Sean Smith
Active member
So, did it work out for you with the niche company?
Obtaining Corporate Work -- Methods?
- Thread starter JonathanLB
- Start date
JonathanLB
Carbonite Member
Jonathan,
Two of my freelance friends have recently moved from Portland back to LA. Their reasoning was the amount of work they were able to find in LA.
If you have contacts in LA, why not live up north and work down south?
-Andrew
I consider Portland uninhabitable. Obviously my fellow humans have very low standards for what constitutes a "habitable environment." A place where it's constantly raining, cold, and cloudy to me is not a habitable land mass and should be barren. But thank god for me these suckers will actually live up there, keeping a few cars off our highways anyway. Once again it's snowing in Portland (I'm going to visit tonight through Sunday, my girlfriend is up there), despite tons of snow the rest of the winter. I'm really sick of it snowing EVERY time I come to town, and it has been snowing constantly this year basically. It must be "global warming" (ha-ha whatever, as Elliot said on Scrubs, HERE'S an inconvenient truth: NOBODY CARES!).
I definitely hope I'm able to stay in Los Angeles because I cannot tolerate bad weather. Any day less than 70 and sunny is not acceptable. We still have like 75 of those types of days per year in Los Angeles, that's bad enough for me.
basspig
Veteran
Yeah Dan, I have experienced some of that myselfI find it really frustrating. I don't want to sound ungrateful or something, but I don't want to do film work at all if I can't do work I'm proud of. I mean if it comes down to it, I'd rather work another job and do film as a hobby that maybe one day could be a better career, rather than do lousy work because I have tiny budgets. Also I have to be a bit realistic with myself, I mean if I can't make an adequate living in this industry I cannot continue forever. It sucks, this is all I really know how to do and all I've trained to do with my life, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point if things don't workout over the next year or two.
Jonathan,
I hear you loud & clear on this topic. I'm in pretty much the same boat. Only difference is I waited a lifetime to realize my dream to be in this business. With the sudden drop in the economy, my company's growth has had the legs cut off from it.
I've been thinking corporate video, too. But in my neck of the woods, it's not paying well. TV commercials are being produced for a few hundred dollars each. Many companies are doing their own video now, as they don't care about the quality enough to perceive the need for a dedicated professional.
I record orchestras, mainly. I love classical music, so that goes well, but there are only so many orchestras and concerts are infrequent. Less frequent are the soloists that hire me. But when they do, it's a big production--4-camera shoot with 7 channels of pristine audio from flown microphone arrays. I have managed to get $1700-2500 a piece for these shoots, which includes design and production of a beautiful DVD and CD. The clients love it and are delighted at the degree of quality they get. I wish I could be doing a concert a week, but it's more like a concert or two a year.
I'm seeing a shift in paradigm ahead: it's not about selling your services to others anymore--like the DTP industry, cheap, available cameras floods the market with competitors and worse--clients that DIY their own video productions. My thought is that maybe it's time to consider being a content creator, rather than a cog in the gears of someone else's content creation.
Excellent thread. Keep us posted on your results with corporate.
JonathanLB
Carbonite Member
Yeah my former business partner goes the content-creation route, he has a ready market for what he is selling and knows basically how many copies he can sell, then goes from there. It's a good way to go if you have the market.
For me, I mean $1,700 to $2,500, because of all of the expenses involved (if you mean that's the total budget), there wouldn't be anything left over, haha. I'd exit the business stage right if I can't find good paying clients regularly. Who knows what will happen, I have two potentially good clients that I'm waiting to pitch to, they're interested based on previous work we did, but if they lowball me too much that's going to be depressing...
For me, I mean $1,700 to $2,500, because of all of the expenses involved (if you mean that's the total budget), there wouldn't be anything left over, haha. I'd exit the business stage right if I can't find good paying clients regularly. Who knows what will happen, I have two potentially good clients that I'm waiting to pitch to, they're interested based on previous work we did, but if they lowball me too much that's going to be depressing...
