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ATTN: People of California...


Bushwack

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Starting Monday, July 1, the state gas tax raises 3.5 cents for a total of 53.5 cents per gallon. Add the 18 cents per gallon for the feds and...with that cost increase, so will consumer goods continue to increase (and so on). Don't want to get political. Just filler-up before midnight.

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Just came back from topping off 4 cars. Two require 91 octane. On the west side of Los Angeles, Unocal, Chevron & Shell between $4.09-$4.13 for 87 octane, $4.39-$4.43 for 91 octane. Last Thursday in Rancho Mirage/Palm Springs, about eight cents more per gallon for each grade. Chevron is typically more expensive because they refine their petroleum with love. Add 3+ cents if you're reading this on or after July 1. I have seen little change with gas prices the past 4 weeks even with the 4th of July holiday coming up.

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To old country boys like me it's like living in a different world out there. Life moves at a faster pace out there and so do the price increases and taxes.

While on the subject of the cost of gas I will share a way of saving some money on gas if you live in this area or somewhere similar that has Kroger stores. If I'm hijacking your thread or getting too far off topic let me know and I will delete this post.

I usually buy gas once a month. I usually spend around $85-$90 for 35 gallons. I usually get about an $.80 discount at Shell if I use my Kroger rewards card which currently makes the cost per gallon about ($3.28-0.80=$2.48) per gallon. For each $100 spent on groceries or medicine per month at Kroger stores they give you $.10 discount on Shell gasoline (up to 35 gallons). We average spending $700-$800 each month at Kroger. I fill my Blazer up which holds 20 gallons when empty and I take three 5 gallon plastic jugs to fill up for the lawn mower and my Reatta. That usually does me for a month. Sometimes I have to buy a little more but overall this has worked out well for me.

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I just returned from the ROA nationals in Lexington, KY. I found gas in Caseyville, IL (east of St. Louis) for a high of $3.89 and in Paducah, KY for a low of $3.22. The average for the trip was $3.41. The $3.89 is a mathematical outlier (way off the charts) that skews the average. Other than that, the most I paid was $3.39. I did see some gas as low as $3.14 in southern Missouri, but that was just after I got gas in Paducah.

Ed

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I fill up at my local Sheetz around here. They keep pretty low. With my Sheetz card in the last two fill ups (Reatta 'vert and Dodge V10) it was $3.26 per gallon. And NC normally has more expensive gas than the surrounding states. We're normally about 20-30 cents more expensive because of our gas tax.

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I will pay higher prices for gas in order to live in a near perfect climate. It is worth it

All things considered, if I had a choice, I'll take quality of life vs paying more for gas any day of the week.

People across the country see sunshine and 78* watching the Rose Bowl on New Years Day while experiencing a wet, dreary winter. Then they decide they 'want a piece of that' and come out to L.A. expecting love, joy, see a celebrity at every other corner, get on the Price Is Right, maybe a shot at stardom. What you end up getting is culture shock - cost of living is 30-50% MORE than where 85% of the US population currently lives (you think the price of a gallon of gas is expensive?). Compare the cost of insurance, groceries, clothes, shoes, medical expenses/prescription drugs, TAXES, etc. And crime isn't stealing a pack of cigs from the local liquor store or sneaking off with the pie cooling on Marge's kitchen windowsill (I exaggerate a bit). Crime here (without exaggeration) is often strong-arm. Bat, knife, gun, shotgun, car, HIV infected needles - pick your choice. Oh...did I forget to mention the 1,400+ organized gangs in L.A. composed of 135,000 hoodlums? How many of you live is a city with 135,000 people?

Unless you live in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica (or other much smaller and more expensive municipalities), police will take an average of 8.5 minutes using their lights and sirens to respond to a life-or-death call. Fire Department/Paramedics takes 7 minutes for a fire, 8 minutes for a medical call. And it gets worse as large cities like L.A. continue to raise taxes BUT decrease public services because they can't operate within budget.

