Jinjer 55: Picking Names Just to Sound Grand

[justodd]

49 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

No shame there. CA is expensive-

(This is not directed at you or any other specific posters, but this is a giant pet peeve that I just can’t ignore)

*Parts* of California are expensive. Most of Southern California, sure, but that’s not the entire state. It takes over ten hours to drive up or down the whole state, and outside of a few areas like the LA and Bay Area bubbles, most of the state is very, very average. Clovis, Fresno, Eureka, Yuba City, Vacaville, Bakersfield, and the many, many other cities like them take up far more space than their more flashy brethren, but they might as well not exist for all they’re recognized by most people who don’t actually live there. Using the extended LA area (we know they aren’t actually in LA, but they sure tried to sell the idea that they were) as interchangeable with the state as a whole is super common, but it’s also really, really, misguided and I don’t think any natives I know can ever hear/read it without sighing/rolling our eyes/facepalming/insert other reflexive gesture indicating “not again.” 

Please, can we just refer to where they’ve been living as “the area they’ve been living,” or maybe “the extended LA area?” Because most of the state is pretty inline with median prices nationwide. 

Edited March 18, 2021 by justodd
Missed a word

[Idlewild]

Is Jeremy due to graduate this year? 

[DalmatianCat]

8 hours ago, justodd said:

Please, can we just refer to where they’ve been living as “the area they’ve been living,” or maybe “the extended LA area?” Because most of the state is pretty inline with median prices nationwide. 

Thank you! This drives me crazy as well! I was born and raised in SoCal and no one in any of the towns I lived in (or surrounding towns) would ever say they lived in LA. The only time you’d tell someone you lived in LA is if you were traveling out of state and it was the quickest way to explain the general area in California you lived in. The Vuolos live in Sun Valley. And even if locations look physically close on a map, the traffic as you get closer to the city is so horrific that what should be 30 minute drive can take over an hour.

[SorenaJ]

18 minutes ago, DalmatianCat said:

Thank you! This drives me crazy as well! I was born and raised in SoCal and no one in any of the towns I lived in (or surrounding towns) would ever say they lived in LA. The only time you’d tell someone you lived in LA is if you were traveling out of state and it was the quickest way to explain the general area in California you lived in. The Vuolos live in Sun Valley. And even if locations look physically close on a map, the traffic as you get closer to the city is so horrific that what should be 30 minute drive can take over an hour.

Wikipedia has it as a neighborhood of Los Angeles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Valley,_Los_Angeles 

Same for statistical atlas: https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/California/Los-Angeles/Sun-Valley/Overview

It is within the City of Los Angeles. 

[DalmatianCat]

45 minutes ago, SorenaJ said:

Wikipedia has it as a neighborhood of Los Angeles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Valley,_Los_Angeles 

Same for statistical atlas: https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/California/Los-Angeles/Sun-Valley/Overview

It is within the City of Los Angeles. 

Technically, yes, but it’s miles away from the city proper. I would say I lived in Sun Valley if I lived right next door to Master’s College. My friends who live in Brentwood say they live in Brentwood, not LA. I think Jinger and Jeremy get more pride out of saying they live in LA than their specific neighborhood, and that’s fine, it just screams “not local!” to me. I can’t speak for all the residents, though, so who knows. Maybe everyone in Sun Valley goes around saying LA. I’ve been to Master’s Seminary and it felt like the middle of nowhere over 20 years ago...it was more like a drive to the desert then a drive to the city. Granted, it could have grown up a lot since then, so maybe it feels like “big city” to them.

[OHFL2009]

2 minutes ago, DalmatianCat said:

Technically, yes, but it’s miles away from the city proper. I would say I lived in Sun Valley if I lived right next door to Master’s College. My friends who live in Brentwood say they live in Brentwood, not LA. I think Jinger and Jeremy get more pride out of saying they live in LA than their specific neighborhood, and that’s fine, it just screams “not local!” to me. I can’t speak for all the residents, though, so who knows. Maybe everyone in Sun Valley goes around saying LA. I’ve been to Master’s Seminary and it felt like the middle of nowhere over 20 years ago...it was more like a drive to the desert then a drive to the city. Granted, it could have grown up a lot since then, so maybe it feels like “big city” to them.