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Wow Mark, Seriously? $1,700.00 to $2,500.00 for a four camera shoot? I am sure you are having fun and have your niche with the music projects and more power to you. But good grief, a four camera shoot with no editing, just the shoot for me to cover a live event would be in the $15k to $30k range. I don't see how you could hire camera operators, have all of the gear necessary, have a sound mixer, TD and a director to call the show, do a line cut perhaps, etc. for anything less than that. Unless you are talking three lockoffs and you alone?
Are you semi-retired or have other income? I can't see how one can survive on those kinds of rates, that sounds like an astronomical amount of work for hardly any money. Don't you have an EX1? Which other cameras do you use for a four camera shoot? You must have at least tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear to cover an even like that with four cameras, then have all of the labor and edit bay to cut it all together and author a CD and DVD of it? No offense intended, I have seen your posts and some of your work and you seem like a nice and talented guy, I just can't undestand the math. You should be chargin about ten times the amount you are for those, unless you just like giving it away to be involved in the music, which is fine, I am just looking at everything these days as a business person first and an artist second.
Nothing to do with your music work, as far as corporate work, I gave up trying to make art in corporate work years ago, made a good run of it, did some half million dollar projects with 35mm, actors, stunts, visual effects, etc. Bottom line, in corporate work, unless the client is specifically hiring you to bring an artistic vision, meet, do not exceed their expectations because honestly, I can say with all assuredness, they don't care if it is artistic. I spent a lot of budget making things artistic when I could have made a ton more profit and still had the clients just as happy. The shooting on 35mm? The clients didn't even care, could have shot it on DBeta. The crane shots? Me, me, me, I wanted it. See what I mean? With corporate, it is a business transaction, they are the customer, you are the vendor. Do good work, but save the art for your own projects.
Dan
Are you semi-retired or have other income? I can't see how one can survive on those kinds of rates, that sounds like an astronomical amount of work for hardly any money. Don't you have an EX1? Which other cameras do you use for a four camera shoot? You must have at least tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear to cover an even like that with four cameras, then have all of the labor and edit bay to cut it all together and author a CD and DVD of it? No offense intended, I have seen your posts and some of your work and you seem like a nice and talented guy, I just can't undestand the math. You should be chargin about ten times the amount you are for those, unless you just like giving it away to be involved in the music, which is fine, I am just looking at everything these days as a business person first and an artist second.
Nothing to do with your music work, as far as corporate work, I gave up trying to make art in corporate work years ago, made a good run of it, did some half million dollar projects with 35mm, actors, stunts, visual effects, etc. Bottom line, in corporate work, unless the client is specifically hiring you to bring an artistic vision, meet, do not exceed their expectations because honestly, I can say with all assuredness, they don't care if it is artistic. I spent a lot of budget making things artistic when I could have made a ton more profit and still had the clients just as happy. The shooting on 35mm? The clients didn't even care, could have shot it on DBeta. The crane shots? Me, me, me, I wanted it. See what I mean? With corporate, it is a business transaction, they are the customer, you are the vendor. Do good work, but save the art for your own projects.
Dan
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basspig
Veteran
Yes, seriously. The concerts with enough budget to hire me are few and far between. We did three last year, which was a record for us. The March concert paid $1700, plus some additional editing, which we billed at hourly rate of $125.
The October concert was paid for by the father of the 17 yr old violinist/pianist. He originally wanted more, including rehearsal footage, but when I quoted $3300 for two days' shooting, he declined and we cut the rehearsal and settled on just the concert for $2400.
In November, a local composer commissioned us to make a recording. We quoted video, and he declined, citing that it was way over his budget. We settled on $900 to make an audio recording and no video.
I've been retired for years, but had to go back to work to pay unexpectedly-rising property taxes which exceeded SS income by 1999. I was originally an electronic engineer and optical physicist and worked in related fields. But my dream of making movies dated back at least to the 1960s, when the bug first bit me. But the barrier to entry was too much. So after retirement, I went into business so that I could pay the property taxes.
