I lived in St. Louis until I was 19. Although St. Louis is large, metropolitan, and not at all the farmland some believe it to be, I was tired of the Midwest, I was sick of the cold, and I wanted to experience something new. I moved to San Diego.

While San Diego is a great place for others (namely the people who grew up there), I found that many people felt totally adrift on the West Coast. Usually transplants from cities like mine and the East Coast, they found Southern California to be a world of its own and the people there to be the complete opposite of what they were used to in other places. Even though the weather was always beautiful, I lived right on the beach, and I should have been happy, I always felt lost. I couldn't stand the lackadaisical surfer attitudes, the oppressive superficiality, or the apparent disconnect between SoCal and the rest of the country.

Since then, I have since lived in two East Coast cities and returned to St. Louis. I still get irritated with Midwestern sensibilities and curse the weather, but I have never been happier. Some people are just meant for certain places, at least certain TYPES of places. I thank you for posting this letter (I'm sure other California refugees will, too), because it helps to know that someone else won't feel as lost as I did for as long as I did.

This letter and comments really spoke to me as I am dealing with a similar situation, but with the coasts reversed.

I grew up in Southern California (born in Anaheim) and moved to Washington DC at age 24 without so much as a thought in my head. I think considering the bigger ramifications of such a move would have made me talk myself out of going, so I just bought the plane ticket and dived right in.

I've been in DC a year and a half now, and am definitely ready to leave. What's keeping me here, and what keeps most people here, is my amazing job - it is said that a few years experience in DC is equivalent to 2x that in any other place.

But, I have had a difficult time adjusting and making friends. There are SO many things about the East Coast that are foreign to me. The directness (interpreted by my Californian eyes as rudeness), the segregation , the better/more important-than-you attitude. There really seems to be a chip on the shoulder of so many people out here when I tell them I'm from California. They assume we are all shallow airheads, and usually feel the need to tell me as much.

So, it's been an adjustment, but I think in the long run it will be good for me (I've decided to move away in a year's time).

Also, as a fellow 20-something, I think that at this stage in our lives nowhere will be home or totally comfortable. We are trying to figure everything out at once, and I think that means we'll have some lonely periods. I'm just trying to view this time as character-building and ultimately an adventure.

To those who find little of redeeming value in San Diego, I offer this: It's a difficult place to come to know, and that's the way we like it.

Don't expect to come here and have your weekend mapped out for you in the form of an up-to-the-minute, glossed-up, pretty-person city guide. Sure, we've got those, and if you actually trek over to one of the bars/clubs/meat-markets listed within, you are certain to find the plasticine, vacant-eyed suburbanites so many San Diego transplants complain about (and then hit on).

Don't expect to come here and have everyone "get" you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the onus on the "outsider" to try to "get" the place he or she has come to? You wouldn't travel to Bangladesh and expect everyone there to "get" your sense of humor or your proclivity for Philly cheesesteak, would you? The same goes for San Diego. It's a Different Place. With Different People who have Different Values and a Different Code of Conduct. Try to remember that. Maybe even embrace it. In other words, we don't hate you because you're from New York. But we certainly don't like it when you scream obscenities at us in traffic. That's not the way we do things here.

It strikes me that most newcomers to this fine city are unbelievably impatient. They want culture, now! Edge, now! Grit, now! What they don't realize is that San Diego is a bit like Brigadoon -- an enchanted place that only appears to those who are patient enough and open-minded enough to see it for what it really is. The real San Diego is at the family-owned taco shop you missed because you were too busy looking for a restaurant with "edge." The real San Diego is at the cool little club hidden away in the industrial area you passed up because it wasn't architecturally "interesting." The real San Diego is at the world-class yoga studio you barely glanced on your search for a gym "that isn't full of blonde, big-breasted bimbos." (Speaking of those creatures, the last time I checked, blonde, big-breasted bimbos were an ever-growing segment of the worldwide population. San Diego most certainly does not boast a monopoly).

Instead of complaining about San Diego being boring, generic, or predictable, consider instead that those adjectives might describe your approach to the city itself. Stay awhile. Talk to the locals. Realize that a place is what you make of it. And most importantly, stay away from Pacific Beach.

You'll see.

There are a lot of New Yorkers here.

As for myself, I remember being stuck in LA traffic, in 100 degree heat, with my whole life ahead of me. But of course, you can't go home again, can you?

Oh, you can visit. I am from Albany, "hicksville" for a NYer, yet here I am brash, "edgie", and way too direct. Think, compared to ....? What are they comparing you to? Once you live somewhere else, your horizons are broadened, and home will never be like it was.

As soon, as you speak and the natives hear your accent, even though to you-what accent?, they know you are from somewhere else. Sometimes, you have to think maybe it makes them feel small. So when people tell you how rude New Yorkers are smile, and think about the mouth that it is coming from; when they make you feel out of place, remember how sophmoric it is, how highschool. But, remember what NYers think of Cali people. Fruits, and Nuts, your moving there?...

I get insecure too, and then remember people are all the same, no matter where you go so live where you want to. Change is always hard, but its also exciting.

Strangers are very very nice here. People seem to take greater pride in appearance, maybe too much, but - take a vaca, go back and visit, you will remember why you came here. New York can be very harsh and real, after all... this is lala land....