It could also partly be because they're not trying to cater to a local LA audience. If they talked on Instagram and their podcast about living in Sun Valley, 95% of their audience wouldn't know where that was. But everyone knows LA. And compared to Arkansas, I'm sure any part of Southern California feels like "big city" to Jinger. 

[Mama Mia]

15 minutes ago, DalmatianCat said:

Technically, yes, but it’s miles away from the city proper. I would say I lived in Sun Valley if I lived right next door to Master’s College. My friends who live in Brentwood say they live in Brentwood, not LA. I think Jinger and Jeremy get more pride out of saying they live in LA than their specific neighborhood, and that’s fine, it just screams “not local!” to me. I can’t speak for all the residents, though, so who knows. Maybe everyone in Sun Valley goes around saying LA. I’ve been to Master’s Seminary and it felt like the middle of nowhere over 20 years ago...it was more like a drive to the desert then a drive to the city. Granted, it could have grown up a lot since then, so maybe it feels like “big city” to them.

But that’s kind of silly. Any moderately big city or well known area you are probably just going to say you live in that place, unless you are talking to someone specifically in the vicinity about your specific neighborhood or smaller town within the city. I live in an unicorporated area that is part of a county that is next to Silicon Valley, and is Part of the greater Bay Area. If I’m looking up the farmers market, or going on Next Door, I’ll put in my neighborhood. If I’m asked what my hometown is I’ll likely say the County name. If it’s something more area specific I might say the Bay Area. 

[viii]

1 hour ago, DalmatianCat said:

Technically, yes, but it’s miles away from the city proper. I would say I lived in Sun Valley if I lived right next door to Master’s College. My friends who live in Brentwood say they live in Brentwood, not LA. I think Jinger and Jeremy get more pride out of saying they live in LA than their specific neighborhood, and that’s fine, it just screams “not local!” to me.

I agree with this. It's like saying my sister lives in Vancouver, when she lives in Langley or Burnaby. 

[OHFL2009]

25 minutes ago, viii said:

I agree with this. It's like saying my sister lives in Vancouver, when she lives in Langley or Burnaby. 

At least Langley and Burnaby are their own entities, while Sun Valley is actually part of the city of Los Angeles. But even then if someone from Langley or Burnaby was speaking to a wide, national audience I wouldn't find it weird at all to say they were from Vancouver. I went to college with a ton of kids from the Chicagoland area and almost all of them said they were from Chicago, even though most were from the suburbs. Once you got to know someone you would probably find out which suburb or which side of town, but they almost universally said they were from Chicago when first meeting someone and I never found it odd. 

[Coconut Flan]

2 hours ago, DalmatianCat said:

Maybe everyone in Sun Valley goes around saying LA. I’ve been to Master’s Seminary and it felt like the middle of nowhere over 20 years ago...it was more like a drive to the desert then a drive to the city. Granted, it could have grown up a lot since then, so maybe it feels like “big city” to them.

 It's all one big suburban sprawl across the valley now except for the few undeveloped bits scattered around.  Sun Valley spreads into Pacoima, etc.

I live in SoCal and when I'm not in LA and I talk about going to see my kids, I say going to LA.  My neighbors don't care usually which neighborhood my kids live in and they're all in different cities anyway.

When I'm in LA county and someone there asks me where my kid I'm staying with lives, they get city, geographic area, etc.  

After living in LA as long as they have why they now are wearing LA merchandise is a mystery to me.  I would think the mystique if there was any should be gone by now.   Their branding has always been off though so why should I expect normal behavior from them?

 

Edited March 18, 2021 by Coconut Flan

[seraaa]

5 hours ago, DalmatianCat said:

Thank you! This drives me crazy as well! I was born and raised in SoCal and no one in any of the towns I lived in (or surrounding towns) would ever say they lived in LA. The only time you’d tell someone you lived in LA is if you were traveling out of state and it was the quickest way to explain the general area in California you lived in. The Vuolos live in Sun Valley. And even if locations look physically close on a map, the traffic as you get closer to the city is so horrific that what should be 30 minute drive can take over an hour.

Is Sun Valley technically not in the city of LA, though? As opposed to one of the other independent cities surrounding LA?

