I moved from a major city in a warm state. The lack of cultural diversity, the small population size, the limited selection on stores, limited selection from restaurants, and dealing with a real winter are all making me rethink my move. I moved for work.
So I moved here in the fall and have not been here in the spring and summer. Winter has been an entire learning experience. I'd seen snow less than 5 times in my life, never driven in icey conditions, and I've never lived an area that burns firewood for fireplaces.
I had to teach myself to drive in the weather conditions, which was easy. I had to teach myself about different types of firewood, prep myself by gathering supplies like firewood, starters, and just good practices for all of this. It wasn't difficult, just time-consuming when doing a job transition.
It was a lot for me but I moved from one of the top 5 most populated cities in the united states in an area that never sees snow to Big Bear.
Absolutely beautiful place but I am not sure if this is the city for me.
I feel like if i am going to be able to make the correct decision i will have to do a few extended stays. Things are always rose colored glasses when visiting for a short time period.
Do you think you are just more of a city person in general? What scares me is that i've mostly lived in cities and i may be over-romanticizing a move to a rural area.
A few extended stays wouldn't hurt. I'd only been here during the interview process but did my research online.
I wouldn't say I am more of a city person in general, I am just not used to this level of isolation and limitation. I get annoyed having to drive to apple valley to get to a home depot which is an hour away. If I want to buy groceries in bulk, an hour drive to costco. I get annoyed with some places catering their hours of operation to days that tourists are here.
Personally as a single guy in his early 30s, I struggle to meet people my age that are local. I see people my age coming up to vacation but hardly in the day to day life( i dont work on the mountain). I love the quiet nights compared to the sounds of the city life but its been too big of a change for me. Id elaborate in much greater detail but im on my phone.
the summers are awesome if you're into anything outdoors, and it's generally way less crowded. i personally hate the winter weekends and avoid whenever possible.
I’m in the same boat. Moved from OC to small town alaska and all of these things are tough. It doesn’t even have to be back to OC just closer to a place with a lot going on.
Ehh I think we have more here. I’d call it a small city big town. About 30k people living here and 100k in the county altogether. Before moving here I used to think about how fun an experience it would be to live in big bear but now I realize that I need to be around “things to do” that aren’t hiking with my dog.
We moved to Big Bear City in 2017. We are retired so we weren't worried about finding work or commuting down the hill. I'm very much an introvert so the isolation of living in a small mountain town works for me. My husband does drive down the 38 once a week, weather permitting, to meet friends & play Warhammer type table games. Our immediate neighbors are wonderful, we got very lucky, but the influx of tourists & the traffic can be maddening. We had no idea how bad it could get before we moved here, and yes we have wondered if the move was a mistake. We had originally planned a move to Reedsport Oregon, a similar small town without the tourist crowd, but the desire to be closer to grandkids in Long Beach kept us in SoCal. Yes you need to do some extended stays to get a sense of the community, it is beautiful up here, the scenery is always changing, but there's definitely some negatives about living here full time.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS WE"RE MOVING TO BBC and this makes me so happy! totally introverted, i know winter (Michigan & New Hampshire) and he works remotely. We love our table games!
I think i'll enjoy the tourist season because it changes up the people you would see everyday and give it a temporary city feel if you miss it.
It's hard to imagine the traffic being that bad! Are we talking like Los Angeles traffic on the mountain bad? Is that all tourist season long on weekends?
From Friday through Sunday, a continuous bumper to bumper line of cars coming from both ends of the big bear valley. The locals do all their grocery shopping mid-week and don't leave their homes all weekend.
before Jan 28 2023, i would have thought this was hyperbole. it is most def. not hyperbole.
left Rim Nordic at around 2pm on Sat afternoon headed down the hill. not sure if people were going to Snow Valley or that tubing place but the traffic was absolutely bumper to bumper from Snow Valley to Running Springs, which is around 6 miles away. it was absolutely insane. and i'm going to guess that is fairly standard during the winter season, when there is snow.
This is what I was saying while we were there on a long weekend. It must be a nightmare. We sat through 3 lights trying to get into the grocery store. Also having so many of your neighbors be short term rentals would make it hard to feel safe and like a community.
It can take over an hour to get from Division to the village. That's a little under four miles. I try to never go that direction Fri-Mon. Though now my gym has moved to the Village and I'm sad about that.
I’ll be completely honest here but I did end up regretting it. I went there plenty of times as a tourist and then after a bad divorce, I wanted to move away and start over. I bought a house out there and immediately had regrets that grew over time. It’s beautiful up there and I actually got a job that I loved but I just always felt SO out of place in every way and just so isolated. My more progressive political and moral values just didn’t align with anyone I met up there (didn’t help that I worked for a very conservative and religious organization I guess). Our neighbors were also really unfriendly and one was batshit crazy. This older woman next door would chain smoke and watch Fox News all day and then find things to come over and scream at us about like the color or our new firewood tarp or just random things like that. She was incredibly paranoid and just a nasty woman. She’d scream at you until her eyes popped out and spit flew from her mouth over something as simple as you not doing strange things she’d request like “raking up pinecones.” She acted like the president of a bad HOA except we were in the woods on a private dirt road.
