On today’s Plain English: west coast living
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. It’s Thursday, July 4, 2024. Happy Independence Day if you are in the U.S.
We’re doing something a little different this summer: we’ll be focusing on American culture and daily life for July and August this year. On Monday, we talked about east-coast living; today, we’ll talk about west-coast living: what’s it like to live in California, Oregon, and Washington State. That’s what you’ll learn about in today’s Plain English.
You’ll also learn the English expression “year-round.” This is lesson number 689 of Plain English. So that means JR, the producer, has uploaded the full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/689. That’s where you’ll find the transcripts, the quiz, exercises, practice area, translations, and more. PlainEnglish.com/689.
All about west-coast living
There are only three states on the entire west coast, but they’re all big states: California, Oregon, and Washington. When I say west-coast living, I’ll be talking about the major population centers in those states: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, and the suburban areas in between.
Let’s start, like we did on Monday , with the climate. The climate on the west coast is amazing. Summers are warm, but usually not too hot. Winters are mild. In Los Angeles, you rarely need more than a light jacket. Seattle is the northernmost city on the west coast. There, it’s cool, but not cold; it rarely snows. It does rain a lot, but the rain is usually just a light drizzle and often ends later in the day.
For that reason, people on the west coast get outside a lot. The quintessential image of life in California is someone rollerblading at LA’s famous Venice Beach. There’s a culture of year-round outdoor activity on the west coast: cycling, outdoor tennis, hiking, rollerblading, and kayaking are all things you can do twelve months a year. You can even lift weights outside at Venice Beach.
All this outdoor activity goes hand-in-hand with another quality of west-coast living. People on the west coast prioritize their health. Sometimes this takes the form of strange new fads and trends. You can laugh at all the cleanses, the green smoothies, the fad diets, and the juice bars. But people out west just seem healthier overall.
They also have great vacation spots. On Monday, you learned how the east coast has beaches and mountains all within driving distance. That’s true. But they aren’t the best beaches and they aren’t the tallest mountains.
On the west coast, the distances are greater, but the rewards are also greater. The country’s best beaches are in Hawaii, just a five-hour flight away from LA. And San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all have good beaches in the city, so many people don’t even have to leave home to get to a great beach.
The natural landscape is also stunning. The Redwood Forest has some of the tallest trees on earth. Yosemite National Park has crystal-clear waters, jagged mountain peaks, and beautiful valleys. Mt. Rainier, which is visible from Seattle, is over twice as high as the highest mountain on the east coast. The best skiing in the U.S. is in Utah and Colorado—an easy flight from west-coast cities.
The most high-profile industry on the west coast is Hollywood: moviemaking. All the important film studios are based there. Screenwriters, film crew, investors, set designers, costume designers, hair and makeup artists: they’re all in LA to be part of the action. Actors and actresses flock to California and the west coast to be closer to industry players—and for the high quality of life.
But of course, moviemaking is not the only kind of high-profile industry on the west coast these days. San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Seattle are known for their high-tech innovation. The west coast has some of the world’s biggest and best brands—technology or otherwise. Apple, Facebook, Google, Adobe, Nvidia—all in Silicon Valley. Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft are based in Seattle. Nike is just a little south in Portland.
California has the best public university system of any state. Its flagship public branch in Berkeley and its branch in Los Angeles are frequently among the top-ranked universities. Stanford University is a big driver of innovation in technology, business, and science.
The west coast has always been at the cutting edge for social change. If you’re comfortable with that, and with the very left-wing politics, then the west coast might be for you. The state of Oregon was the first to decriminalize many hard drugs like heroin and methamphetamine. Washington and Oregon were the first to legalize physician-assisted suicide. California has some of the strictest consumer-protection laws in the country, and many of its laws are later adopted by other states.
The west coast developed in the age of the car. Los Angeles is a sprawling city, dominated by freeways. The only west-coast city with a well-developed public transit system is San Francisco. If you live anywhere else, you’re going to want to have a car. And you’ll probably spend a lot of time in it. It can take hours to cross LA on the freeways during peak times.
If the east coast is oriented toward Europe, the west coast is oriented toward Asia. When it’s 8:00 a.m. in China, it’s only 5:00 p.m. on the west coast. There are direct flights to Asia and Australia from the west coast. California has the highest percentage of ethnically Asian residents of any U.S. state other than Hawaii.
Sounds great, right? Well, nowhere is perfect. The weather may be delightful on the west coast: there are no hurricanes or snowstorms, no deep freezes. But there are wildfires, mudslides, droughts, and earthquakes. Except for earthquakes, all of those are getting worse with climate change.
The west coast also has high taxes: some of the highest state taxes in the nation are in California. Business regulation is tighter there, so it can be harder to start and run a business. That is especially true in the construction industry, where red tape and long permitting cycles make building difficult. California suffers from a shortage of housing. That means rent and home prices are very high, eye-watering in some places. Housing eats up a large portion of people’s incomes.
Speaking of incomes, the west coast has some of the most innovative companies, and some very rich people who built them. So it also has stark income inequality. The difference between rich and poor can seem especially wide on the west coast. While ordinary workers suffer on city buses or sit in traffic, tech workers get whisked to their offices on private coach buses with Wi-Fi and comfy seats.
Jeff’s take
I’ve never lived on the west coast. I have to say…the weather, the lifestyle, the outdoors is just incredible.
San Diego is one of my favorite cities in the U.S. It’s a smaller city, but it has it all: good culture, friendly people, a beach, good Mexican food. The craft beer culture is strong in San Diego, too. I’m into that.
But the number one reason, I would say, is the outdoors—what you can reach easily from the west coast is just incredible. I have to say, west coast living has a lot going for it .
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