City Wars: Palos Verdes vs Berkeley

Here are my pros and cons of living in a wealthy conservative suburb vs a poor liberal city.

Pros of Palos Verdes
+no fear of violent crime. You don’t have to hide valuables in your car. Or walk frightened of the angry guy who might mug you.
+girls dress sluttier. Because they aren’t afraid of being raped, women walk around in much nicer and more revealing clothes. I saw a pretty girl going down the escalator in a short loose dress when a gust of wind revealed that she was wearing bright blue panties. Easily the best thing I’ve seen in months.
+all stores have public restrooms and offer free coffee/food. With no bums, stores can actually offer decent service and attendants are nice. They don’t have their days ruined trying to throw out a foul-smelling hobo who thinks he should be allowed to sleep because he bought something for 73 cents.
+nice cars. Shopping today, I saw a pretty good number of cars that have been reviewed on Top Gear in the last couple years. Parking lots aren’t a profile of the cars that should be traded in the Cash for Clunkers program, and the Toyota Prius.
+clean city. People take pride in the town because they own it. There is a good diversity of plant life and trees. I have yet to see a person spit on the ground or litter, a common sight in Berkeley.

Cons of Palos Verdes
-meritocracy. Along with pride comes its ugly twin sister, contempt. While people are proud of living in a rich city, they feel that they earned their station in life while people in poorer neighborhoods deserve what they get. There’s a lot of looking down on people and not so much examining their skills or qualities.
-conformity. Part of being snobby means you’re afraid to try new things, because you might be exposing yourself to the very shame you perpetuate. As such, the malls here are all cookie cutter stores. The quality is decent but there isn’t anything transcendent or unique. There’s little character to the town.
-banks. I just saw a woman withdraw $10,000. In coins. She had a box filled with rolls of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, and the whole thing looked like it weighed a good 50+ lbs. It will be quite a trip to the Vegas slots, as my mom quipped.
-enthusiasm. People have passion for their jobs and they’re good at it, which is why they’re rich. But at the same time, there’s not a lot of care for things that don’t immediately affect the town.
-douchebags. All the beach-blond white guys around here drive Mustangs and wear Hollister, the douchebag badges of honor. I also burn with a quiet hatred for girls driving Mercedes who could not tell me a single fact about their cars, World War II, or anything other than clothing companies and makeup.

Pros of Berkeley
+creature comforts. Say what you will about liberals, they’re very particular about how they live and quality. You will never find the quality and range of foods in a conservative town as you can in Berkeley. Same applies to things like beds, hobbies, coffee, etc.
+innovation. Part of being extremely tolerant is that you encourage risk-taking and new ideas. Even though most of the ideas in Berkeley are bad, you do have a few diamonds in the rough.
+competition. While I hate it for people who apply it when walking or driving, Berkeley has a much wider collection of excellence. All PV has are the douchebags wearing their USC gear.
+public transport. If you don’t have a car in PV, you aren’t going anywhere. Berkeley is much less ashamed to ride bikes, buses, or the subway. It’s a lot easier to get around.

Cons of Berkeley
-dirty. I’ll put it frankly, Berkeley is dirty and it largely lives in the past. They need to tear down 80% of the buildings and start over. Rent control, what idiot ever thought that was a good idea? Even northside, which is a million times cleaner, is not “clean”.
-pretentious. Berkeley carries a defiant attitude about its faults and tries to defend them as positives. No, widespread homelessness is not a good thing. It’s not a sign of tolerance or equality, it’s a sign of poor planning and bad government. Same goes with ugly buildings from the 1960s, no parking, and rising crime.
-bad drivers. Part of being a diverse city means you have citizens from all over the world, none of whom have experience driving in the United States. Which means they all suck at driving, but they’re still competitive and hate being passed so they’ll cut you off anyways. And there’s nothing worse than being cut off by someone who thinks they’re better than you but they’re sitting in a car that was a piece of crap in 1982.
-cops and taxes. Living in a poor city means that cops aren’t there as defenders of the law and protectors of the innocent, they’re there as tax collectors. On top of already exorbitant taxes levied by the government. Ask a cop for help in Berkeley and he’ll look at you like you asked him for a bar of gold.

So basically it comes down to this: who do you hate more, douchebags or hobos and parking tickets?