This may be totally flippant but I feel like to be constructive in this case, the 'reference' totally depends on the target audience's travel experiences. In t

This may be totally flippant but I feel like to be constructive in this case, the 'reference' totally depends on the target audience's travel experiences. In the simplest case, the 'reference' could just be to live in other cities (not like L.A.). Specifically other cities that weren't all that much in the past decades and had progress in recent years, more or less as an antithesis of SF which I'd categorize as a city that was ahead of its time in 50 years ago and let the hype get too deeply engrained in its psyche and culture and stagnated since, out of a sense of isolation and self superiority. If you lived in other places and disagree, the meat of our discussion would take entirely different paths.