The orchestra work was something of a passion of mine. I am willing to take the work at a modest price, rather than sit at home staring at the monitor, with no work at all. What I'm charging is all the market would bear in 2008. Now it will bear even less, and I've not engaged ANY shoots since November. No bookings, no prospects for upcoming work.
Unions would hate me; I do nearly all the work myself. I have two camera operators who are glad to work on a volunteer basis. One is an afficionado of Classical music and the other is a musician (a cellist) who finds it enjoyable to run a camera. He's the owner of a very successful corporation and doesn't need the money--he does it out of selfish pleasure and I just happen to benefit from this synergystic relationship.
The theater's unionized crew flies my custom-built mic array and takes it down after the concert.
I shoot with 2 EX1s, a V1U and a HV20 (which is locked off, fixed focus, on a medium shot of the maestro, perched in the orchestra shell 12' up). I have an 8-track digital recording interface feeding a laptop backstage, and a secondary digital recorder in the balcony for safety backup and alternate DVD audio.
I get back to the studio and dump all the video and audio onto the workstation. With hours, I have all the cameras and audio sources synched. Within a day, I have a window dub in the mail to the orchestra committee for approval.
Next, I design the motion menus for the DVD. I design the packaging for the DVD and CD, including disc art.
Upon approval of the dub, I get to work doing the final encode, color correction and crispening, and begin laying out the DVD, building menus, subpicture elements and burning the DVD image. In as little as a week, the project is ready to go to the duplication phase, which takes me an evening or two to knock out 75 DVDs and 75 CDs, for the client and each orchestra member.
Now, according to Ralph LaBarge, this whole project should run $68,000 or so. $10-12K for the shoot, $56K for the DVD authoring, etc. and more for the CD and should involve 50 employees occupying 4 floors about 10,000 sq ft each. That was in 1998. Times have changed, I found ways to streamline the process and do it all with minimal staffing. This sort of shoot would not be possible with the old business model. I had to adapt and be capable of eliminating inefficiency whereever it turns up.
Yes, I should be charging more. Realistically, I think I'm doing about as well as my local market can bear. There are so many others that will come in and do an inferior job for less.
My most recent cancellation was a string quartet. I offered to do the recording for $900, two cameras, audio from the cameras, to keep costs down. The reply from the client was stunning:
"I spoke with _______, the director of the group, and he was in shock when I told him how much it would cost. I think he was thinking a couple of hundred at the most. The trouble is, he has no idea of current prices. And the fact that he is paying for it out of his own pocket. So don't hold Feb.7 for us, I guess we can't do it.
This is the sort of thing I face every day. Wedding shoots that don't happen because I won't shoot it for $150. Really insulting offers I get with regularity.
Frankly, the orchestra shoots are a piece of cake. Since I make true fidelity recordings, I simply use a set recording level at 24-bits and 96KHz sample rate and just leave it alone. I get 7 pristine tracks of audio and need only normalize it to peak level and that's the extent of the audio--it's a clean, purist audio, no manipulation (distortion) added. The cutting in the edit bay is straightforward and I can knock it out in 90 minutes, then go back and tweak a few transitions later. About 15-16 hours of editing time, typically and I'm done.
At least the musicians appreciate my work, and Peter Aczel at The Audio Critic was quite impressed with it, citing my Beethoven recording as one of the best he's heard in 30 years publishing that magazine.
I know what you mean about corporate not caring about quality. We're in the age of the $400 TV commercial spot. We're talking 30-min infomercials being cranked out like a puppy mill for subsistence wages. Professionals have to compete with amateurs who DIY their own video instead of hiring the pros. The DV revolution was a double-edge sword--the low barrier to entry flooded the market with cheap competition. The good times are over, I'm afraid....
The October concert was paid for by the father of the 17 yr old violinist/pianist. He originally wanted more, including rehearsal footage, but when I quoted $3300 for two days' shooting, he declined and we cut the rehearsal and settled on just the concert for $2400.
