Should I stay or should I go?

[KrazyHorse]

Wife's going to Anaheim for a conference 25-31 of July, is staying in a hotel room by herself.

I can go for part/all of that time if I pony up the airfare, which looks to be 250$ or so. Here's the background: I've never been to LA (or California at all, for that matter). I'd be by myself for most of the day. Is there awesome **** I could do/see there which would make it worth the money to visit? I'd be willing to rent a car for a couple of days to hit LA or go to a beach.

[SlowwHand]

Yes, go.

[KrazyHorse]

June 19, 2009, 11:23
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[SlowwHand]

Whatever, dude. I was trying to let you know that you would have a good time.
No skin off my ass, though, if you don't want to know.

[Aeson]

The beach is free (even parking some places). Everything else in SoCal is not worth it IMO. On the plus side, if social services stop being paid out while you're there, there's likely to be lots of rioting and looting opportunities... and you might even be able to set yourself up as some sort of warlord using "magic" (physics) to entertain/amaze the locals after the apocalypse.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm more likely to end up as Brain than the Duke, I'm afraid.

[Aeson]

Just watch out for mines! :P

[CrONoS]

QFT

Yes, go.

[DanS]

The downsides and marginal risk seem minimal and the airfare isn't much. What am I missing?

Edit: Why does Escape from LA come to mind?

[KrazyHorse]

Because Aeson touched on that theme, and I made an explicit reference to escape from new york?

[-Jrabbit]

Anaheim is pretty boring; car rental is near mandatory if you want to do anything interesting. Is she staying near the convention center?

Some nice restaurants, especially down by the water (need car). Seafood/sushi is generally great around there. There's baseball, Disney (tons of families with kids), some nice golf courses. When I have a rental car, I usually end up taking the 5 up to Hollywood/North Hollywood (90 minutes) and hit the club scene. You can also do the studio audience thing up there with some advance planning.

So it depends on what you consider "fun."

[DanS]

That must be why. Thanks.

But as I recall, Escape from New York was about 10x better than Escape from LA.

[rah]

IF you've never been to lala land, I would suggest going. It's hard to understand just how wacked the place is until you've been there.

[self biased]

and i'm sure you can arrange to hang with oerdin again.

[KrazyHorse]

For comparison purposes, it would be worth it to me to visit (assuming I'd never been, which is true for some of these):

NYC, Boston, DC, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Nashville, Philly, Kansas City, Detroit, Honolulu, a number of smaller cities with interesting histories/native culture.

If I didn't know anybody in the following cities then it probably wouldn't be worth it:

Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, anything in Ohio, Seattle, Atlanta, Phoenix, Omaha, Pittsburg