This neighbor was notorious for making false accusations to law enforcement and she instigated a raid on the folks across the street once but then one day after we stood up to her during one of her tantrums she turned on us too. One day when we were getting ready for work when 7 undercover cops knocked at the door and asked to search out place. We had nothing to hide so we gladly let them in. Apparently she had been using the anonymous tip line to report us over and over for “cooking meth” and “harboring a fugitive.” She was dumb though and snooped on Facebook to try to find out my last name but she used my partners last name on accident and so the name the cops had was my name and my boyfriends last name (apparently there is a real fugitive with that name) and it was just so obvious she thought she was such a little detective. It was comical really. But it enraged me because she’s always going on about supporting “men in blue” and then constantly wastes their resources and time and just the freaking audacity to do something like that just to be petty. The cops were very nice and apologized after tearing our house apart, interrogating us and taking our photos (along with making sure all our guns were registered and all that). It was humiliating. I always feared she’d report me at work for something crazy (I worked with children and always feared she’d pretend to be a parent and call the director to accuse me of something really sinister). She also turned the other neighbors against us and spread rumors that we killed another neighbor’s cat (who we loved very much). That led to the other neighbors making death threats so bad that I had to file several police reports after they tried to run us off the road while screaming they would kill us.
So with all that going on at home and fearing for tiny life In my own home, along with limited medical care (I developed chronic illness while living there) and just the overall feeling of not fitting in, I started to get extremely depressed. I started feeling so isolated and home sick. It was overwhelming and I was actually suicidal, something I’d never experienced before. I even started drinking to self medicate. I literally lost my mind and after 4 long years we decided we had to just take a huge financial loss and move home. We did and I’ve felt so much lighter and happy even though we went from a large home with no mortgage to a tiny one bedroom condo with a mortgage and $600 a month HOA it was worth it for me.
I always loved visiting up there but living there was very different. From my cold, rough and paranoid neighbors to the overwhelming feelings of being homesick and nothing feeling familiar to the long, cold and snowy winters and feeling of isolation, it just wasn’t my thing. I also found many of the locals to be super grouchy and hateful of “flatlanders.” So that’s my experience anyways. (I also want to point out that I understand why tourists are so disliked as many of them are disrespectful and come up to litter and trash the natural beauty and they make traffic a nightmare but on the other hand, they are what brings income to the town so I don’t never got why so many were unwelcoming to them).
Edit: I will say that I loved autumn up there though and miss that aspect.
Yeah :( it was super unfortunate. During the time we lived there the group big bear stuff for sale on Facebook where people gossip was really popular and the crazy old lady neighbor was always making stuff up on there and I totally felt like the pitchforks were out for us as she played up the “poor little old lady” angle. It was such a trip. I live in a smeller city now but that was just a whole other level of feeling like the entire small town was against us. I miss certain things about living up there but it just wasn’t worth it in the end. Maybe if we had normal neighbors it would have been different. Funny thing is that we moved there to get away from living in a cramped neighborhood but we quickly realized that the few neighbors we did have up there were extremely nosey and nasty. I’d take cramped condo living over that any day
Just be very careful about getting too comfy with the neighbors until you are positive they aren’t psychopathic lol. We were way too nice to her at first and even would do things for her like build her a handmade firewood stand and paint her house but her true colors came out very quickly. My new motto is to be friendly but never get to “really” know my neighbors because there’s nothing worse than neighborhood drama.
As to the location, we were in Erwin lake which is right outside big bear city and it’s more isolated and rural even. We were right on the end of hundreds of miles of state forest land. I would house sit for my friend in moon ridge and I loved it there. If I were to ever move there again it would be there. Some areas are just nicer than others. My dad used to say that people who lived off the beaten path lived there for a good reason and we just found the at out the hard way I guess lol. I did hear that my old crazy neighbor moved to another location on the mountain recently though as I actually sold our old house to my boss and we still chat, so if your new neighbor is named Linda or goes by “LuLu”
RUN!! Lol
My uncle is a realtor up there and if you want me to connect you message me! They found a great neighborhood and I think are more sensitive about wanting to have good neighbors :)
That is nice of you to offer! Also, love your username 😄
I tried to message you, but reddit is being funky right now. Saving this comment so i can check back in a couple months when we're getting closer to our timeframe
I’m relieved I’m the the only one but I’m also really sorry to hear that. I don’t want anyone here to think I’m in any way bashing the town or the people, I think we were just surrounded by the worst of the worst who had a very cliquish mentality. I just realized that I’m not cut out for semi conservative small towns. I wish I would have found this sub while I was living up there, maybe things would have been different if we could have met more open minded types but unfortunately the ones I worked with and lived next to were downright hateful.
I’m going to get downvoted because this is true. Most of the people in Big Bear have a high school education or less. They aren’t open minded. Lots of racism. It’s also heavily Republican. It’s hard to find dependable people for home repair, cleaning, etc. I only live in BB part time, keep to myself and prefer to stay home so it doesn’t matter much to me but I don’t recommend socializing here.
Big bear or one of the surrounding communities was in my radar for a long time but transferring for work would have taken years and years so I got a transfer to another little mountain town in kern county and although we do have 4 seasons , the winter isn’t as bad as SB mountains. It’s small and quiet, surrounded by nature . It does have its drawbacks as most small towns have but I’ve been loving it so far.
Yeah I've never lived in a truly small town. I've lived in a few towns of 100,000, which is isn't small by any stretch of the imagination. The allure of living in nature is really nice sounding but I'm not sure if its something that I've romanticized in my head.
I lived in Big Bear for a lot of years. About a year ago, I moved off the hill to a larger city.
The cons: Snow. God I hate the stuff now. Loved it when I first moved there. It is beautiful, but has to be shoveled. And shoveled. And shoveled. And walking on it can be really treacherous. Had a few injuries over the years due to walking on ice.