In November, a local composer commissioned us to make a recording. We quoted video, and he declined, citing that it was way over his budget. We settled on $900 to make an audio recording and no video.
I've been retired for years, but had to go back to work to pay unexpectedly-rising property taxes which exceeded SS income by 1999. I was originally an electronic engineer and optical physicist and worked in related fields. But my dream of making movies dated back at least to the 1960s, when the bug first bit me. But the barrier to entry was too much. So after retirement, I went into business so that I could pay the property taxes.
The orchestra work was something of a passion of mine. I am willing to take the work at a modest price, rather than sit at home staring at the monitor, with no work at all. What I'm charging is all the market would bear in 2008. Now it will bear even less, and I've not engaged ANY shoots since November. No bookings, no prospects for upcoming work.
Unions would hate me; I do nearly all the work myself. I have two camera operators who are glad to work on a volunteer basis. One is an afficionado of Classical music and the other is a musician (a cellist) who finds it enjoyable to run a camera. He's the owner of a very successful corporation and doesn't need the money--he does it out of selfish pleasure and I just happen to benefit from this synergystic relationship.
The theater's unionized crew flies my custom-built mic array and takes it down after the concert.
I shoot with 2 EX1s, a V1U and a HV20 (which is locked off, fixed focus, on a medium shot of the maestro, perched in the orchestra shell 12' up). I have an 8-track digital recording interface feeding a laptop backstage, and a secondary digital recorder in the balcony for safety backup and alternate DVD audio.
I get back to the studio and dump all the video and audio onto the workstation. With hours, I have all the cameras and audio sources synched. Within a day, I have a window dub in the mail to the orchestra committee for approval.
Next, I design the motion menus for the DVD. I design the packaging for the DVD and CD, including disc art.
Upon approval of the dub, I get to work doing the final encode, color correction and crispening, and begin laying out the DVD, building menus, subpicture elements and burning the DVD image. In as little as a week, the project is ready to go to the duplication phase, which takes me an evening or two to knock out 75 DVDs and 75 CDs, for the client and each orchestra member.
Now, according to Ralph LaBarge, this whole project should run $68,000 or so. $10-12K for the shoot, $56K for the DVD authoring, etc. and more for the CD and should involve 50 employees occupying 4 floors about 10,000 sq ft each. That was in 1998. Times have changed, I found ways to streamline the process and do it all with minimal staffing. This sort of shoot would not be possible with the old business model. I had to adapt and be capable of eliminating inefficiency whereever it turns up.
Yes, I should be charging more. Realistically, I think I'm doing about as well as my local market can bear. There are so many others that will come in and do an inferior job for less.
My most recent cancellation was a string quartet. I offered to do the recording for $900, two cameras, audio from the cameras, to keep costs down. The reply from the client was stunning:
"I spoke with _______, the director of the group, and he was in shock when I told him how much it would cost. I think he was thinking a couple of hundred at the most. The trouble is, he has no idea of current prices. And the fact that he is paying for it out of his own pocket. So don't hold Feb.7 for us, I guess we can't do it.
This is the sort of thing I face every day. Wedding shoots that don't happen because I won't shoot it for $150. Really insulting offers I get with regularity.
Frankly, the orchestra shoots are a piece of cake. Since I make true fidelity recordings, I simply use a set recording level at 24-bits and 96KHz sample rate and just leave it alone. I get 7 pristine tracks of audio and need only normalize it to peak level and that's the extent of the audio--it's a clean, purist audio, no manipulation (distortion) added. The cutting in the edit bay is straightforward and I can knock it out in 90 minutes, then go back and tweak a few transitions later. About 15-16 hours of editing time, typically and I'm done.
At least the musicians appreciate my work, and Peter Aczel at The Audio Critic was quite impressed with it, citing my Beethoven recording as one of the best he's heard in 30 years publishing that magazine.
