I grew up in the LA area. I spent a lot of time in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, the Miracle Mile, the west side, etc. I drove the freeways regularly from Ventura County to LA, to Orange County, and the Inland Empire.
To know LA is to know driving and freeways. I admit that the SNL skit The Californians always makes me laugh because there really is a lot of talk about routes and the time it takes to get from one place to another.
I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb with lots of kids whose parents were in the motion picture industry. My grandfather was an executive at one of the major studios. So to grow up there for me was to hear a lot about the film industry. The other big employers when I came of age were the aerospace companies such as Northrop and Rockwell. Those are long gone now. There was always lots of money and I could have gotten any drug I wanted with no more then one call. I was not the average child in my city as my dad was a teacher so we were a lower middle class family in an upper middle class area.
The weather was almost always nice and we spent a ton of time outside. When I grew up and had my own kids we spent a lot of time at the beach (we went at least three times a week during the nicest months), and we did a lot of hiking.
One thing I loved about living there was being surrounded by mountains. It was pretty cool being able to see a mountain out of almost every window in the house.
I have been living outside the state for about six years and I miss the weather more than anything, with the mountains being a close second.
I agree with those who say the city is so big and sprawling that it would be very tough to know the whole thing.
The biggest deal for me about being from the LA area is the reaction I get when people find out that is where I am from. I am always surprised at how impressed some people are when for me it was just life. When I was in my 20’s I drank free all night in Buffalo because every time a bartender saw my California ID the drinks were on the house. In the end, aside from the weather, life isn’t much different now that I live in the Midwest.