Not to offend anyone but this is an observation of mine, being a native Los Angelino and traveled the country and lived in other places it seems that southern Californians are something like peaches. Sweet on the outside but a tough nut to crack on the inside. On the surface Californians appear to be friendly but standoffish when put to the test. There's even a bit of that in me, since we are the products of our surroundings, so no offense to the rest of you's, okay? I don't want to be shot on the freeway again!
I've noticed that people who live in lands where there is very severe weather (northern mid-west as an example, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas) build very strong social ties to their neighbors even if they are not very similar in terms of personality traits. In Des Moines Iowa as an example, one can stand on their rear porch and see their neighbors rear yard and their street beyond and some houses on the opposite side of that street and beyond. Contrast that with Californians who build walls tall enough to prevent neighbors from seeing their beautifully landscaped million dollar homes. Another test of social habits would be to watch what goes on inside of elevators. In Des Moines Iowa, perfect strangers strike up conversations as they ascend or descend skycraper elevators, and it is so normal nobody gives it a second thought. In Los Angeles, people are usually looking off into never-never-land or the floor or their shoes or the sign with lighted floor numbers above the door. And.. If you try to strike up a conversation with them they look at you with deep suspicious eyes while their hands rummage inside their bags doing the braille search for the can of pepper spray or mace.
Sad?
Well, hope that didn't anger too many people. Having said all of that, I've moved away from the southern part of Southern California. I'm living in San Luis Obispo now. Technically this is central coast. We tend to talk to each other more freely up here. In many ways this is heaven, figuratively and literally. The weather here is much better than Des Moines Iowa, and the people are very courteous, like Des Moines. They are also very even keeled and while green they haven't lost their free enterprise capitalistic roots and overall sense of value. One big test of a community is to watch how the drivers on the roads treat bicyclists (I bike to work, and I feel safe doing that even though there are some really bad spots on some of the roads that tend to favor automobiles, I will blame that part on CalTrans and the government who would rather send soldiers to foreign land to bomb and destroy infrastructure among other bad things, rather than build roads which would truely set us up a few notches higher than Mexico).