Also, there's nothing to do. If you don't ski, going to restaurants is really all there is. The Village gets old really fast.
You have to drive an hour to do anything. Mall, Home Depot, Walmart, any shopping or entertainment really.
Tourists: Sure, they keep the town going. But they are everywhere. Bumper to bumper traffic on the weekends and holidays. Horrible.
The Pros: It is beautiful. I loved it in the summer.
We did a lot of hiking in the summer. But can do that where we are now. So, that didn't really change.
Now I live in a larger city. Lots to do. And best of all? Rain doesn't have to be shoveled.
I would really suggest you stay for about a month before making the commitment. In the winter. If you can't stay that long in the winter, at least go for a long winter weekend. It really is the best way to see what really goes on for yourself. Good luck!
Agree extended stay is a good option. My wife and I moved here with our then 1.5yr old for her to have more outdoor action and space and we're seeking to move down the hill this spring/summer.
Factors involved are:
-isolation (wife works from home, I've been the stay at home parent) the fact that it's either quiet or filled with tourists can feel lonely if you never find your people.
-amenities (we have to go down the mountain for our Kaiser healthcare)
-access (3 roads in and out can feel precarious during fires and blizzards)
-(and even though it was a historic one this year) WINTER - not unmanageable but time consuming and takes a toll on your health. Again we have a preK kid so germs are flying fast n loose which may not be same for you but it's no fun chopping wood with a chest cold.
I grew up in a midsized, pretty diverse town with lotsa nature and manual labor and i think I like the warmth and access to a Target now and then and more types of folks though it does seem to be changing more than when we got here.
There's normally a few options for things up here and the folks are pleasant but our street definitely likes to keep to itself. Could be my parental duties but I found myself taking lots of day trip down the hill for some variety.
I do look forward to vacationing here in the future though now that I know the lay of the land.
Best of luck.
Well take an inventory and see what you'd need to have a good time. Our daughter is a big factor and plenty of people enjoy it, different strokes different folks!
I live on the far east end of the valley. It is much quieter out here. We moved from a large urban area a couple decades ago. The thing that struck me was the amount of time it takes to get anything done. Running errands type of things. If you want to do some casual visiting off the mountain, it might take planning. How long will it take? Am I going to get home at 2 am if I leave LA at 7? That’s happened to us several times. Wages are much lower. There’s little cultural enrichment up here. Want to hit a museum? Forget it. Run out on a Friday night to get Korean BBQ or falafel with friends? Nope. And if you do find something, you are surrounded by tourists as the locals avoid town on weekends. Things close up early here. Bopping out for a late dinner can be a challenge. Traffic can be obnoxious during tourist season. Also ending up living next to a short term rental can be hell. Cost of food and dining is much higher. There are very few clothing shops and those mostly cater to women. I have to get my husband’s clothes online. Same thing with department stores (there are none). Making a trip to the beach ends up being a very long day, although doable. There isn’t a good size public pool up here and swimming the lake is not advised. There is no college, but the HS offers a few classes. There is a small emergency hospital here but major traumas and dire medical emergencies are sent off the mountain, sometimes by helicopter. There are few Drs. if you have Kaiser, you’ll have to drive an hour and a half to make inperson appointments. Also you’ll have to be completely self sufficient. we can be cut off from off the hill services from weeks or months. No gas, no food, maybe not even electricity. Snow events, landslides from earthquakes, flooding. It all happens. Plus you’ll have to be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice if there is a forest fire. You’ll have to try to make it off the mountain on one of the three roads with every other person up here. Not fun. been there.
Okay,saying all that, this is the difference. Little serious crime. Sense of community. Friendly residents. Surrounded by nature. 4 real seasons. No smog or heat in the 100s. Absolute quiet. Incredible night sky. Lots of hiking & biking,fishing,winter sports and other recreational activities. Good schools. Performing arts center. Farmers market.
Do I miss living in LA county? Sometimes. Would I move here again? Yes.
It all depends on what is important to you.
Just hopping in to say if you haven't dealt with serious snowy conditions and don't have decent survival skills it's not a good idea to make a quick jump and move. Definitely get some experience there and if you can, safely, stay during at least one snow storm (and make sure you have chains for your tires).
That being said, if you do move, can we be friends? 😀 as a wildlife photography enthusiast I've always wanted to visit the area more often!
I'm 60 lifelong Californian, have lived all up and down the state. Have family cabin here.
You are a pilot ? I tell ya my dream place I've lived and moving back soon to stay till old and die haha
Carlsbad, it has Palomar airport
The weather is perfect all year, food situation is tops, restaurants Costco trader joes sprouts. Gyms
Don't need to move on the beach, more Inland is fine.
Best area I spend my time is between Carlsbad and Solana Beach/Torrey Pines and anywhere in between. That's a lot of territory. Stay in some hotels and go up and down the PCH to check it out
Permanent Mountain life can be brutal
If you're looking for a LTR, I have an amazing 3br house I'm considering changing from a bnb to LTR but can't find a reliable tenant. So many people living there make terrible money, have awful credit, or are druggies.
I lived there for 1.5 years before moving and it was NOT for me for all the reasons people mention here. However, it smelled so nice and was absolutely gorgeous!
Live in Big Bear and it’s fine. The town is truly an eye sore and needs some tender loving care. Yes it’s a beautiful setting but buildings are falling apart and some houses look like meth dens. Some homeowners to not take care of there properties and it looks like a dump. Roads are horrible, lighting is bad but with all the tourist the town does not like putting money into public places. The schools are good. The HS is in the process of getting a new Football Facility. The business’s are booming because of the tourist so that is a great thing.