They certainly don't live downtown, but they may live within the proper Los Angeles city limits - not just in LA county, but within the actual city itself.

(I obviouly do not live there, though, and have no idea how locals describe the area and where they live and what people actually mean in practice when they say "LA")

ETA: I see the discussion has covered this

Edited March 18, 2021 by seraaa

[SassyPants]

12 hours ago, justodd said:

(This is not directed at you or any other specific posters, but this is a giant pet peeve that I just can’t ignore)

*Parts* of California are expensive. Most of Southern California, sure, but that’s not the entire state. It takes over ten hours to drive up or down the whole state, and outside of a few areas like the LA and Bay Area bubbles, most of the state is very, very average. Clovis, Fresno, Eureka, Yuba City, Vacaville, Bakersfield, and the many, many other cities like them take up far more space than their more flashy brethren, but they might as well not exist for all they’re recognized by most people who don’t actually live there. Using the extended LA area (we know they aren’t actually in LA, but they sure tried to sell the idea that they were) as interchangeable with the state as a whole is super common, but it’s also really, really, misguided and I don’t think any natives I know can ever hear/read it without sighing/rolling our eyes/facepalming/insert other reflexive gesture indicating “not again.” 

Please, can we just refer to where they’ve been living as “the area they’ve been living,” or maybe “the extended LA area?” Because most of the state is pretty inline with median prices nationwide. 

No...I’ll disagree. The Central Valley of CA (I’ve lived in many areas in Ca from the Sierra NV foothills outside of Sacramento, to RPV in LA, San Francisco, The East Bay of SF and now on the Monterey Bay) is still more expensive than the rural or even many suburban areas of places in the Midwest, South, FL... Find me a decent house, in a decent neighborhood anywhere in CA for under $150,000-200.000. I think for many places in the US this is very doable.

Edited March 18, 2021 by SassyPants

[SassyPants]

16 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

No...I’ll disagree. The Central Valley of CA (I’ve lived in many areas in Ca from the Sierra NV foothills outside of Sacramento, to RPV in LA, San Francisco, The East Bay of SF and now on the Monterey Bay) is still more expensive than the rural or even many suburban areas of places in the Midwest, South, FL... Find me a decent house, in a decent neighborhood anywhere in CA for under $150,000-200.000. I think for many places in the US this is very doable.

I’m just quoting myself here to give an example. In 1990, we sold a fully renovated starter home  in a crappy location in Concord, CA. The house was a 30 YO bank repo that we had purchased in 1982. We sold that home for $250,000. Concord is about 35 miles outside of SF to the East. 

[JanasTattooParlor]

Just chiming in as someone who lives in the suburbs of a big city for their state. Usually if I someone asks where I’m from, I just tell them the big city’s name and only get more specific if someone asks what part of the city I’m from. My suburb is like the Vuolos’ in that it’s not an incorporated city and is completely within the big city’s limits. It is really fun to meet someone who’s also from the same city I’m from, because they’ll say the city’s name and as soon as I ask them what part they’re from, the part that they’re describing is not even close to the actual big city. I have a friend who lives in San Clemente, and as soon as he told me that’s where he was moving my first question was how close is it to LA? I think it’s pretty common that we want to know which big city it’s close to to give ourselves an idea of geographic region because I would have no idea were Sun Valley was if I didn’t know it was within half an hour of LA.  

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

4 hours ago, OHFL2009 said:

It could also partly be because they're not trying to cater to a local LA audience. If they talked on Instagram and their podcast about living in Sun Valley, 95% of their audience wouldn't know where that was. But everyone knows LA. And compared to Arkansas, I'm sure any part of Southern California feels like "big city" to Jinger. 

While I understand that Sun Valley is not the same thing as Los Angeles "proper", I also agree with you that people from other areas wouldn't necessarily know where Sun Valley, California is. When I hear "Sun Valley", my mind immediately goes to the ski resort, or maybe the 1941 musical  Sun Valley Serenade. I'm afraid that the city in California is pretty much an afterthought in my case.

Edited March 18, 2021 by WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?
redundant word extraction

[seraaa]

3 hours ago, viii said:

I agree with this. It's like saying my sister lives in Vancouver, when she lives in Langley or Burnaby. 

