California is still the best place in America to – Latest News
I’ve lived in China, Egypt, France, Dubai, London, Sweden, New Jersey, Manhattan, Washington, DC and California. I do know there are extraordinary locations to dwell throughout the world. But now I’ve a baby. And that adjustments the manner you decide a place.
You stop asking which metropolis has the most spectacular skyline or the place you will get the best dinner reservation. You begin the world by means of the eyes of somebody seeing it for the first time.
Where can I show her the most? Where can her creativeness grow to be larger just because of what surrounds her? When I ask myself the place in America I need my daughter to grow up, the reply is still California.
We can speak about the financial system all day. We can debate the price of residing, calculate what a home prices per sq. foot and make spreadsheets evaluating California to in every single place else.
When I ask myself the place in America I need my daughter to grow up, the reply is still California. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post
We can speak about the financial system all day. We can debate the price of residing, calculate what a home prices per sq. foot and make spreadsheets evaluating California to in every single place else. CHRIS TORRES/EPA/Shutterstock
But spreadsheets don’t measure sunshine. They don’t measure taking your baby to the seaside in February or waking up beneath palm trees, driving a few hours into the mountains and watching your toddler make footprints in actual snow.
That’s California.
There is the quiet magnificence of San Diego, the iconic seashores of Santa Monica, the funky eccentricity of Venice Beach and the manicured magnificence of Beverly Hills. And there is Yosemite, the place nature reminds even the most self-important adults how small we actually are.
There is San Francisco’s barely grungy seriousness and Palo Alto’s unusually well-funded science honest populated by billionaires. Then there is Palm Springs, a midcentury trendy mirage in the desert, with swimming swimming pools and palms beneath an nearly impossibly blue sky, framed by mountains rising dramatically from the desert ground.
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Ocean. Desert. Forest. Mountains. Snow. Redwoods. Beaches. California has all of it.
Sometimes in the similar weekend.
France can take you from Champagne nation and the Alps to the yachts, seaside golf equipment and wild cabaret of Saint-Tropez. Italy provides the Dolomites, the sun-drenched hills of Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast and Capri’s nearly surreal blue.
California by some means determined it needed all of it.
The Palm Springs High School band welcomes college students to the first day of college with a efficiency in Palm Springs, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun) USA TODAY Network by way of Reuters Connect
And then there’s the food.
I look ahead to In-N-Out in a manner that most likely solely is smart should you’ve spent time away from California. I look ahead to sushi that is terribly tough to beat outdoors Japan — though I hear Vancouver would really like a phrase.
Even my favourite cookie has adopted me west. Levain Bakery — the New York authentic I fell for in Washington, DC — has made its manner to Los Angeles. Everything finally does.
And yes, I’ve had the Hailey Bieber smoothie at Erewhon. And yes, it is divine.
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Laugh if you’d like. I do, too. But there is one thing splendidly Californian about the entire factor: wellness tradition, superstar tradition and unapologetic extra blended collectively and served with a straw.
Then there is the California that issues far more to me: Persian eating places, Mexican taquerias, Korean barbecue, Armenian bakeries and extraordinary Japanese delicacies.
California doesn’t merely inform my daughter that the world is numerous. I can put the world on her plate.
And that, too, is an training.
California doesn’t merely inform my daughter that the world is numerous. I can put the world on her plate. CHRIS TORRES/EPA/Shutterstock
But California’s promise isn’t confined to geography or food. It lives in its people.
Take Beverly Hills, the place my cousin, Dr. Sharona Nazarian, not too long ago served as mayor, turning into the first Iranian American girl to maintain the workplace. That an immigrant who fled non secular persecution in Iran may finally rise to lead one of the world’s most recognizable cities isn’t merely exceptional. It is the California story.
Come from elsewhere. Bring your historical past with you. Build one thing. Become one thing. Belong.
That’s the promise I need my daughter to grow up believing is still potential.
None of this implies California is good. It isn’t.
And yes, selecting the West Coast provides a few hours after I head back to Europe, Asia or the Middle East. Those connections still matter enormously to me.
But the further miles are price it.
I need my daughter to stand in the snow, swim in the Pacific, wander beneath trees which have lived for hundreds of years, see the desert bloom and eat food made by people whose households got here from each nook of the planet. I need her environment to make her curious. I need her to grow up believing that the world is monumental, however by some means still within attain.
People can say what they need about Hollywood, that it was constructed to solid a spell with its tinsel and sparkle, promoting us fantasies on screens massive and small. They can declare the California dream useless for the hundredth time.
I don’t buy it.
Seeing California by means of my daughter’s eyes has made me understand one thing. The California dream was by no means actually about California. It was the American dream with higher climate.
And I’m still betting on each.
Adelle Nazarian is a journalist, entrepreneur and commentator protecting politics, tradition, technology and the concepts shaping America.
