im with proudsvt...orange county would be the way to go...l.a. is a shiz hole...the more time u spend in orange county the less u'll want to spend anywhere near l.a....even the 'slum' of irvine where i grew up is better than l.a....irvine is nice, newport beach will get u penis rodman as a neighbor and anything south of irvine is pretty expensive and more and more exclusive
any of those places will let u live roughly 35-40 mins south of l.a....great cars, great ass...lots of little pubs and hangouts...just becareful down in laguna beach...there's this club called the golden spike or something...all im sayin is guard your backdoor
oh on that drive to l.a. from o.c....that was the estimated time back in the 80's i think...now if u haul ass on an open freeway u can still do it...but the 405 isn't open very often...expect closer to an hour plus