I know what you mean about corporate not caring about quality. We're in the age of the $400 TV commercial spot. We're talking 30-min infomercials being cranked out like a puppy mill for subsistence wages. Professionals have to compete with amateurs who DIY their own video instead of hiring the pros. The DV revolution was a double-edge sword--the low barrier to entry flooded the market with cheap competition. The good times are over, I'm afraid....
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi Mark:
Okay, now I understand. You do this for a business but it is not really your full time career, you retired but had a full time technical career. I am not saying that you should not be doing it, you are definitely right, it beats sitting at home staring at a monitor. You obviously have a passion for the music and I think that it is great that you can do this sort of gig and enjoy it and scrape out a few bucks but it does sound like you are doing a massive amount of work for little money. But at least you have the side benefit of doing something that you obviously have a love for, that counts for something.
How far are you from NYC? Would it be realistic to try to peddle your services closer to the city where there is more opportunity and definitely more money?
Believe me, I see the same things, even out here in Hollywood. Too many KWCWLAH (Kids With Camcorders Who Live At Home) here as well. As a professional, you will never be able to compete on price with the market, there will always be someone willing to do it for little or even free. I am just waiting for the ads to appear that will read, "Three camera shoot crew and gear needed. Must have broadcast capable cameras, talented and accomplished full crew. You pay us $500.00 for the privelge of shooting out event". I am sure that it is not far off.
Luckily, the studios will not hire KWCWLAHs yet, they still want a real production company with an office, tons of insurance and lots of edit bays, but I am convinced with the economic squeeze and downturn, it is a just a matter of time before they will turn to those kids, quality be damned.
Bottom line is that we are in a business that everyone thinks they can do, the gear has gotten progressively cheaper and better quality and the audience's expectations have simultaneously gone up and down. They want "better quality" for almost no budget, yet in many instances, they just don't care if something is done right or done well.
It still all goes back to who you know. If you don't know any corporations or people who need video and will hire you, you are "on the outside" and will probably not be very successful with corporate video. You have to know the decision makers AND the people who have the need for the video. Fortunately I know a few and they do hire me to do their projects. But it took me more than a decade of slogging through low end events and editing other people's crappy productions to meet and nurture these relationships. All of my corporate clients who regularly hire me, I have known for 10-15 years. And I don't get a lot of new ones, as much as I try. And many of the new ones that I do land, I just get through referals.
Also, not sure where you are in Connecticut, I have only been there once or twice and it seemed pretty rural. I did not see a lot of industry and manufacturing or big business in general there, but I am sure that I only saw a little corner of the state. It helps to be in an area where there are a lot of potential clients. If you live in a rural or small town area, that can be almost impossible because there is no commerce there that would have a need for corporate video.
Good luck,
Dan
Okay, now I understand. You do this for a business but it is not really your full time career, you retired but had a full time technical career. I am not saying that you should not be doing it, you are definitely right, it beats sitting at home staring at a monitor. You obviously have a passion for the music and I think that it is great that you can do this sort of gig and enjoy it and scrape out a few bucks but it does sound like you are doing a massive amount of work for little money. But at least you have the side benefit of doing something that you obviously have a love for, that counts for something.
How far are you from NYC? Would it be realistic to try to peddle your services closer to the city where there is more opportunity and definitely more money?
Believe me, I see the same things, even out here in Hollywood. Too many KWCWLAH (Kids With Camcorders Who Live At Home) here as well. As a professional, you will never be able to compete on price with the market, there will always be someone willing to do it for little or even free. I am just waiting for the ads to appear that will read, "Three camera shoot crew and gear needed. Must have broadcast capable cameras, talented and accomplished full crew. You pay us $500.00 for the privelge of shooting out event". I am sure that it is not far off.
Luckily, the studios will not hire KWCWLAHs yet, they still want a real production company with an office, tons of insurance and lots of edit bays, but I am convinced with the economic squeeze and downturn, it is a just a matter of time before they will turn to those kids, quality be damned.