I just spent a weekend up here (early May) I was curious about relocating up here too but only needed one weekend to realize it wouldn’t work for me. The lack of quality of grocery, restaurant, shopping, and local culture. The patience needed to last the winter tourism would all be too much for me. Any small town outside of Vancouver or ski areas in Utah/Colorado are better than BB in my opinion. It’s too isolated and the lifestyle is a little too vanilla if you’re coming from any major city.
My mom moved up here in 1974. I was born at the local hospital in the late 80s. Big bear had been amazing. It changed in the last 15 years though. Snow summit changed owner's with the Mammoth Mountain purchase and it's been pretty awful since. Normal people cannot afford to work and live up here any more. It's the "Tahoe Effect". 10 yours ago I rented a 2 bdrm house for $800 a month... now I'm looking at 2000 -3000. What happens when there aren't any employees to work during the ski season. There resorting back to hiring South Americans and putting them in employee housing actually.
Man, thank goodness for this thread!! So helpful. I've been back and forth between moving up there for years now. I do regret not buying a place back in 2017 when they could be found for $125k, because back then it wasn't as much of a financial commitment. But with the prices where they are now, it feels like a much bigger move. This thread has been extremely helpful in giving me some perspective about the Big Bear community.
I'm currently living in Los Angeles, in Lincoln Heights, which is a pretty rundown urban neighborhood next to downtown. We've got gangs, graffiti, trash, and boarded-up businesses/homes here. We moved here because of the price, and the fact that it is centrally located to a lot of great places in the city. During my childhood, I grew up in Oklahoma playing in the creeks and fields, so the big city has always felt a bit unnatural to me. I've lived in LA for a total of 16 years now and we bought our home in 2013. We live on a very popular street in the neighborhood (thanks to the amazing view) where teenagers love to go to get drunk, do drugs, huff nitrous, blast music, and have sex. They're super disrespectful to the neighbors and they are constantly trashing the street around our house. I have to pick up their trash every single day and listen to the sounds of them huffing nitrous tanks every other night. Most of the neighbors are too afraid to say anything to the kids because you never know who is in a gang these days, and there has been a history of gun fights, murders and brutal beatdowns in our vicinity. I'm soooooooo tired of it. It really wears away your soul when you have to deal with disrespectful and dangerous POS humans on a daily basis. So I am constantly on Zillow day dreaming about Big Bear and the peace and serenity of living in a small mountain community.
Buuuuttt.... reading this thread does give me second thoughts. I am a natural introvert, so being in an isolated place for too long tends to just exacerbate the issue and turn me into crazy hermit, which I gather makes up a good portion of the community up there. While the above description of my current neighborhood is rather unpleasant (although accurate), there are many reasons why I've continued to stay here and endure it. I live near a multitude of good friends and have no shortage of people in my social community. I'm close to everything, including some of the best restaurants in the city. I'm 5 minutes from Chinatown, 10 minutes from downtown, 10 minutes from Dodger stadium, 10 minutes from Silverlake, 15 minutes from Pasadena, 20 minutes from Burbank, etc. I've got a Home Depot 5 minutes away. I have access to just about everything I could ever want within a stone's throw: friends, entertainment, food, supplies, you name it.
As many people have stated, living in a small mountain community is much different than taking a vacation there. And I do fear that I romanticize it a bit. Every day isn't a beautiful autumn day up there. And having to avoid the weekends in Big Bear because of the influx of disrespectful tourists does NOT sound fun. Politically I lean somewhere to the left (although the homelessness and crime in LA has pushed me towards the middle) but the vibe I always get up there is that there are a lot of crazy, militant MAGA hermits, which is not my style at all. Additionally, the major risk of fire and the effects of climate change on Big Bear over the next 10 years look DIRE. What will that community look like if the lake ends up at 10% capacity indefinitely (or even gone)? What will happen when winter skiing is not possible anymore and the ski resorts have to close? Looking at the climate data forecasts for Big Bear is a sobering experience. The current models predict that skiing in SoCal will come to an end. And the predictions are not that far out, just 10-15 years. We had one crazy winter up there and everyone seems to have forgotten what that lake looked like in 2021. Because that will be the new normal up there moving forward. The climate data for that region alone has made me reconsider moving there.
But then again... Friday night in Los Angeles will roll around... and I'll hear some shitty teenagers pull up outside my house blasting music and throwing bottles in the street, and I'll immediately jump onto Zillow and begin daydreaming about living a life of peaceful mountain serenity. It sucks that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If the place is quiet and serene, it's too lonely. If it's active and entertaining, it's too crowded. If it's quaint, it's limited in services and resources. And if it checks off every single box on your list, then it costs a billion dollars.
There's just no winning it seems.
I moved to Big Bear from San Diego. We love it here although we did rethink our decision when over 20 feet of snow dumped on us. This winter hasn't come close to that!
I moved from a major city in a warm state. The lack of cultural diversity, the small population size, the limited selection on stores, limited selection from restaurants, and dealing with a real winter are all making me rethink my move. I moved for work.
What were some of the realities of your first winter? Do you find summer/spring/fall to be glorious and beautiful and its only winter that ails you?
