I don't know how you do it out there in Cali man. Out here in the midwest (MO) there is nothing like that. I'm am so glad we do not have your state's emission laws.
Car-wise, tons of twisty mountain roads, world class tracks, a huge car scene and SCCA/NASA communities, great access to tuners and parts suppliers, and the best weather in the country. Outside cars, availability of just about any product or service imaginable, locally and instantly, from camera gear to race equipment to exotic foods. Skiing and surfing possible in the same day. Tons of jobs if you're in aerospace, engineering (mechanical and electrical) or any artistic or entertainment profession. A huge variety of awesome places, natural and artificial, to go to. I really like the large national and ethnic communities here, and all the eating and shopping possibilities they open up.
The downsides, of course, are high property values, restrictive car laws, and restrictive weapons laws. Rent sucks, I won't argue with that. I like shooting and I'd love to have a nice tricked out AR-15 but it's not one of those things that's that big of a deal to me. The car laws, as much as they are an annoyance, are unfortunately a necessity here. I grew up in LA and watched the pollution get insanely bad, and then, once modern emissions laws were instituted, gradually watched it turn back into something reasonable. When I was a kid, we had days at school with no gym class because the pollution was too high outside for it to be safe to have kids running around. The whole city was tinted orange all the time because of the layer of smog filtering the light. You could go up the hills and see the giant brown cloud over the city. It's never like that anymore.
I do think the state should have more practical testing and less technicalities. If you swap in a JDM motor, as long as it doesn't emit over the limit, it should be fine. Same for high-flow cats or intakes or anything else. There's also no reason it should be so hard to get a title for a kit car or a homebuilt here, either.
Oh, one thing I need to add - everything I just said is true of Southern CA and the San Francisco Bay area. Very little of it is true of Sacramento, where I've been stuck for the past few years. This place sucks and I don't get why you'd choose to live here, when you could move to Oregon or Utah or Nevada and live exactly the same lifestyle but with cheaper gas, cheaper groceries, and twice the square footage in your house for the same money.