Difference is neither of those places are officially within Vancouver city limits, whereas Sun Valley is offically an administrative suburb of LA. People in Sun Valley vote for the mayor of LA, but people in Burnaby don't vote for the mayor of Vancouver.

Not that the official boundaries necessarily matter when it comes to how people describe where they live, because it can be very idiosyncratic and influenced by various factors - geographic proximity! Historical affiliation! Neighburhood character! Age of settlement! etc - and as people have already pointed out, may change depending on who you are talking to!

 

(I am a map and urban geography nerd and find this specifically all very interesting ?)

Edited March 18, 2021 by seraaa

[justodd]

53 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

No...I’ll disagree. The Central Valley of CA (I’ve lived in many areas in Ca from the Sierra NV foothills outside of Sacramento, to RPV in LA, San Francisco, The East Bay of SF and now on the Monterey Bay) is still more expensive than the rural or even many suburban areas of places in the Midwest, South, FL... Find me a decent house, in a decent neighborhood anywhere in CA for under $150,000-200.000. I think for many places in the US this is very doable.

I’m not going to look for that range, because that’s nowhere near accurate for the median or average price, nationwide. 

The average sales price of a new home in 2020 was 389,400 U.S. dollars and in 2021, it reached 408,800 U.S. dollars.

It’s completely disingenuous of you to throw out inexpensive areas of the country and pretend they’re somehow more in line with what most Americans are working with, and even more so for you to talk about how other parts of California are more expensive than these exceptionally low cost areas and completely ignore how they stack up to national averages and the fact that they’re still nowhere near the cost of someplace like LA - especially when those were kind of my main points.

I just spent maybe five minutes browsing Zillow listings for two bedroom or larger houses in Sacramento, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Tulsa and guess which one looked most expensive? Hate to break it to you, but it wasn’t the one in California. All four had their share of listings over a million, but even in Tulsa, which had the most listings under $300k, still had far more above that line than under it. Yes, these are all cities, and likely to be more expensive than some small town that’s a bit more rural, but even Fayetteville, less than half an hour from where Jinger “city, please!” grew up, has more than twice as many listings over that $300k mark than under it. 

Are there parts of the country where someone can buy a home between $150-200k? Of course. Does that make them representative of average home prices nationwide? Not. Even. Remotely.

[FiveAcres]

6 hours ago, SorenaJ said:

Wikipedia has it as a neighborhood of Los Angeles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Valley,_Los_Angeles 

Same for statistical atlas: https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/California/Los-Angeles/Sun-Valley/Overview

It is within the City of Los Angeles. 

I used to tell people a relative lived in Southern California. Because I knew it wasn't Los Angeles, but unless it's Hollywood, Burbank or Beverly Hills, most people aren't familiar with the less well known municipalities in the Valley. And I would be damned if I call my relative a Valley Girl. 

Edited March 18, 2021 by FiveAcres
typo

[Leftitinmysnood]

I think a lot of this goes along with the pervasive attitude that people who live "in the Valley" (usually referring to the San Fernando Valley) are not real Angelenos. It's an othering mechanism and a lot of it is rooted in wealth and class discrimination. As far as their fans care, they live in LA and since it's probably temporary, they are milking it for all it's worth.

[tanba]

1 hour ago, justodd said:

I’m not going to look for that range, because that’s nowhere near accurate for the median or average price, nationwide. 

The average sales price of a new home in 2020 was 389,400 U.S. dollars and in 2021, it reached 408,800 U.S. dollars.

It’s completely disingenuous of you to throw out inexpensive areas of the country and pretend they’re somehow more in line with what most Americans are working with, and even more so for you to talk about how other parts of California are more expensive than these exceptionally low cost areas and completely ignore how they stack up to national averages and the fact that they’re still nowhere near the cost of someplace like LA - especially when those were kind of my main points.

I just spent maybe five minutes browsing Zillow listings for two bedroom or larger houses in Sacramento, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Tulsa and guess which one looked most expensive? Hate to break it to you, but it wasn’t the one in California. All four had their share of listings over a million, but even in Tulsa, which had the most listings under $300k, still had far more above that line than under it. Yes, these are all cities, and likely to be more expensive than some small town that’s a bit more rural, but even Fayetteville, less than half an hour from where Jinger “city, please!” grew up, has more than twice as many listings over that $300k mark than under it. 

