Los Altos vs Palo Alto - The Showdown (San Jose, Sunnyvale: rent, insurance)

[BayAreaHillbilly]

I always found Los Altos Hills to be much more plastic and new moneyish than Los Altos.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by sonarrat

Why the heck not? That's like saying you don't want to be on the Atherton flats.

The views from up there are spectacular.

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

I always found Los Altos Hills to be much more plastic and new moneyish than Los Altos.

The whole place is designed for showing off. As far as I know, it's all zoned residential and homes must have a certain setback from the street. The real Los Altos has a town center and everything.

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

The views from up there are spectacular.

They're better from further up the hills. I drove down Skyline on Sunday morning and saw the valley on one side and the ocean on the other. Holy ****, try and beat that...

[CAVA1990]

My aunt and uncle lived on an acre up off of Magdalena. I spent a lot of time there as a kid in the 60's and the view of the lights at night with the planes taking off and landing at Moffett Field was great. Lots of deer, racoons, and other animals along with all the trees gave it a real out in the country feel.

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by waves17

Palo Alto ... soft socialist pablum ...(Palo Alto City Hall actually flies the United Nations Flag) ... Palo Alto is your ultra Politically Correct place ... a bunch of self absorbed hypocritical leftist ... Normal people enjoy life in Los Altos

Fear not, kids. Not everybody in Los Altos lives in a Cold War backyard nuke bunker, getting info from the outside world from Glen Beck.

The "normal people" there are in fact quite diverse, and enjoy a great library (actually two), museum, Draeger's, Foothill Produce, farmer's market, and other commie/hippy/loser/not-so-pasty-white-redneck interests.

Oh, and being filthy rich (living in Palo Alto) ain't terribly "Politically Correct". You can always head over to the Hoover Institute to find out how "liberal" much of the Stanford/P.A. crowd truly is.

[LexusNexus]

LA and PA are not much different from one another. Both are outrageously expensive to buy a home in. You pay an extra million for the exclusivity and the false sense of superiority. People live in these places to EXCLUDE themselves from others, namely blacks and mexicans, whom they feel cause all the crimes and are beneath them. The PA police department is even under fire now for past racial profiling with the former police chief urging officers to stop all black men who come through the town for questioning. Absolutely absurd. I once read a line that PA's favorite football play is to "fake left, go right." Beautiful neighborhoods though. Very unique place to live, but certainly no guarantee that your kids are going to grow up as you intend. Drug use such as meth, weed, ecstasy, and other transgressions are commonplace among kids who feel entitled, invincible, and access to their parents' money. While you're fooling yourself into believing that your exclusive snob environment is helping you raise your kids to be ideal, they are quietly planning their suicide. PA's Gunn High might as well be called "Suicide High."

LA nothing to write home about either. I'm there everyday and have yet to see one kid out playing in their own yard. I know it happens, but where the hell are all the kids? What are they doing? The few that I do know are studying. All their activities are structured and scheduled. Your kid will know what it means to "burn the midnight oil." MIT or Stanford are the only goals after such a sheltered existence. By raising your kid in LA, don't fool yourself into thinking that they won't experiment with meth, crank, alcohol, or sex. Your kid might be one of those who takes unprescribed ritalin in an attempt to try to compete with high-scoring asians on exams. You're afraid of gangbanging, but your perfect kid won't tell you that they prefer rap music and listen exclusively to Lil Waye, Eminem, or Snoop. Absolutely no guarantee here that your kids will turn out the way you'd like just because you live in the beautiful and secluded enclave called Los Altos.

Neither place is immune from the problems that plague many affluent communities. Spousal abuse, depression, anxiety attacks, personality disorders, various stress-induced auto-immune diseases, isolation and separatist behavior, insomnia, addiction to medications, paranoia, and financial strain. Downtown LA at one time had two or three asian houses of prostitution fronting as massage parlors and "good health centers." Business was booming until they shut these places down. I wonder how many of the snobby husbands from LA were stopping off on the way home to get some "relief"? Certainly enough to get the attention of authorities. Phony, insincere neighbors are abundant. Don't kid yourself, these places are far from perfect, and certainly not places that guarantee that your kids will flourish and become well-rounded people.

I consider the better parts of Sunnyvale and Mountain View a step UP from these places. They're more reasonably priced, have beautiful neighborhoods, good schools. You're likely to run into neighbors who are not so stuck on themselves. Your kids are likely to experience more of what the real world is like, you know, the one they're going to encounter when they leave you to go to college.

