Never Retire: Living Without the Constant Hostility That Has Become the USA
The real cost of American life isn’t just rent or groceries — it’s the vigilance you can’t turn off.
When I think back to living Los Angeles for 16 years, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t sunshine or culture. It’s hostility.
And a slow degradation in quality of life.
The streets felt wired for conflict. Drivers cutting each other off, pedestrians bracing at every intersection, cyclists treated like targets. Even inside the grocery store, the thought lingered: people get shot in places like this. Three minutes from my house, it actually happened—twice.
You live with that edge so long, it starts to feel normal. Until you leave.
Living on Alert
It’s such a weird thing to think about now from Spain. When we lived in Los Angeles, we enjoyed life. We were on the go almost as much as we are in Valencia. But enjoying life came with tradeoffs. It came with normalizing things that now not only seem abnormal, but feel like a dire threat to the survival of American democracy.
You watch shit unfold from afar on big central issues like civil liberties, equal rights, and freedom of speech and expression and it makes social problems in cities look small.
The reality is that—for years—the United States neglected cities. First, they disinvested in them by encouraging suburban development. Then, the far (and not-so-far) right demonized cities and dehumanized the people who live in them. Turns out the national treatment of and discourse around cities was merely a scene setter for what was to has come.
So—make no mistake—I use Los Angeles to tell a story. But what I describe isn’t an LA problem. It’s a uniquely (heartbreaking and pathetic) American one.
In LA, every trip outside involved some stress. Who’s behind me? Who’s about to blow the light? Am I about to watch some shit go down or wind up in an argument I don’t need or want to be involved in?
That’s the real cost of urban life in the U.S. — not just rent or groceries, but the background radiation of knowing anything can turn volatile.
I wrote a couple of articles on Medium in late 2023 that articulate what I was feeling at the time. Other than having a fresh and cleaner vantage point, this has little to do with greener grass in Spain.
It’s worth taking a longish look back two years in the rearview mirror.
…there’s just an anti-social and inconsiderate sense in the air. People being aggressive and outright mean on the roadways (even for LA), more aloof than ever on the sidewalks, skipping past trash on the ground as if it belongs there and, sometimes, even resorting to violence.
Just a few weeks ago, driving along La Brea in Hollywood, my girlfriend and I saw a homeless guy swinging one of those aforementioned bats around, not really at people and cars…
…one guy in a beat up old Mercedes didn’t keep driving. He swerved and circled the width of La Brea no fewer than three times, aiming straight for the homeless guy. I think he wanted to scare, not hurt or kill him. But we have absolutely reached a low point in society when you take random acts like this, treat them as personal affronts and viciously go after another human being — with or without the intent to harm or kill — clearly at or near the low point of their lives.
When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2008, it was common for one car to make a left turn across the opposite lane of incoming traffic once the light turned red.
A few years passed and it became two cars effectively going through the red light to make that left turn.
Then, it became three.
Now — in 2023 — we’re up to four cars pretty much every single time.
Seems like an irrelevant thing to point out. And, in isolation, maybe it is. However, in conjunction with other seemingly irrelevant things it helps illustrate the culmination of an urban society disintegrating into one that’s decreasingly fun to be a part of.
I’m less worried about being a victim of crime in Los Angeles, but more worried that nobody has my back if I become a victim of crime or something else random goes down on the street.
I have a sense that people not having one another’s backs comes down to a growing sense of mistrust, fueled in part by the rhetoric around crime, safety, blight and homelessness.
Since I wrote that story, there was a shooting in the parking lot of the grocery store at the busy intersection a block from where we live. A guy got shot in a dispute over driving the wrong way in one of the store’s parking lot lanes.
No shit.
When I put this against my life now, the contrast is absurd.
None of this—the actual incidents, the reasonable perceptions, the real hostility—exists at any measurable level in Spain.
It just doesn’t.
It’s not utopia. People argue, bikes get cut off, petty crime happens (though I have not seen much of this at all). But the default mode isn’t attack. Walking through Russafa at night doesn’t feel like testing fate. Sitting at a café doesn’t mean scanning for the guy about to lose it.
The city hums. It feels welcoming. And that changes everything — not just your body language, but the way your mind moves through the day.
Why It Matters at Midlife
At 50 (or any age for that matter), I don’t want to spend my best hours bracing for nonsense. That’s what LA had turned into: a grind where vigilance was part of the morning routine.
Here, I get to use that energy differently. To write. To ride. To notice the details instead of constantly scanning for threats.
People think moving abroad is about cheaper rent or slower pace. For me, it’s about something simpler: not living with my shoulders up all the time.
That’s the reset. Not trust. Not fantasy. Just the everyday relief of not expecting a fight every time I step out the door.
That’s not greener grass. That’s just life the way it should feel.
Check out my YouTube channel—Friki de Bici