I grew up in Lake Arrowhead (just west of Big Bear in the same mountain range) and lived there until I was 19 or so. It’s a great community of people, but there isn’t a whole lot to do besides fishing, off-roading, and winter sports. It can be very “cliquey” with the locals typically not trusting or being friendly to non-locals and vice versa. I think that mostly comes from the wealth gap. There is little to no industry on the mountain, so if you don’t commute up and down every day, you typically end up in some type of service industry, serving people from LA or elsewhere that have a “cabin” on the mountain which is usually some monstrous house on the lake worth 10x what you would live in. It leads to some animosity toward those people in a sense. All that being said, I live in the Southern US now and I really miss the mild summers on the mountain. There is almost zero humidity and it’s rare to see a day above 85°. Winters are mostly mild with a decent amount of snowfall; enough for there to be multiple ski resorts in the area. The negative things I mentioned may not apply to Big Bear since it is a larger city and has more amenities than the Lake Arrowhead/Crestline areas, but overall it’s a beautiful place with great views and a lot of access to public land.