I'm born and raised in L.A. but spent most of 1997-2001 in Colorado. Walk down most any street in Colorado (whether the size of Denver, Boulder or Berthoud (pop of 5,000) and you'll get a pleasant acknowledgement from the person walking the opposite direction. Walk through the entrance of a post office or office bldg in much of SoCal and rarely will a man let a woman walk through first. We've become a very selfish, self-absorbent city.

If I had to choose a general criteria, cities with less then 50,000 inhabitants of which local govt cherishes that 'old town' feeling (think a modern day Mayberry) should make up the best of both worlds. I spend time in Rancho Mirage (outside of Palm Springs) and it's very much a roots-based city with year round good weather (except for May - October when its often extremely hot). Cost of living is about as high as L.A. but quality of life is fantastic.

I could go on but I've been on the soap box long enough. There are exceptions to my rant but as a whole, one's quality of life is more important then paying more for cost of living expenses or year round good weather.

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Guest Kitskaboodle

Just gassed up the Fiero this morning. $3.89 for 87 Regular at the local Rotten Robbie. I am still in shock that gas in So Cal is more than Silicon Valley. By the way, the simplest way to check gas prices is go to Gasbuddy.com. :)

Kit

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Guest steveskyhawk

All that talk about crime is nonsense. If you fell asleep on my front lawn you would probably wake up with a pillow and blanket. There is a large park with a fresh water lake, small airport, NHRA drag strip, all with a snow capped mountain view within a mile of my home. The only thing that might disturb one that is sleeping on my lawn is the sprinklers. (It seldom rains). I've seen most of the country and there is no place like home

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Just gassed up the Fiero this morning. $3.89 for 87 Regular at the local Rotten Robbie. I am still in shock that gas in So Cal is more than Silicon Valley. By the way, the simplest way to check gas prices is go to Gasbuddy.com. :)

Kit

As Kit says, $3.89 to $3.99 is typical here in Silicon Valley. Like Ronnies example at Kroger, I sometimes use Safeway rewards at the Safeway gas station nearby. For example this month got a $0.50/gal discount. When I take my Suburban, with its 42 gallon tank, Safeway cuts me me off at 25 gallons at that price.

Gas Buddy rocks.

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All that talk about crime is nonsense. If you fell asleep on my front lawn you would probably wake up with a pillow and blanket. There is a large park with a fresh water lake, small airport, NHRA drag strip, all with a snow capped mountain view within a mile of my home. The only thing that might disturb one that is sleeping on my lawn is the sprinklers. (It seldom rains). I've seen most of the country and there is no place like home

You left out one small, minor detail about your Shangri-la. You live in a gated community!

With that said, I'm also in a gated community (in Rancho Mirage). But 95% of city dwellers are not.

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As Kit says, $3.89 to $3.99 is typical here in Silicon Valley. Like Ronnies example at Kroger, I sometimes use Safeway rewards at the Safeway gas station nearby. For example this month got a $0.50/gal discount. When I take my Suburban, with its 42 gallon tank, Safeway cuts me me off at 25 gallons at that price.

Gas Buddy rocks.

I think such plans are available nationwide with various retailers. I know recently Discover(card) had an offer involving spending $200 at a Texaco or Chevron within a 3 month period and you get a $50 gas card in return. On a smaller scale, larger supermarkets in SoCal like Ralphs and Vons/Pavillions have co-branding offers with Shell & Chevron also similar to what you, Kit and someone else said.

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Although there are drawbacks, it's nice living in a small city. I do envy you guys in the big cities being able have all the nice events to go to like the big car shows and such but I wouldn't trade places with you. It would be nice to see all the movie stars I see on TV every now and then but they wouldn't know me or even acknowledge that I was alive. Doubtfully anyone in LA would... unless they were making fun of my southern drawl.

