Irvine, CA

Irvine, CA was designed by Satan.

The streets are very wide, four lanes in each direction, like mini-freeways that run all over with stop lights. This means that if you are making a right hand turn then a left hand turn that you have to make your right turn, then JAM over 4 lanes of free way driving to the left to make your left hand turn at the next light. Keep in mind that even though it's only a surface street, because of the four lanes and because it's southern california, that everyone still drives at free way speeds.

Then... it's hot here. Even in my hotel room I can feel the sun burning through the building, heating up my room... at midnight.

Everyone drives new cars, whether they can afford them or not, and since they can't afford them, they're constantly distracted by how much money they owe the bank and thus are more likely to run you over if you happen to be walking across the street.

This is why no one walks in Irvine. Cyndi Lauper's song "nobody walks in L.A." was actually written about Irvine, except that "Irvine" doesn't sound as good as "L.A.", isn't internationally known, so she used L.A. instead... in fact, if you drive anywhere downtown L.A. you'll see that in fact EVERYBODY is walking.. which makes it harder to drive because there's so many damned pedestrians around.

In Irvine, all buildings are office buildings, except for the malls. There is no such thing as a mom and pop shop or a family owned restaurant. Everything in Irvine is corporate. It's either office building or mall... nothing else. If you wan't to go to dinner or lunch you have many choices like:
california pizza kitchen, ruth's chriss steak house, fatburger, cheese cake factory, pf chang's etc. etc... sound familar? That's because they are all huge chains. No friendly family places here where people have worked most of their lives and know your name... you're just a number in Irvine.

The people are like that too... they look like people on the outside, but in fact they are hollow shells in business clothes. If you talk to them about their lives outside of work, all they have to talk about are TV shows... there isn't anything. They have no critical thinking skills but they will do what they're told by their management.

Irvine is hell. Satan loves it here.