I came quite close to growing up in Southern California. One of my dad’s medical-school classmates moved to Huntington Beach in the early 50s, and Dad was planning to move out there too when he got out of the Air Force in 1953. He had some free time, so he and Mom and the two infants took a detour through the Northwest. They got to Portland and decided to stay, and that’s where the other four of us were born. Portland was actually a really nice place back then. Now I don’t think I’ll ever go back even to visit.
Lots of lousy places today were like paradise in the 1950s-1980s (and later for some).