Another moving thread: School me on San Bernardino, CA (and the Inland Empire in general)

Straygatsby

You guys were fantastically helpful in the thread I posted last year about moving to Seattle. We've had a great time up here, but as graduate school and its attending requirements seem hell bent on disrupting any sense of normality a stable life can afford, an impending post doc sends us south to yon Inland Empire. Our focal point is just a few miles northeast of San Bernardino. Our comfort radius is an hour's drive in any direction. We're dyed in the wool renters and would like to find a small but nice place in the realm of 1000-1400 a month tops (be it rented house, condo, or very quiet apartment). We no longer consider ourselves cool or young or fearless. I've heard mostly terrible, awful things about San Berdoo proper. Given all that, any wisdom you folks can impart on great towns or neighborhoods in the vicinity would be most helpful. We spent about 5 years living in Los Angeles a decade ago, but we were much younger then AND we never went east of the 405 if we could help it, so this is all undiscovered country.

Some of the areas/towns thrown at us (with the drive considered) have been: Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, and Alta Loma (that I remember so far).

Anything you folks can relate about the area would be much appreciated. We both commute about an hour into Seattle and have considerable freeway experience, so anything under an hour's commute is not daunting. We're mostly concerned with finding a really nice places to live that are close(ish) to both the aforementioned San Bernardino area and that whole west towards LA general civilization corridor so I can have a shot at finding work as well (IT/Tech Support).

We really don't know a damn thing aside from road trips to Palm Springs, Lake Arrowhead, Vegas, and driving out to the valley to buy cars, so anything is helpful! This won't be happening for another 6 months, but I've begun to long process of research now as we'll have a tiny, tiny window to transition there come September.

mightyjongyo

My sister was able to rent a single bedroom apartment in rancho for a little over 1k. I think on a normal day it's maybe 30 minutes to San Bernardino from rancho? I could be remembering that wrong. The neighborhood in rancho wasn't too bad from what I remember, but I didn't go out much either so ymmv.

kaliyama

Claremont is the nicest place out there, but too far from SB to be practical IMO. How long are you guys stuck out there? Commuting westward is hellish and I wouldn't do it - it is probably the worst commute in socal because a bunch of low and lower middle income people have bought affordable houses in riverside and SB and drive to work in LA(the 10 west backs up with these people into santa monica by 630 am) but you can take the metrolink from any of those towns into downtown LA, which should broaden your it job search a bit.

Straygatsby

kaliyama wrote: »

Claremont is the nicest place out there, but too far from SB to be practical IMO. How long are you guys stuck out there? Commuting westward is hellish and I wouldn't do it - it is probably the worst commute in socal because a bunch of low and lower middle income people have bought affordable houses in riverside and SB and drive to work in LA(the 10 west backs up with these people into santa monica by 630 am) but you can take the metrolink from any of those towns into downtown LA, which should broaden your it job search a bit.

I forgot about the Metrolink! I just never used it after years in Santa Monica. Great idea. I've never much liked commuting, but if I have to do it, the train is aces. I do think Claremont is just a bit too far. I think the edge of where I'd like to live is eastern/northeastern Rancho Cucamonga. I'm guessing Fontana/Rialto is where the apparoch to SB begins to go downhill? It's only a year to start, so we figure it's an adventure no matter. We've long since stopped being city people, so it might be nice to live out in the wilds of suburbia for a bit. The SO has to be in Highland (I think), which looks to be E/NE San Bernardino. I supposed we could look at some place on the other side of SB like Redlands as well, but it just seemed like centering in on west of San Bernardino might give us the flexibility of looking both east and west.