Are there parts of the country where someone can buy a home between $150-200k? Of course. Does that make them representative of average home prices nationwide? Not. Even. Remotely.

That's a pretty unfair comparison. Minneapolis and Nashville at least are at the top of their states in terms of house prices. Nashville is also larger in terms of population. Yes, you can find places in other states that are less expensive.

[artdecades]

42 minutes ago, Leftitinmysnood said:

I think a lot of this goes along with the pervasive attitude that people who live "in the Valley" (usually referring to the San Fernando Valley) are not real Angelenos. It's an othering mechanism and a lot of it is rooted in wealth and class discrimination. As far as their fans care, they live in LA and since it's probably temporary, they are milking it for all it's worth.

100000 percent. I have lived in the valley (north, valley, west valley, currently south east valley) pretty much my whole life and it’s always snobs who act like it isn’t LA. Sun Valley residents are as much part of LA as someone in Mar Vista or Frogtown. 
 

Within LA it’s classism, but for those who aren’t from LA it can be genuinely confusing how the city is administered. Los Angeles county is ginormous and the city of LA is smaller but still huge. But there are parts of LA County that are not part of the city even though they are geographically smack dab in the middle of the city. These places are like Burbank, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, etc. some of these cities utilize county resources like the sherif and the library and some go their own way (usually the wealthier cities). So someone can be from LA county and not be from the city of LA but within the valley it’s predominantly city of LA. 

[justodd]

2 minutes ago, tanba said:

That's a pretty unfair comparison. Minneapolis and Nashville at least are at the top of their states in terms of house prices. Nashville is also larger in terms of population. Yes, you can find places in other states that are less expensive.

I never said one couldn’t. If you read the entirety of the post you quoted, you’d have seen that I sad that yes, there are places where $150-200k is a reasonable budget. My points were that the Los Angeles area is not representative of California as a whole, and if you look at actual price averages across the nation, most of it isn’t far off. 

I looked up cities because I used cities as my examples of parts of California that aren’t as expensive as Los Angeles. There is no logic in comparing home prices in a city to home prices in rural areas - especially when the reason so many rural areas are less expensive is because they’re less densely populated and often have fewer opportunities.

Yes, there are definitely places where someone can buy a house for well below the current averages. That doesn’t make those lower prices the default any more than the $900k a friend of mine just paid for a home in Brooklyn. Cheaper areas balance out the higher ones and that’s how we figure out where the average is. 
 

$175k may be typical (or even pricey) in some places, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s seriously cheap compared to national averages, or that most run of the mill parts of California can be had in that middle ground.

[seraaa]

51 minutes ago, artdecades said:

100000 percent. I have lived in the valley (north, valley, west valley, currently south east valley) pretty much my whole life and it’s always snobs who act like it isn’t LA. Sun Valley residents are as much part of LA as someone in Mar Vista or Frogtown. 
 

Within LA it’s classism, but for those who aren’t from LA it can be genuinely confusing how the city is administered. Los Angeles county is ginormous and the city of LA is smaller but still huge. But there are parts of LA County that are not part of the city even though they are geographically smack dab in the middle of the city. These places are like Burbank, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, etc. some of these cities utilize county resources like the sherif and the library and some go their own way (usually the wealthier cities). So someone can be from LA county and not be from the city of LA but within the valley it’s predominantly city of LA. 

This is the kind of stuff I like to hear about ?

[Bluebirdbluebell]

13 hours ago, Idlewild said:

Is Jeremy due to graduate this year? 

No

He'll be two years into what was a three-year program, but now a four-year program. Considering they teach Greek and Hebrew to people with no experience with those languages, it makes sense the program is so long. 

[AussieKrissy]

I tell foreigners that I live in Sydney (technically I am in a suburb of Sydney). As that is a capital they may know. I tell out of staters and locals my specific town and then add its an hour or so out of Sydney and the general direction if they don't recognise the town name and or location. 

I agree it is a lot easier to just say the big city name to people who are unfamiliar with the area and then add a little blurb about it being a far out suburb of said city rather than going straight to the town name.

I would look like a twat to a local if I claimed to live in Sydney and then told them where I really live. Only locals really know (even then they may not) that we fall in the sydney radius.