The city is like a secret urban fairy tale hidden behind stunning beaches and mountains and endless blue skies, contrasted by a sometimes-ugly, sometimes-gorgeous urban sprawl of stucco and post-modern apartment buildings and strange villas and tiny bungalows and edgy artists’ lofts. That’s because, unlike New York or London or San Francisco, L.A. can be one of the worst cities to visit but one of the best cities to live in. I’m originally a New Yorker, and at 30 I moved to L.A.

Los Angeles is not like any other city I have lived in or visited.