There are lots of good things about living in a small city with a population of around 6000 people. Everything is more personal and people are friendly and willing to help you. No matter where I go around here, post office, courthouse, city hall or wherever, I will most always see someone I know that is working there. A lot of times they are people I grew up with and went to school with. And best of all there is hardly ever a line at any of those places.

My wife commented last night as we were coming back from the movies (we have to go to a bigger city for that) about how good it is to live in a small town where traffic is so light that all the traffic lights in town but one (we just have 9) are set to start flashing caution after 11:00pm because there isn't hardly enough cars on the street to justify making you stop at a red light. Here a traffic jam is if there are more than 10 people sitting in line at the traffic light at the main intersection of town. The only time we have a real traffic jam is when there is a wreck on I-40 and they have to detour traffic through downtown to bypass it.

As for crime, our county does have a small problem right now. Our county jail serves both the county sheriff's office and four small cities (the cities don't have their own jails). The jail has a problem with overcrowding. It was built to hold 174 inmates. It currently has about 240 and the state is complaining about it. I'll bet LA has more people than that in the Drunk Tank on an average Saturday night. :D We will soon be solving the overcrowding problem by expanding the jail to take over the Dollar Store property located next door. If I remember correctly it has been 3 years since we've had a tax increase. We might need to have one to raise enough money take over the Dollar Store.

Weather is usually good here. Rarely do we have a snow and when we so it's usually gone in a day or two. When we do have bad weather here we go inside and watch all the people in LA on TV. You guys put on quite a show!

And to stay on topic... my wife just came home and told me that gas had went up a penny to 3.29 at the Shell station. I'm glad I filled up yesterday before the price went up.

Edited by Ronnie (see edit history)
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I am under the impression that a Liter is larger than a callom............

Not sure what a "callom" is, but there are approximately 3.79 liters in one US gallon. So $1.25/liter would be $4.74/gal. The poster was in Canada and as of right now the currency rate is US$1=Cad$1.05 so that would be about US$4.51/gal.

About 15 years ago I falsely concluded that gasoline would probably be around $5/gal by now. Having gas at only $4/gal or so is actually a pleasant surprise to me. Since we keep our cars a long time (newest car is 10 years old) we purchased cars that got 40+ MPG.

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This morning, when the local media outlets were reporting on the California gas tax hike, they all flock to one Shell station (a few blocks away from the Peterson Automotive Museum) that sells gas at $1.00 more then most others (between $5.09 - $5.39).

FWIW, the reason that particular Shell owned self-serve Shell station (say that a few times quickly) is more expensive is due to location. The next, nearest station is 2/3 mile away on the opposite side of the street, it is at a very busy intersection and on a very busy boulevard. ...and they sell about 240,000 gallons/month without having a mini-mart (average station in the city of L.A. sells 305,000 gallons/mo with a mini-mart).

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Interesting information. To add to that...

Population of CA in 1970 - 19 million. Amount of refineries in CA in 1970: 24 or 25 (stats differ).

Population of CA in 2012 - 38 million. Amount of refineries in CA in 2012: 18 (even though state population doubled)

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No new refineries in CA for many years. And of course we also mandate a boutique blend of gas that is refined nowhere else. So it isn't fungible with gas produced out of state. Nor would any out of state customer want to buy ours.

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No new refineries in CA for many years. And of course we also mandate a boutique blend of gas that is refined nowhere else. So it isn't fungible with gas produced out of state. Nor would any out of state customer want to buy ours.

Give it time...soon the state will tax flatulance.

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So Cal vs South Carolina. Gas in So Cal is over $4 per gallon. Temperatures in So Cal are around or over 100 degrees and forest fires are not uncommon. South Carolina gas is $3.04 per gallon, temperatures are between 85 and 95 with nice afternoon rains and forest fires are rare. It is not difficult for me to choose.

Ed

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We can't control gas prices. I have learned to accept that fact. If you need gas you buy it. If a whale farts next to a tanker the price goes up. Every year it goes up in the spring because of the cost of adjusting the blend for summer. It always goes up faster than it comes down.

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