Well I don’t know if it is considered the “outskirts of Los Angeles” but I grew up and spent most of my life in a northern suburb of LA located in Ventura County. I of course took the area for granted but the truth is it is a beautiful valley surrounded by more beautiful mountains. It is no more than twenty minutes away from Ventura county and LA county beaches. The weather is pretty much perfect year round. There are some super hot days and some rather cold days but it is a dry heat and it rarely dips below 40 degrees in winter. I was an hour or so from seeing a show in LA and about the same distance from State Street in Santa Barbara. In my experience, traffic in the northern suburbs is not as bad as traffic south of Los Angeles (in towns such as Huntington Beach) but for pretty much any drive beyond the San Fernando Valley, what should have taken no more than a half hour never took any less than a full hour and was usually closer to two hours. It is an expensive area and I feel fortunate to have spent so much of my life there. That doesn’t mean I plan to return. If I was to move back to California it would probably be further north in some place like San Luis Obispo but the truth is I’ll probably end up in Colorado.