It’s Official – Los Angeles’ Coolness Factor Outranks Almost Every City In America
Los Angeles ranks as the third coolest city in North America based on factors like record stores, microbreweries, tattoo studios, vegan restaurants, and thrift stores.
We have featured reports ranking certain cities and towns as the safest (or most dangerous), most peaceful, best to visit, etc., but there is a fun new scale for ranking cities! Betway Insider recently decided to find out which of the cities throughout the United States and Canada are the “coolest” places to live, work, and visit. We are talking about places that are considered chic, trendy, “hip,” and the results are in: Los Angeles is officially one of the coolest cities in North America.
So, how exactly do you rate the coolness factor of a city? Online slots site Betway compared the rate of several factors, each considered “hip” and trendy, per capita in every US and Canadian city. The results were compiled, giving each city a “Coolness Index Score.”
Factor number one on the scale is the number of record stores. Despite the fact that record stores were at the brink of extinction not long ago, we have definitely seen a major comeback, and now Los Angeles has a whopping 90 record stores!
In fact, LA’s famous Amoeba Music - the largest music store in the world - is known for buying and trading vinyl.
The second factor (and my personal favorite) in determining coolness is the number of microbreweries, and the number of craft breweries. There were 92 at the time of the ranking in LA (and throughout Southern California) and the number continues to grow regularly.
The vegan (and vegetarian) lifestyle has grown exponentially in recent years, and the number of restaurants that cater to a plant-based diet is a huge factor in determining whether a city is a cool place to be. Are you ready for this? LA has at least 910 vegetarian and vegan restaurants!
Lastly, thrifting is a big part of the hipster lifestyle and was a major consideration in the coolness ranking. Los Angeles shines here too, with 117 thrift stores in the city.
And there you have it, the makings of one of the coolest cities in North America! Do you consider Los Angeles a cool place? What city would you assign the highest coolness factor, and why? We would love to hear from you! Want to spend a weekend exploring the continent’s third coolest city? This cool, hipster hotel is a great home base for a weekend in the city, and it won’t deplete your savings!
When you think about life in Northern California, you might think of Mediterranean weather, healthy eating, gorgeous sandy beaches, or sky-high Redwood forests – and you’d be right. But we’re not just a bunch of pretty faces. We’re dang smart, too. There were a whole bunch of Northern California inventions, some right here in San Francisco, that might even surprise you. We hate to brag about these inventions from NorCal, but guess what, we’re going to!
Eleven-year-old Frank Epperson invented popsicles in 1905. He left fruit juice out overnight on a very cold night with a stirrer in it at home in San Francisco. Epperson later got a patent on his frozen treats, which were originally called Epsicle. He was quite the frozen-over achiever and went on to invent the twin popsicle, Fudgsicle, Creamsicle and Dreamsicle.
Watch this fun video explaining the history of the popsicle from The History of Stuff:
Tech giant Apple Inc. was founded by the late Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 in Cupertino. The company is the largest publicly traded corporation in the world.
Since we're already talking about Apple, lets share a few facts about another Apple product-: the iPhone. Released June 29, 2007, this phone has over 101 million users in the U.S. alone and over 700 million users worldwide. And, it all began in Northern California!
Levi Strauss and Company was founded in 1853 and began making blue jeans in San Francisco. Strauss designed the first pair of jeans by stitching canvas together to help withstand the wear and tear Gold Rush prospectors put their clothes through.
If you use one of these on your car or house windows, or even in your shower, you have Ettore Steccone from Oakland to thank. The window cleaning aid was invented in 1936 by Italian immigrant and professional window cleaner. His original family-owned factory, Ettore Products Co., is still in operation near the Oakland International Airport.
John Dolbeer (March 12, 1827 – August 17, 1902) was a partner in the Dolbeer & Carson Lumber Co., one of the early major Humboldt County, California lumber operations based in Eureka. While in that business, he invented the logging engine, more commonly known as the steam donkey or donkey engine. This invaluable equipment, especially with regard to difficult terrain and very large trees, revolutionized 19th century logging so significantly that variations of the engine were still used well into the 20th Century.
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Learn more about the Steam Donkey Engine and fun facts about California in this video from CR Museum:
Hugh Bradner, a physicist at the University of California Berkeley, created the first wetsuit in 1952. His invention took awhile to catch on and others created their own brands, but in the 1990s, research confirmed Brander was the inventor of the wetsuit. Whew...
Oakland Coliseum in 1981 was the birthplace of the very first full-stadium wave. It was during a sold out game between the Oakland A's and the New York Yankees. You know you're impressed.