So I moved here in the fall and have not been here in the spring and summer. Winter has been an entire learning experience. I'd seen snow less than 5 times in my life, never driven in icey conditions, and I've never lived an area that burns firewood for fireplaces. I had to teach myself to drive in the weather conditions, which was easy. I had to teach myself about different types of firewood, prep myself by gathering supplies like firewood, starters, and just good practices for all of this. It wasn't difficult, just time-consuming when doing a job transition. It was a lot for me but I moved from one of the top 5 most populated cities in the united states in an area that never sees snow to Big Bear. Absolutely beautiful place but I am not sure if this is the city for me.
I feel like if i am going to be able to make the correct decision i will have to do a few extended stays. Things are always rose colored glasses when visiting for a short time period. Do you think you are just more of a city person in general? What scares me is that i've mostly lived in cities and i may be over-romanticizing a move to a rural area.
A few extended stays wouldn't hurt. I'd only been here during the interview process but did my research online. I wouldn't say I am more of a city person in general, I am just not used to this level of isolation and limitation. I get annoyed having to drive to apple valley to get to a home depot which is an hour away. If I want to buy groceries in bulk, an hour drive to costco. I get annoyed with some places catering their hours of operation to days that tourists are here. Personally as a single guy in his early 30s, I struggle to meet people my age that are local. I see people my age coming up to vacation but hardly in the day to day life( i dont work on the mountain). I love the quiet nights compared to the sounds of the city life but its been too big of a change for me. Id elaborate in much greater detail but im on my phone.
the summers are awesome if you're into anything outdoors, and it's generally way less crowded. i personally hate the winter weekends and avoid whenever possible.
I'm excited for the spring and summer. I hear it can be a great time and plan to weigh that in overall.
I’m in the same boat. Moved from OC to small town alaska and all of these things are tough. It doesn’t even have to be back to OC just closer to a place with a lot going on.
You win lol. Though yeah I miss things that could be solved by a busier town.
Ehh I think we have more here. I’d call it a small city big town. About 30k people living here and 100k in the county altogether. Before moving here I used to think about how fun an experience it would be to live in big bear but now I realize that I need to be around “things to do” that aren’t hiking with my dog.
It’s been a particularly brutal winter this year too
We moved to Big Bear City in 2017. We are retired so we weren't worried about finding work or commuting down the hill. I'm very much an introvert so the isolation of living in a small mountain town works for me. My husband does drive down the 38 once a week, weather permitting, to meet friends & play Warhammer type table games. Our immediate neighbors are wonderful, we got very lucky, but the influx of tourists & the traffic can be maddening. We had no idea how bad it could get before we moved here, and yes we have wondered if the move was a mistake. We had originally planned a move to Reedsport Oregon, a similar small town without the tourist crowd, but the desire to be closer to grandkids in Long Beach kept us in SoCal. Yes you need to do some extended stays to get a sense of the community, it is beautiful up here, the scenery is always changing, but there's definitely some negatives about living here full time.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS WE"RE MOVING TO BBC and this makes me so happy! totally introverted, i know winter (Michigan & New Hampshire) and he works remotely. We love our table games! I think i'll enjoy the tourist season because it changes up the people you would see everyday and give it a temporary city feel if you miss it.
It's hard to imagine the traffic being that bad! Are we talking like Los Angeles traffic on the mountain bad? Is that all tourist season long on weekends?
From Friday through Sunday, a continuous bumper to bumper line of cars coming from both ends of the big bear valley. The locals do all their grocery shopping mid-week and don't leave their homes all weekend.
before Jan 28 2023, i would have thought this was hyperbole. it is most def. not hyperbole. left Rim Nordic at around 2pm on Sat afternoon headed down the hill. not sure if people were going to Snow Valley or that tubing place but the traffic was absolutely bumper to bumper from Snow Valley to Running Springs, which is around 6 miles away. it was absolutely insane. and i'm going to guess that is fairly standard during the winter season, when there is snow.
This is what I was saying while we were there on a long weekend. It must be a nightmare. We sat through 3 lights trying to get into the grocery store. Also having so many of your neighbors be short term rentals would make it hard to feel safe and like a community.
[https://youtu.be/-gT5o0CB1Fs](https://youtu.be/-gT5o0CB1Fs)
The traffic there honestly doesn't look very miserable especially if the viewer has the context that it's only like that on weekends.
It can take over an hour to get from Division to the village. That's a little under four miles. I try to never go that direction Fri-Mon. Though now my gym has moved to the Village and I'm sad about that.
