Hi, I’m a native of NW Pennsylvania, know Erie well, and currently live in Southern California (not far from Temecula).
I’d give just about anything to move back to PA. But my wife has 8 siblings who all live within 50 miles of here.
We just got back from 10 days there (flew in and out of Erie, actually). You have it good, really good there in terms of livability.
You’ve got a nice clean beach, an amusement park that you don’t need to pay for if you’re only taking kids and watching them ride, you’ve got community events galore. Go 5 miles from the center of Erie and you are in a pristine area of forests and farms and rolling hills. You can buy a really nice house for $100K. Here, you get a mobile home in a rough gang infested area for perhaps $270K, and a reasonable house for perhaps a half million.
If you come to SoCal you will immediately notice the following:
Crazy people on the roads. You will never be going fast enough, and if you slow down to e.g. turn into your driveway, the guy behind you will give you the finger for making him slow down.
I drove 50 miles to the Erie airport and it was actually what used to be called “a relaxing drive.” Nobody tailgating you. Nobody passing you around curves and when you’re slowing down for a school bus. There is no such thing here as a relaxing drive. Nobody goes out for a relaxing drive here, my blood pressure jumps 20 points when I pull out of the driveway, and another 20 points when I get on the freeway.
And the fun of going 90MPH bumper to bumper on the freeway. And if you leave a bit of room ahead of you (in other words, don’t tailgate) that opening becomes an opportunity for the “weavers” who want to go 120MPH but can’t. What fun. And, of course, the only way to get anywhere is on the freeway.
There’s trash all over the roads. Matresses, bottles, old TVs, you name it. I didn’t see a SINGLE piece of trash the 10 days I was visiting the Erie area.
Here, everybody is in a hurry, and woe to those who are not. The impulse to get more, buy more, have more, seems to be the entire reason for existence.
Good luck if you move, but I wouldn’t recommend moving here. I would, in fact recommend moving to Erie, for those that don’t live there