Bottom line is that we are in a business that everyone thinks they can do, the gear has gotten progressively cheaper and better quality and the audience's expectations have simultaneously gone up and down. They want "better quality" for almost no budget, yet in many instances, they just don't care if something is done right or done well.
It still all goes back to who you know. If you don't know any corporations or people who need video and will hire you, you are "on the outside" and will probably not be very successful with corporate video. You have to know the decision makers AND the people who have the need for the video. Fortunately I know a few and they do hire me to do their projects. But it took me more than a decade of slogging through low end events and editing other people's crappy productions to meet and nurture these relationships. All of my corporate clients who regularly hire me, I have known for 10-15 years. And I don't get a lot of new ones, as much as I try. And many of the new ones that I do land, I just get through referals.
Also, not sure where you are in Connecticut, I have only been there once or twice and it seemed pretty rural. I did not see a lot of industry and manufacturing or big business in general there, but I am sure that I only saw a little corner of the state. It helps to be in an area where there are a lot of potential clients. If you live in a rural or small town area, that can be almost impossible because there is no commerce there that would have a need for corporate video.
Good luck,
Dan
basspig
Veteran
I work partly because if I don't, the tax man will take my house! And partly because I've chosen a field that I enjoy working in. However, I do realize that living here in Sleepy Hollow, I'm not convenient to show biz, nor am I to crime, air pollution and other urban problems.
That said, I always believed that there is always SOME work available in just about any field, regardless of the demographics of where one resides.
I'm about 2 hours from NYC. But it's not the distance that bothers me, it's the complexity of transportation, whether it be driving to the train station and then taking a train, or driving all the way to the city and dealing with parking. Both are pretty expensive and somewhat risky. I had a gig down there once, which was in my color prepress days, and it was a small importer of foreign films. Luckily, I was able to do most of my business through FedEx deliveries of materials. But eventually, the CEO got smart and figured out he could pay college kids to layout slipcases and sell sheets on Mac computers in the office for minimum wage and so I was eventually minus what was a somewhat profitable client.
A really good gig could bring me to deal with the headaches of commuting to the city on occasion, but most aren't worth the trouble.
I don't know anyone in the corporate field, so I'm a complete outsider. I've been down that road with graphic design, having spent hundreds on mailings to every ad agency in the country, offering my services back in the early 1990s, and gaining zero new work for my expenditures and efforts. Very frustrating.
Yes, CT is pretty rural up in the NW corner. I love it here though. My last trip to New Jersey, attending a convention almost landed me in the cardio-pulmonary unit at the local hospital--I can't breath the air down there. I feel fine in the fresh mountain air, so I avoid urban, polluted areas when possible. But CT has some fairly major cities within 70 mins of my location. Westport has some upscale businesses, and so does Stamford. The latter is very congested nowadays, but still preferable to NYC. Hartford may have some opportunities as well.
But in lieu of work-for-hire, I'm thinking maybe I may see better return from some sort of content-creation, whether it be stock footage or educational/informative videos. Ultimately, the idea of making a short movie still intrigues me.
That said, I always believed that there is always SOME work available in just about any field, regardless of the demographics of where one resides.
I'm about 2 hours from NYC. But it's not the distance that bothers me, it's the complexity of transportation, whether it be driving to the train station and then taking a train, or driving all the way to the city and dealing with parking. Both are pretty expensive and somewhat risky. I had a gig down there once, which was in my color prepress days, and it was a small importer of foreign films. Luckily, I was able to do most of my business through FedEx deliveries of materials. But eventually, the CEO got smart and figured out he could pay college kids to layout slipcases and sell sheets on Mac computers in the office for minimum wage and so I was eventually minus what was a somewhat profitable client.
A really good gig could bring me to deal with the headaches of commuting to the city on occasion, but most aren't worth the trouble.
