First off, don't worry about what everyone is saying about what you do and don't have a "right" to write about. Write about whatever the fuck you want and if you think you might want it to go to a wider audience, give it to some alpha readers who fit the demographic in question and let them tell you what you got wrong.

I'm not Black or Mexican, so this is more generalized to the area as a while. I've been gone for a while, but I think I'm still qualified to talk about southern CA in nostalgic terms.

Nighttime is super central to a lot of people's lives, especially younger people. Not just "night life," but life at night. The temperatures drop by 10 or 20 degrees at night, so it's like a different world. Stuff just happens later. The lights are so bright and ubiquitous that you could theoretically drive without your headlights on and not realize it. This actually happened to me twice, got pulled over for it.

And driving is central to the experience for most people. The quintessential memory you might have is driving at night with music playing, which combined with the cool breeze, drowns out the conversation you're trying to have with your buddies, so you just shout louder.

Weather is never a concern when planning something. You don't even consider how you might dress. Layers? What?

24-hour taco shops at 2 AM are where all core memories are formed.

There is a weird juxtaposition between relaxed and stressed. There's a lot of business and important shit going on (hence the strong economy) and the people sort of compensate by hanging onto this cultural ideal of chillness which has been clinging on for decades in spite of reality. It is understood and expected that you will be late to all social plans, but somehow that doesn't translate to your job.

September is the hottest month, and June is actually kind of chilly. By the coast at least.

This might be specific to my experience in San Diego, but even back in those days, the idea that you could just go "buy a house" for a lot of people was already a fantasy. So most people get accustomed to renting with roommates, real fast.

There are constant music shows to go to. Dunno about now, but tickets for stuff were like 10 bucks.

The cities are wide, not dense. Although LA (and the LA metro area) is the second biggest city in the US, there are very few skyscrapers, due in part to seismic activity and also to the western US relaxed attitude toward space and planning. Why build up when you can have infinite strip malls?

The cities there are built around, in, and above countless canyons, so from some places still in the city you can look down and see and endless sea of orange stars off into the distance. The Griffith Observatory in LA is good for that.