Well I took a phone call this morning on the beach while drinking some excellent Groundworks coffee . . . it was almost too hot in a t-shirt and jeans. Weather is niiiiiiice in Santa Monica.
The tech scene is healthy and not frothy. Google Venice is a large presence, as is Factual (my employer), Hulu, Snapchat with their sweet Venice boardwalk office, and assorted others (http://siliconbeachla.com/). I like it here because being in a tech startup is very different and cool, unlike in SF/SV where it seems a ridiculous number of people are doing identical work.
I moved to San Francisco last year and settled in a nice apartment on Dolores Park; I was hired at Factual to work remotely but came to the L.A. office for the first month to train up. After a week I told them I wanted to stay, and I love SF. It is just . . . really nice here.
Agreed. Santa Monica is is a solid spot for media startups or a handful of mobile apps. Some good work being done in the recommendation / metasearch space, and a handful of crowdfunding startups. Safe to assume everyone funding you has ties to Hollywood, since that's the majority of the VC money down there.
I am assuming I am missing the sarcasm or you don't live in San Francisco. We have barely a month of continuous sunshine and most of it is not during summer time. It is fog, fog and more fog.
Edit: nvm, I didn't know what Silicon Beach stands for. LA obviously has way better climes than SF.