I don't know anyone in the corporate field, so I'm a complete outsider. I've been down that road with graphic design, having spent hundreds on mailings to every ad agency in the country, offering my services back in the early 1990s, and gaining zero new work for my expenditures and efforts. Very frustrating.
Yes, CT is pretty rural up in the NW corner. I love it here though. My last trip to New Jersey, attending a convention almost landed me in the cardio-pulmonary unit at the local hospital--I can't breath the air down there. I feel fine in the fresh mountain air, so I avoid urban, polluted areas when possible. But CT has some fairly major cities within 70 mins of my location. Westport has some upscale businesses, and so does Stamford. The latter is very congested nowadays, but still preferable to NYC. Hartford may have some opportunities as well.
But in lieu of work-for-hire, I'm thinking maybe I may see better return from some sort of content-creation, whether it be stock footage or educational/informative videos. Ultimately, the idea of making a short movie still intrigues me.
JonathanLB
Carbonite Member
Yeah, Dan is definitely right. It's very hard to find corporate clients, you need some help and connections. I only have a few "ins" and for me, those have to turn out to be good, I mean I have this one industry / market I'm targeting because that's where I have my connections. It's probably easier for me to get that video work than anyone else, but it's probably going to be hard to get a lot of other work for the next year or two, so I'm just lucky I have these connections. If they don't pan out that well, I'm pretty much screwed. But if things go well I can dominate this small niche and do pretty well for myself. What bums me out is if the economy were doing really well, like if we were in a bull market, it would be so much easier closing these guys, they probably would be a lot less concerned with the cost, and not to say I could overcharge them but just that I wouldn't be too nervous or worried about them wanting to haggle a ton over price. I'd be confident that my rates are fair, which they are, and that they'd be happy to spend the money for the additional marketing and advertising I can provide, basically.
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puredrifting
Major Contributor
Jonathan:
I love this, it actually sounds like my same rant I have had since I was a kid. I was in Philadelphia two weeks ago for a shoot for a week. It was 17 degrees the entire time and we had 8" of snow the first day. I hate cold and could not love in it to save my life.
I am with you, bring on the sunshine and heat!
Dan
basspig
Veteran
Dan,
How do you deal with the illegals, the gang warfare and the oppressive pollution over there, not to mention oppressive and stupid laws in CA? I spent a few weeks in Stockton, CA back in 2001 and it was like living in South America, with bars on the windows everywhere, air that was unbreathable (I had to go on oxygen canister several times a day while there) and rampant crime. I couldn't wait to get back to CT!
How do you deal with the illegals, the gang warfare and the oppressive pollution over there, not to mention oppressive and stupid laws in CA? I spent a few weeks in Stockton, CA back in 2001 and it was like living in South America, with bars on the windows everywhere, air that was unbreathable (I had to go on oxygen canister several times a day while there) and rampant crime. I couldn't wait to get back to CT!
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi Mark:
Well, Stockton is pretty different from where I live. I live near the coast, midway between Hollywood and Santa Barbara. It hailed here today and there is snow all over the surrounding hills, which is really weird for here. But normally we have a pretty Mediterranean climate that is the envy of about 40 of the 50 states in the Union ;-) Yesterday, my wife and I went for a four mile walk in shorts and t-shirts and were sweating. In the dead of Winter. We have awesome climate here.
Illegal aliens are a fact of life in the Western US and now really in most of the other states to varying degrees. I love Mexico, South and Central America and Mexican, South and Central American people and culture so I have no personal problems with illegal aliens. The sad thing is that as a lifelong Californian, our state systems an economy have been brought to their knees by this issue. The bottom line is, if I were born in their countries, I would do the same thing, try to seek a better life for my family so I cannot blame the people. I do blame our government and business because our greed for cheap labor began this issue in the 1930s and 1940s and the state and federal government basically looked the other way because our economies thrived under the cheap labor that illegal aliens provided. So in the end, we have a terrible situation that was caused by our own greed. It is too late to really do very much about it when you have granparents and great grandparents who were illegal and have raised generations here already. We cannot round up every illegal alien in the state and deport them, our entire infrastructure would collapse.