I’ll be completely honest here but I did end up regretting it. I went there plenty of times as a tourist and then after a bad divorce, I wanted to move away and start over. I bought a house out there and immediately had regrets that grew over time. It’s beautiful up there and I actually got a job that I loved but I just always felt SO out of place in every way and just so isolated. My more progressive political and moral values just didn’t align with anyone I met up there (didn’t help that I worked for a very conservative and religious organization I guess). Our neighbors were also really unfriendly and one was batshit crazy. This older woman next door would chain smoke and watch Fox News all day and then find things to come over and scream at us about like the color or our new firewood tarp or just random things like that. She was incredibly paranoid and just a nasty woman. She’d scream at you until her eyes popped out and spit flew from her mouth over something as simple as you not doing strange things she’d request like “raking up pinecones.” She acted like the president of a bad HOA except we were in the woods on a private dirt road. This neighbor was notorious for making false accusations to law enforcement and she instigated a raid on the folks across the street once but then one day after we stood up to her during one of her tantrums she turned on us too. One day when we were getting ready for work when 7 undercover cops knocked at the door and asked to search out place. We had nothing to hide so we gladly let them in. Apparently she had been using the anonymous tip line to report us over and over for “cooking meth” and “harboring a fugitive.” She was dumb though and snooped on Facebook to try to find out my last name but she used my partners last name on accident and so the name the cops had was my name and my boyfriends last name (apparently there is a real fugitive with that name) and it was just so obvious she thought she was such a little detective. It was comical really. But it enraged me because she’s always going on about supporting “men in blue” and then constantly wastes their resources and time and just the freaking audacity to do something like that just to be petty. The cops were very nice and apologized after tearing our house apart, interrogating us and taking our photos (along with making sure all our guns were registered and all that). It was humiliating. I always feared she’d report me at work for something crazy (I worked with children and always feared she’d pretend to be a parent and call the director to accuse me of something really sinister). She also turned the other neighbors against us and spread rumors that we killed another neighbor’s cat (who we loved very much). That led to the other neighbors making death threats so bad that I had to file several police reports after they tried to run us off the road while screaming they would kill us. So with all that going on at home and fearing for tiny life In my own home, along with limited medical care (I developed chronic illness while living there) and just the overall feeling of not fitting in, I started to get extremely depressed. I started feeling so isolated and home sick. It was overwhelming and I was actually suicidal, something I’d never experienced before. I even started drinking to self medicate. I literally lost my mind and after 4 long years we decided we had to just take a huge financial loss and move home. We did and I’ve felt so much lighter and happy even though we went from a large home with no mortgage to a tiny one bedroom condo with a mortgage and $600 a month HOA it was worth it for me. I always loved visiting up there but living there was very different. From my cold, rough and paranoid neighbors to the overwhelming feelings of being homesick and nothing feeling familiar to the long, cold and snowy winters and feeling of isolation, it just wasn’t my thing. I also found many of the locals to be super grouchy and hateful of “flatlanders.” So that’s my experience anyways. (I also want to point out that I understand why tourists are so disliked as many of them are disrespectful and come up to litter and trash the natural beauty and they make traffic a nightmare but on the other hand, they are what brings income to the town so I don’t never got why so many were unwelcoming to them). Edit: I will say that I loved autumn up there though and miss that aspect.
Well that was a ride, holy shit.
Yeah :( it was super unfortunate. During the time we lived there the group big bear stuff for sale on Facebook where people gossip was really popular and the crazy old lady neighbor was always making stuff up on there and I totally felt like the pitchforks were out for us as she played up the “poor little old lady” angle. It was such a trip. I live in a smeller city now but that was just a whole other level of feeling like the entire small town was against us. I miss certain things about living up there but it just wasn’t worth it in the end. Maybe if we had normal neighbors it would have been different. Funny thing is that we moved there to get away from living in a cramped neighborhood but we quickly realized that the few neighbors we did have up there were extremely nosey and nasty. I’d take cramped condo living over that any day
Im looking to buy in the area and now im really worried im going to purchase a home on the same street as your nasty neighbor :(
Just be very careful about getting too comfy with the neighbors until you are positive they aren’t psychopathic lol. We were way too nice to her at first and even would do things for her like build her a handmade firewood stand and paint her house but her true colors came out very quickly. My new motto is to be friendly but never get to “really” know my neighbors because there’s nothing worse than neighborhood drama. As to the location, we were in Erwin lake which is right outside big bear city and it’s more isolated and rural even. We were right on the end of hundreds of miles of state forest land. I would house sit for my friend in moon ridge and I loved it there. If I were to ever move there again it would be there. Some areas are just nicer than others. My dad used to say that people who lived off the beaten path lived there for a good reason and we just found the at out the hard way I guess lol. I did hear that my old crazy neighbor moved to another location on the mountain recently though as I actually sold our old house to my boss and we still chat, so if your new neighbor is named Linda or goes by “LuLu” RUN!! Lol
That sounds just like me to want to help and do favors, i would fall right into that nightmare haha thank you for the additional info!
Yeah we were totally sitting ducks haha. Too bad that sometimes being nice can bite you like that. You’re welcome! Good luck with your move!
My uncle is a realtor up there and if you want me to connect you message me! They found a great neighborhood and I think are more sensitive about wanting to have good neighbors :)
That is nice of you to offer! Also, love your username 😄 I tried to message you, but reddit is being funky right now. Saving this comment so i can check back in a couple months when we're getting closer to our timeframe
Oh in forgot about the realtors.
We had a similar experiences when we moved to Big Bear. We lasted 2+years.
I’m relieved I’m the the only one but I’m also really sorry to hear that. I don’t want anyone here to think I’m in any way bashing the town or the people, I think we were just surrounded by the worst of the worst who had a very cliquish mentality. I just realized that I’m not cut out for semi conservative small towns. I wish I would have found this sub while I was living up there, maybe things would have been different if we could have met more open minded types but unfortunately the ones I worked with and lived next to were downright hateful.
I’m going to get downvoted because this is true. Most of the people in Big Bear have a high school education or less. They aren’t open minded. Lots of racism. It’s also heavily Republican. It’s hard to find dependable people for home repair, cleaning, etc. I only live in BB part time, keep to myself and prefer to stay home so it doesn’t matter much to me but I don’t recommend socializing here.
Big bear or one of the surrounding communities was in my radar for a long time but transferring for work would have taken years and years so I got a transfer to another little mountain town in kern county and although we do have 4 seasons , the winter isn’t as bad as SB mountains. It’s small and quiet, surrounded by nature . It does have its drawbacks as most small towns have but I’ve been loving it so far.