The famous ice cream brand was founded in 1928 in Oakland by William Dreyer and Joseph Edy. Mr. Dreyer was the ice cream maker and Mr. Edy was a candy maker and it was a match made in heaven. Together, in 1929 they invented Rocky Road ice cream.
An Oakland Tribune sports editor, 2 Oakland Raiders employees and a sports reporter returned from a 3-week East Coast road trip with the Raiders in 1962. Following the trip, they started the weekly Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League -- leading the way for Fantasy Football -- at King's X bar, which is now the Kona Club.
Charles Ginsburg, who had a background in radio engineering, is credited with inventing the first videotape recorder. Born in San Francisco in 1920, he received his bachelor's degree from San Jose State University. He worked as an engineer at AM-radio station KQW (now KCBS). He then joined Ampex in 1951, where he led the group that invented the videotape recorder. This photo here is from an early 80s model and was used at a local TV station. We've come a long way, baby!
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Learn more about the team that invented the video tape recorder in this video from Richard Arsenault:
Perhaps one of the classiest Northern California inventions and one of the most famous drinks in the world. Legend has it that the Martini was originally called the Martinez, after the city of Martinez in the Bay Area. It was the popular drink in the early 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco before taking a ferry over to Martinez.
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Admit it. You're impressed by these Northern California inventions.
We could go on and on and on about all the things to come from this golden part of our state. But, hey, we have a lot of class. So, we're going to let you share below all the things YOU know got their start here. Have you heard about interesting things invented in San Francisco?
One of the most iconic movie franchises of the 1980s is the Back to the Future trilogy. Part comedy, part love story, part science fiction, the first of the three films was the highest-grossing movie of 1985. It became an almost immediate cult classic and worldwide phenomenon with two sequels. The final sequence of the third film took place at a railroad crossing in the quiet Southern California beach town of Port Hueneme. As popular as Back to the Future became, very few people know parts of this movie were filmed in Port Hueneme, California.
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In the final scenes of the final film in the Back to the Future trilogy, the time-traveling DeLorean - along with two different trains - runs on a portion of railroad tracks located about 500 feet from the beach on the Southern California coast.
If you ever come across a trivia question that asks, "Where was Back To The Future 3 filmed," you've got the answer.
Fun fact: A total of seven DeLoreans were actually used in filming the Back to the Future trilogy. This specific car was used in the filming of Part III.
Although Californians may be familiar with Port Hueneme, Back To The Future really helped put this town on the map.
In the film “Back to the Future III,” the DeLorean - stuck in the Old West with no gas - is pushed by a train toward a partially built bridge over Eastwood Ravine. The train crashes in the ravine (filmed using a large model) but the car, having successfully reached 88 miles per hour, makes it over the now-finished bridge and continues down the track near Hilldale.
The tracks in the scene are found in the SoCal beach town of Port Hueneme. The bridge in the background is fake - either a prop or computer graphics. There is no such bridge or ravine in Port Hueneme. In fact, the location where they seem to be in the film is actually a port along the Pacific.
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It is a little funny to see that the movie’s real estate sign for Hilldale advertises single-family homes but the community behind the sign is clearly condos or apartments. It is unlikely that anyone noticed while watching this scene.
Aside from the fake bridge over Eastwood Revine and the signs near the tracks, the tracks look the same now and are easily recognizable if you happen to live in or frequent the little beach town.
As the DeLorean slowly makes its way through the railroad crossing, the bells and lights activate, the gates come down, and passengers in cars wait impatiently for it to pass.
In the distance, you can see the flags and palm trees at Port Hueneme Beach.
The freight train (actually two linked trains) that destroys the DeLorean on the east section of the tracks, right after it brings Marty safely back to the future, was a real train that belonged to the Ventura County Railway.
The trains were eventually purchased and used by the Fillmore and Western Railroad. The crash on the tracks was real, but the DeLorean was a shell car that was created for the scene. In the next scene, a steam engine from the past appears on the tracks, only to lift off and fly away as you catch one last look at the railroad.
Looking east, the trees have grown over the tracks, but otherwise, not much has changed on this section of the railroad where the DeLorean was destroyed.
This is also the section of tracks where the futuristic flying steam engine appears in the last scene of the movie.
You can watch the movie's train crash scene in this video:
https://youtu.be/1g7z6Aw4X1M
If you've wondered, "Where was Back To The Future 3 filmed," you now have the answer to an interesting piece of trivia. Few people, though, know where Port Hueneme is, but almost everyone has seen part of this town in the film. Did you know that Back to the Future was in Port Hueneme? What's your favorite Back to the Future film? I'm partial to the original because, well, sometimes nothing beats the first time we meet a character.