But the real issue is that we have a huge population who makes money here and doesn't pay taxes. The same population is the largest consumer statewide statistically of social and governmental services of all kinds. So much so, that the state is broke, read the front page of the NY Times today, we are going down.
If you were in an area with bars everywhere, you were in a really bad part of Stockton. And there are many bad parts of the state but also some really amazingly nice and beautiful areas as well.
As far as the air, I must be used to it, being a lifelong Californian. it rarely bothers me. I will say that in the past decade, the air here in LA has improved tenfold, the air is much less polluted than it was in the 70s and 80s. All those new fuels and detergent additives.
Rampant crime? Once again, you were obviously in a bad area, it isn't that way everywhere. Much like most of the five boroughs of NYC used to be scary there was so much crime, LA, SF and Sacramento are relatively safe and low crime in most areas. Fresno, Stockton, Modesto, not so much. Basically, almost all crime in our state comes from gangs/drugs. The gangs here are out of control and have setup meth labs all over the state, even in little rural towns and farm areas in the central valley. But gangs/drugs are an issue all over the country, not just California.
If you ever are back here in LA, send me a PM and I will show you why everyone at least used to want to live in California. It's like everything else, if you go with someone who knows the places to go, you would be amazed at what there is there. I am sure that Connecticut is the same way.
Best,
Dan
Well, Stockton is pretty different from where I live. I live near the coast, midway between Hollywood and Santa Barbara. It hailed here today and there is snow all over the surrounding hills, which is really weird for here. But normally we have a pretty Mediterranean climate that is the envy of about 40 of the 50 states in the Union ;-) Yesterday, my wife and I went for a four mile walk in shorts and t-shirts and were sweating. In the dead of Winter. We have awesome climate here.
Illegal aliens are a fact of life in the Western US and now really in most of the other states to varying degrees. I love Mexico, South and Central America and Mexican, South and Central American people and culture so I have no personal problems with illegal aliens. The sad thing is that as a lifelong Californian, our state systems an economy have been brought to their knees by this issue. The bottom line is, if I were born in their countries, I would do the same thing, try to seek a better life for my family so I cannot blame the people. I do blame our government and business because our greed for cheap labor began this issue in the 1930s and 1940s and the state and federal government basically looked the other way because our economies thrived under the cheap labor that illegal aliens provided. So in the end, we have a terrible situation that was caused by our own greed. It is too late to really do very much about it when you have granparents and great grandparents who were illegal and have raised generations here already. We cannot round up every illegal alien in the state and deport them, our entire infrastructure would collapse.
But the real issue is that we have a huge population who makes money here and doesn't pay taxes. The same population is the largest consumer statewide statistically of social and governmental services of all kinds. So much so, that the state is broke, read the front page of the NY Times today, we are going down.
If you were in an area with bars everywhere, you were in a really bad part of Stockton. And there are many bad parts of the state but also some really amazingly nice and beautiful areas as well.
As far as the air, I must be used to it, being a lifelong Californian. it rarely bothers me. I will say that in the past decade, the air here in LA has improved tenfold, the air is much less polluted than it was in the 70s and 80s. All those new fuels and detergent additives.
Rampant crime? Once again, you were obviously in a bad area, it isn't that way everywhere. Much like most of the five boroughs of NYC used to be scary there was so much crime, LA, SF and Sacramento are relatively safe and low crime in most areas. Fresno, Stockton, Modesto, not so much. Basically, almost all crime in our state comes from gangs/drugs. The gangs here are out of control and have setup meth labs all over the state, even in little rural towns and farm areas in the central valley. But gangs/drugs are an issue all over the country, not just California.
If you ever are back here in LA, send me a PM and I will show you why everyone at least used to want to live in California. It's like everything else, if you go with someone who knows the places to go, you would be amazed at what there is there. I am sure that Connecticut is the same way.
Best,
Dan