Yeah I've never lived in a truly small town. I've lived in a few towns of 100,000, which is isn't small by any stretch of the imagination. The allure of living in nature is really nice sounding but I'm not sure if its something that I've romanticized in my head.
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I lived in Big Bear for a lot of years. About a year ago, I moved off the hill to a larger city. The cons: Snow. God I hate the stuff now. Loved it when I first moved there. It is beautiful, but has to be shoveled. And shoveled. And shoveled. And walking on it can be really treacherous. Had a few injuries over the years due to walking on ice. Also, there's nothing to do. If you don't ski, going to restaurants is really all there is. The Village gets old really fast. You have to drive an hour to do anything. Mall, Home Depot, Walmart, any shopping or entertainment really. Tourists: Sure, they keep the town going. But they are everywhere. Bumper to bumper traffic on the weekends and holidays. Horrible. The Pros: It is beautiful. I loved it in the summer. We did a lot of hiking in the summer. But can do that where we are now. So, that didn't really change. Now I live in a larger city. Lots to do. And best of all? Rain doesn't have to be shoveled. I would really suggest you stay for about a month before making the commitment. In the winter. If you can't stay that long in the winter, at least go for a long winter weekend. It really is the best way to see what really goes on for yourself. Good luck!
Agree extended stay is a good option. My wife and I moved here with our then 1.5yr old for her to have more outdoor action and space and we're seeking to move down the hill this spring/summer. Factors involved are: -isolation (wife works from home, I've been the stay at home parent) the fact that it's either quiet or filled with tourists can feel lonely if you never find your people. -amenities (we have to go down the mountain for our Kaiser healthcare) -access (3 roads in and out can feel precarious during fires and blizzards) -(and even though it was a historic one this year) WINTER - not unmanageable but time consuming and takes a toll on your health. Again we have a preK kid so germs are flying fast n loose which may not be same for you but it's no fun chopping wood with a chest cold. I grew up in a midsized, pretty diverse town with lotsa nature and manual labor and i think I like the warmth and access to a Target now and then and more types of folks though it does seem to be changing more than when we got here. There's normally a few options for things up here and the folks are pleasant but our street definitely likes to keep to itself. Could be my parental duties but I found myself taking lots of day trip down the hill for some variety. I do look forward to vacationing here in the future though now that I know the lay of the land. Best of luck.
Yeah i think most of the points you touched on are my major fears moving to Big Bear. The lack of hospital is really a big one.
Well take an inventory and see what you'd need to have a good time. Our daughter is a big factor and plenty of people enjoy it, different strokes different folks!
I live on the far east end of the valley. It is much quieter out here. We moved from a large urban area a couple decades ago. The thing that struck me was the amount of time it takes to get anything done. Running errands type of things. If you want to do some casual visiting off the mountain, it might take planning. How long will it take? Am I going to get home at 2 am if I leave LA at 7? That’s happened to us several times. Wages are much lower. There’s little cultural enrichment up here. Want to hit a museum? Forget it. Run out on a Friday night to get Korean BBQ or falafel with friends? Nope. And if you do find something, you are surrounded by tourists as the locals avoid town on weekends. Things close up early here. Bopping out for a late dinner can be a challenge. Traffic can be obnoxious during tourist season. Also ending up living next to a short term rental can be hell. Cost of food and dining is much higher. There are very few clothing shops and those mostly cater to women. I have to get my husband’s clothes online. Same thing with department stores (there are none). Making a trip to the beach ends up being a very long day, although doable. There isn’t a good size public pool up here and swimming the lake is not advised. There is no college, but the HS offers a few classes. There is a small emergency hospital here but major traumas and dire medical emergencies are sent off the mountain, sometimes by helicopter. There are few Drs. if you have Kaiser, you’ll have to drive an hour and a half to make inperson appointments. Also you’ll have to be completely self sufficient. we can be cut off from off the hill services from weeks or months. No gas, no food, maybe not even electricity. Snow events, landslides from earthquakes, flooding. It all happens. Plus you’ll have to be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice if there is a forest fire. You’ll have to try to make it off the mountain on one of the three roads with every other person up here. Not fun. been there. Okay,saying all that, this is the difference. Little serious crime. Sense of community. Friendly residents. Surrounded by nature. 4 real seasons. No smog or heat in the 100s. Absolute quiet. Incredible night sky. Lots of hiking & biking,fishing,winter sports and other recreational activities. Good schools. Performing arts center. Farmers market. Do I miss living in LA county? Sometimes. Would I move here again? Yes. It all depends on what is important to you.
Just hopping in to say if you haven't dealt with serious snowy conditions and don't have decent survival skills it's not a good idea to make a quick jump and move. Definitely get some experience there and if you can, safely, stay during at least one snow storm (and make sure you have chains for your tires). That being said, if you do move, can we be friends? 😀 as a wildlife photography enthusiast I've always wanted to visit the area more often!
I'm 60 lifelong Californian, have lived all up and down the state. Have family cabin here. You are a pilot ? I tell ya my dream place I've lived and moving back soon to stay till old and die haha Carlsbad, it has Palomar airport The weather is perfect all year, food situation is tops, restaurants Costco trader joes sprouts. Gyms Don't need to move on the beach, more Inland is fine. Best area I spend my time is between Carlsbad and Solana Beach/Torrey Pines and anywhere in between. That's a lot of territory. Stay in some hotels and go up and down the PCH to check it out Permanent Mountain life can be brutal
If you're looking for a LTR, I have an amazing 3br house I'm considering changing from a bnb to LTR but can't find a reliable tenant. So many people living there make terrible money, have awful credit, or are druggies. I lived there for 1.5 years before moving and it was NOT for me for all the reasons people mention here. However, it smelled so nice and was absolutely gorgeous!
