chicagogal

I'll be in LA for ~6 month and will be bringing my bike. Any advice on where to live to have easy access to good cycling? Also, any group ride suggestions. I'd be looking for a B-type ride with solid strong cyclists, but not a group that would drop me on unfamiliar routes.

daoswald

Just live close to where you work. The best way to have a terrible LA experience is to live "only twenty miles from work" and discover that is 90 minutes each way during rush hour. That can put a damper on your cycling real fast... or real slowly.

I lived in LA ten years, and it was a lot of fun while I was there. Just about anywhere you live you will find places to ride. But it is geographically huge. Even bigger if you consider Los Angeles to actually be LA County with its 76 suburbs, or "LA, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside" counties. Traversing just LA county can take 75 minutes by car at 3am. Traversing the greater metro area can be 2-4 hours by car on a busy time of day (which is pretty much 6am through 8pm).

eja_ bottecchia

TakingMyTime

As suggested above... live close to work unless you like spending a lot of time in your car. With that said, do you have any ideas of where you'll be? It's kind of hard to give you a definitive answer without knowing if you'll be on the East, West, North or South side.

chicagogal

Thanks for all of the responses I have gotten. I will be working at USC.

eja_ bottecchia

diphthong

glendale is a good choice but i'd also consider adjacent eagle rock, the toluca lake area and culver city as well.

KraneXL

Central city, so no good cycling thoroughfares (surrounded by traffic, congestion, lights, etc.) close by. At least not any that I'd consider acceptable. There is however, a commuter path that opened next to the school recently that I featured in a thread earlier this year.

The good news is that there are cyclist group at USC (though I'm not sure how large or competitive they are), so group riding shouldn't be too much of an issue. The best news is the rail system next to the school which can connect you to Long Beach trails or Santa Monica (scenic) bike trails. Here's a list of featured paths.

Number 2 on the list is isolated away from traffic if you want to stretch out. But there are still some wayward dog walkers and hypnotized pedestrians (they're everywhere) you'll still have to contend with and watch out for.

Aubergine 

eja_ bottecchia

Garfield Cat

Can you get a job at Univ of Calif Santa Barbara instead?

TakingMyTime

USC is pretty much mid-city. Things don't really open up for cyclists until you get some distance from the campus. Be careful of areas immediately surrounding the campus. Once you get a few ideas of where you think you'd like to be maybe I can make more suggestions.

Garfield Cat

I would imagine Chicago is different in Los Angeles in one big area, the ethnic makeup of the riders. Bike culture is similar but the riders make it distinct. Don't miss out on that.

Jon T

My only advice is Don't move to L.A. unless it's a life-or-death situation, and the latter could become a reality. WHY, would any one in their right mind WANT to move to L.A., or Commiefornia in the first place? I've got 2 years until I retire and I can't wait 'til Commiefornia is a vision in my rear-view mirror and I WON'T be coming back.
Jon

caloso

tinrobot

I'd suggest something north of Downtown, close to Griffith Park and/or the LA River trail. It would be close enough to USC for a reasonable commute. Neighborhoods would be Echo Park, Atwater, Frog town, Silver Lake, Los Feliz. Another option might be South Pasadena/Pasadena - lots of good rides around there.

Avoid Glendale, though. For some reason, it attracts all the crazy drivers.

eja_ bottecchia

trailangel

There is no such place as West Orange County.
Tell us how you really feel about Los Angeles and surrounding cities!

caloso

I haven't heard "Commiefornia" since Jerry was dating Linda Ronstadt and driving a Plymouth Satellite.

Tycho Brahe 

Nachoman

Maybe coming from Chicago you're used to fierce traffic. But prepare yourself.
My parents live in west LA (below UCLA), only about 5 miles from my sister, who lives in Santa Monica.
During rush hour it's about a 45 minute ride to get from one house to the other.

roadfix

You're right about Glendale. Too many kids driving and showing off their parents' Beemers and Mercedes. Most are very impatient...

trailangel

Those are the kid's Beemers and Mercedes. They drive like **** in Glendale and will run you off the road, while drooping a cig with one arm out the window so you can see the gold watch.

Chinghis

Ack, how'd I miss this thread?!

So, are you looking to commute to USC, or just looking for a neighborhood that offers convenient access to good riding?

I just commute or ride solo for most part, so I'll let others chime in on the group rides thing. As far as neighborhoods go, it depends on what kind of city experience you're comfortable with. Do you want something that's:
a) Gentrified,
b) Gentrifying, or
c) Cheap? (sorry, having trouble coming up with a third term).

"Gentrified" could be the West Side (gentrified from the git-go!), or some place like Silverlake or Los Feliz, which have seen huge transformations in the past two decades. Eagle Rock has always been a fairly genteel place, and has a fairly long neighborhood history. Highland Park, meanwhile, is somewhere between b and c. It's in the process of gentrifying, but you can still find reasonable accommodation if you try. Depends how comfortable you are in different urban environments. Where in Chicago are you coming from? I just spent a couple of weeks there last year, and it struck me, for example, that the University of Chicago is kind of similar to USC - a private university surrounded by a generally run-down neighborhood. So, if you're coming from U of Chicago, it may be a somewhat similar environment for you. If you're coming from Northwestern, however, that's a much different story.

Feel free to PM me, too, if you'd like. I have lived here for over 25 years, and spent my first 23 years in the Midwest (Wisconsin). So I have a bit of perspective on both places. Happy to help.

Downtown has more and more (not cheap) housing, but would be very convenient to USC. There are a few folks (guys, generally) that I encounter on my commute who are headed past downtown (my destination) to USC. Has anyone mentioned Koreatown or Mid-City yet? Those could also be good options, especially if you're going to be driving to USC. You'd be largely cutting across the morning traffic that's headed downtown or to the Westside (heade south instead of east or west).

Chinghis

I just wanted to say that this is not necessarily a "short drive" at rush hour. When I drive to Downtown from Eagle Rock in the mornings, I will sometimes take the Glendale Freeway (and Chicagogal will soon learn that we always refer to our freeways by number. That's the "2" freeway), and it tends to be pretty trafficky when you hit Echo Park. A lot of drivers, it seems are using the 2 to get to the Hollywood Freeway, the 101 (one-oh-one) by cutting across on Alvarado.

None of this will make sense until you get here, of course.

Also, you might want to check out the Los Angeles forum at city-data.com. There's a subsection for people relocating to Los Angeles who have questions. There are a lot of LA Haters there, but you can get some value out of it.