Newcomer's Handbook for Moving to and Living in Los Angeles: Including Santa Monica, Pasadena, Orange County, and the San Fernando Valley

I absolutely loved this book! Although Im no longer looking to move to the LA area, it was a great heads up for obtaining all the info I could possibly need on the area. It tells you where all the local govt agencies are in the are as well as little things like the library. I loved that it gave me a heads up on some of the seedy areas as well. Most books wont tell you to stay ut of places after dark, but this book will give u that. Great buy!

Los Angeles is absurd sprawl of quasi-independent towns that can easily overwhelm a newcomer. Make a mistake, and you could end up living in Sun Valley - a nice name for a rather ugly place, and just wait until summer: the low rent won't compensate for the bill from the electric company. Add in a bizarre city government and top it off with California's own unique way of doing things (visit the DMV), and you'll begin to understand why a guide like this is essential to a newcomer. You may think, "I can find all this on the Internet for free," and you'd be right. That is if you can get the Internet to function. The cable company and the phone company are not exactly customer oriented in Los Angeles. It might help to have a guide book like this when you're trying to set all that up. Maybe you've got Internet on your phone so you can just go to Google and... yeah, I'll see you in Sun Valley. Since you're not a savvy resident you didn't know that the particular "Apartment Locator" site that you looked at was actually a scam or that a particular "church" was really shilling for Scientology. If you're moving to Los Angeles I'm sure this book will save you time and money. It'll also reduce your frustration (though it won't eliminate it--wait until you talk to the phone company).

Very very good pocket (not pocket sized thought) book which covers things I would never had thought of. Great websites and contacts provided for all topics and the content is well thought of and carried off well in a nice manner. Am buying the New York one.... you never know.

I just moved to Los Angeles and had bought this book a couple of months before the move. My copy is pretty well-thumbed thru at this point. There's a lot of really good basic info here, to give you a clue as to where to start (e.g. how to set up your utilities, what neighborhoods are like) and it did a pretty good job of helping me with ideas/expectations of what life would be like here. It's not a be-all, end-all book but it'll give you a very solid jumping off point if you're moving here (and i moved cross-country) and i think it was definitely worth the $15 or so.

I grew up in LA, and I assumed I knew everything about all the secret spots and the do's and the don't of LA. However, this book blew me away on how much I don't know about LA. It was a ton of fun rediscovering LA with my girlfriend.