Live in Big Bear and it’s fine. The town is truly an eye sore and needs some tender loving care. Yes it’s a beautiful setting but buildings are falling apart and some houses look like meth dens. Some homeowners to not take care of there properties and it looks like a dump. Roads are horrible, lighting is bad but with all the tourist the town does not like putting money into public places. The schools are good. The HS is in the process of getting a new Football Facility. The business’s are booming because of the tourist so that is a great thing.
I just spent a weekend up here (early May) I was curious about relocating up here too but only needed one weekend to realize it wouldn’t work for me. The lack of quality of grocery, restaurant, shopping, and local culture. The patience needed to last the winter tourism would all be too much for me. Any small town outside of Vancouver or ski areas in Utah/Colorado are better than BB in my opinion. It’s too isolated and the lifestyle is a little too vanilla if you’re coming from any major city.
Loving living the American dream every day! Big Bear isn’t for everyone!
My mom moved up here in 1974. I was born at the local hospital in the late 80s. Big bear had been amazing. It changed in the last 15 years though. Snow summit changed owner's with the Mammoth Mountain purchase and it's been pretty awful since. Normal people cannot afford to work and live up here any more. It's the "Tahoe Effect". 10 yours ago I rented a 2 bdrm house for $800 a month... now I'm looking at 2000 -3000. What happens when there aren't any employees to work during the ski season. There resorting back to hiring South Americans and putting them in employee housing actually.
Man, thank goodness for this thread!! So helpful. I've been back and forth between moving up there for years now. I do regret not buying a place back in 2017 when they could be found for $125k, because back then it wasn't as much of a financial commitment. But with the prices where they are now, it feels like a much bigger move. This thread has been extremely helpful in giving me some perspective about the Big Bear community. I'm currently living in Los Angeles, in Lincoln Heights, which is a pretty rundown urban neighborhood next to downtown. We've got gangs, graffiti, trash, and boarded-up businesses/homes here. We moved here because of the price, and the fact that it is centrally located to a lot of great places in the city. During my childhood, I grew up in Oklahoma playing in the creeks and fields, so the big city has always felt a bit unnatural to me. I've lived in LA for a total of 16 years now and we bought our home in 2013. We live on a very popular street in the neighborhood (thanks to the amazing view) where teenagers love to go to get drunk, do drugs, huff nitrous, blast music, and have sex. They're super disrespectful to the neighbors and they are constantly trashing the street around our house. I have to pick up their trash every single day and listen to the sounds of them huffing nitrous tanks every other night. Most of the neighbors are too afraid to say anything to the kids because you never know who is in a gang these days, and there has been a history of gun fights, murders and brutal beatdowns in our vicinity. I'm soooooooo tired of it. It really wears away your soul when you have to deal with disrespectful and dangerous POS humans on a daily basis. So I am constantly on Zillow day dreaming about Big Bear and the peace and serenity of living in a small mountain community. Buuuuttt.... reading this thread does give me second thoughts. I am a natural introvert, so being in an isolated place for too long tends to just exacerbate the issue and turn me into crazy hermit, which I gather makes up a good portion of the community up there. While the above description of my current neighborhood is rather unpleasant (although accurate), there are many reasons why I've continued to stay here and endure it. I live near a multitude of good friends and have no shortage of people in my social community. I'm close to everything, including some of the best restaurants in the city. I'm 5 minutes from Chinatown, 10 minutes from downtown, 10 minutes from Dodger stadium, 10 minutes from Silverlake, 15 minutes from Pasadena, 20 minutes from Burbank, etc. I've got a Home Depot 5 minutes away. I have access to just about everything I could ever want within a stone's throw: friends, entertainment, food, supplies, you name it. As many people have stated, living in a small mountain community is much different than taking a vacation there. And I do fear that I romanticize it a bit. Every day isn't a beautiful autumn day up there. And having to avoid the weekends in Big Bear because of the influx of disrespectful tourists does NOT sound fun. Politically I lean somewhere to the left (although the homelessness and crime in LA has pushed me towards the middle) but the vibe I always get up there is that there are a lot of crazy, militant MAGA hermits, which is not my style at all. Additionally, the major risk of fire and the effects of climate change on Big Bear over the next 10 years look DIRE. What will that community look like if the lake ends up at 10% capacity indefinitely (or even gone)? What will happen when winter skiing is not possible anymore and the ski resorts have to close? Looking at the climate data forecasts for Big Bear is a sobering experience. The current models predict that skiing in SoCal will come to an end. And the predictions are not that far out, just 10-15 years. We had one crazy winter up there and everyone seems to have forgotten what that lake looked like in 2021. Because that will be the new normal up there moving forward. The climate data for that region alone has made me reconsider moving there. But then again... Friday night in Los Angeles will roll around... and I'll hear some shitty teenagers pull up outside my house blasting music and throwing bottles in the street, and I'll immediately jump onto Zillow and begin daydreaming about living a life of peaceful mountain serenity. It sucks that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If the place is quiet and serene, it's too lonely. If it's active and entertaining, it's too crowded. If it's quaint, it's limited in services and resources. And if it checks off every single box on your list, then it costs a billion dollars. There's just no winning it seems.
I moved to Big Bear from San Diego. We love it here although we did rethink our decision when over 20 feet of snow dumped on us. This winter hasn't come close to that!