout out! 😊
As a Mexican when visiting USA cities it amazes me the amount of NO or restriction signs everywhere , and usually lots of words in the signs , you feel like you are doing something wrong all the time man
About the sponsor ad. For your use case, a VPN makes sense, because you probably trust your VPN more than public networks. Most creators don't give a valid use case, so thank you The ddos prevention however, isnt really a concern, even with your use case. Most ddos attacks are against servers and networks, not personal workstations. And if either nord or your local network gets hit with a ddos attack, your device will be unable to access the internet, regardless of if your personal device was targeted.
That creek is awesome
Both Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo are frustrating in that they have really charming walkable downtown areas but most of the businesses are just mainstream chain stores you find at your average mall.
Wasn’t always that way. Grew up in SLO and went to college in SB.
SLO used to be intensely against chains downtown---I remember in the late 90s or early 2000s, when a Carl's Jr went in downtown there were protests and the windows were smashed. It's wild to see the vibe invert in just two decades.
SLO! Did you hang out with City Beautiful?! I was just there a couple weeks ago, appreciating the downtown, a bomb vegan restaurant, and the nearby ocean. Lol I was just at that lifestyle center! I've been to Morro Bay, too. Lol at the no stealing plants sign. The Central Coast is the best place to steal succulents from! I love the Central Coast. It's my favorite part of California and maybe the country. I hope to live there one day. I hadn't heard of California Forever, but I've spent time in Solano County. Very interesting video!
Would love to see your analysis on Glendale, CA. It’s really changed a lot over the years.
Man he was grumpy in this one. Then it turns into an add for VPN. Tough to give a thumbs up for that.