My main point is that how your kids turn out depends on the values they are taught at home, not your putting them in overpriced, overrated exclusive cocoons.

[NorCal Dude]

Palo Alto would be where you meet your wife in College. Los Altos would be where you grow old together. To offer some sort of analogy....

[NorCal Dude]

Originally Posted by Alexus

LA and PA are not much different from one another. Both are outrageously expensive to buy a home in. You pay an extra million for the exclusivity and the false sense of superiority. People live in these places to EXCLUDE themselves from others, namely blacks and mexicans, whom they feel cause all the crimes and are beneath them. The PA police department is even under fire now for past racial profiling with the former police chief urging officers to stop all black men who come through the town for questioning. Absolutely absurd. I once read a line that PA's favorite football play is to "fake left, go right." Beautiful neighborhoods though. Very unique place to live, but certainly no guarantee that your kids are going to grow up as you intend. Drug use such as meth, weed, ecstasy, and other transgressions are commonplace among kids who feel entitled, invincible, and access to their parents' money. While you're fooling yourself into believing that your exclusive snob environment is helping you raise your kids to be ideal, they are quietly planning their suicide. PA's Gunn High might as well be called "Suicide High."

LA nothing to write home about either. I'm there everyday and have yet to see one kid out playing in their own yard. I know it happens, but where the hell are all the kids? What are they doing? The few that I do know are studying. All their activities are structured and scheduled. Your kid will know what it means to "burn the midnight oil." MIT or Stanford are the only goals after such a sheltered existence. By raising your kid in LA, don't fool yourself into thinking that they won't experiment with meth, crank, alcohol, or sex. Your kid might be one of those who takes unprescribed ritalin in an attempt to try to compete with high-scoring asians on exams. You're afraid of gangbanging, but your perfect kid won't tell you that they prefer rap music and listen exclusively to Lil Waye, Eminem, or Snoop. Absolutely no guarantee here that your kids will turn out the way you'd like just because you live in the beautiful and secluded enclave called Los Altos.

Neither place is immune from the problems that plague many affluent communities. Spousal abuse, depression, anxiety attacks, personality disorders, various stress-induced auto-immune diseases, isolation and separatist behavior, insomnia, addiction to medications, paranoia, and financial strain. Downtown LA at one time had two or three asian houses of prostitution fronting as massage parlors and "good health centers." Business was booming until they shut these places down. I wonder how many of the snobby husbands from LA were stopping off on the way home to get some "relief"? Certainly enough to get the attention of authorities. Phony, insincere neighbors are abundant. Don't kid yourself, these places are far from perfect, and certainly not places that guarantee that your kids will flourish and become well-rounded people.

I consider the better parts of Sunnyvale and Mountain View a step UP from these places. They're more reasonably priced, have beautiful neighborhoods, good schools. You're likely to run into neighbors who are not so stuck on themselves. Your kids are likely to experience more of what the real world is like, you know, the one they're going to encounter when they leave you to go to college.

My main point is that how your kids turn out depends on the values they are taught at home, not your putting them in overpriced, overrated exclusive cocoons.

As a new parent and some one who grew up middle class back east, who is black, I can share some of your sentiments. But you are going to be hard pressed to convince people that you are going to have just as good of a chance at raising well rounded children in Palo Alto as in East Palo Alto.
Or that your kids will get just as good an education in Los Altos Hills as they would in red wood city.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Plus, Los Altos is one of the few places around here that visually resembles a nice Midwestern or Southern well tuned burb, and Palo Alto one of the few that visually resembles a leafy East Coast, older, inner ring one. Aesthetics are worth something especially when most CA burbs are very plain and much more urbanized in appearance than ones in other parts of the country.

[LexusNexus]

Originally Posted by NorCal Dude

As a new parent and some one who grew up middle class back east, who is black, I can share some of your sentiments. But you are going to be hard pressed to convince people that you are going to have just as good of a chance at raising well rounded children in Palo Alto as in East Palo Alto.
Or that your kids will get just as good an education in Los Altos Hills as they would in red wood city.

Excuse me, but EPA was not mentioned by me. Neither was RC. The OP mentioned four cities that I am familiar with and commented on. What is your point? Which sentiments that I expressed do you share?