Route 66 icon, Just outside SB
Another Detroit in the making.
Any FReepers live or have lived in SB? What’s your opinion of the place?
Ask Doug_From_Upland, he lives nearby ...
I wanted to drive the old Route 66 last year and started in SB toward LA. SB is a shocking dump compared to towns like Rancho Cucamonga, etc. In fact, there is a 'line of demarcation' as you drive old Route 66 when leaving SB, that you suddenly feel like you are in another state.
This should send awakening shock waves through the so-called "Liberal" or "Progressive" enclaves, but don't expect those people to be jolted out of their delusions by anything.
Route 66 icon, Just outside SB
It could have been a great place, good climate, citrus groves, snow capped mountains surrounding it, close proximity to many attractions. But it turned into a pit with trashy people, greedy developers ripping out the groves, choking smog blocking out the vistas. McDonald’s began there.
Lived there from 1987 - 1994. Nothing particularly redeeming about the place. My idea of the quintessential ugly urban sprawl. Throw in plenty of empty lots, chain link fences, graffiti, and LA smog rolling in from the east, and you’ve got the picture. One claim to fame - the place where Sammy Davis, Jr. was involved in an auto accident that cost him his right eye.
Sometime after I left, Section 8 housing saw to it that zillions of Los Angeles people who raise gangbangers moved there for the cheaper living. Predictable results ensued.
It's now a slime pit. It never had a stellar reputation before, but it's much worse now. There's still bright spots, like Redlands, Yucaipa, and Cucamonga ("Train leaving on track fiiive...") but even they'll fall soon enough. The offspring of the last well-living people in those places just aren't sticking around. Fiends creeping in. Same story with formerly-neat communities all over California.
Up in the mountain communities, the former hayseeds who lived down in the flatlands have now moved up the mountain to escape the gangbangers who crowded them out. What you have in Crestline CA is the closest thing to Appalachia that the West Coast can emulate.
I'd never return to California, but that goes triple for Southern California. Not even if I had more money than Steven Spielberg would I live there.
It must just be a GOT-DAYUM feeding frenzy of issuing citations there now. Like *berserk* with the infractions and fines. I'll never know because I won't be traveling through there again.