The problem is that the sprawl here is so immense (and I say that as someone raised in Southern California) that all useful and/or interesting stores (such as used bookstores) are spread out in no discernible pattern in sort of a random distribution over the suburbs. As a result, nobody knows anything about anything three or four towns over, so questions like "Is there a used bookstore around here" are met with universal negatives "Nope, not anywhere out here", when the answer should be "Yes, but you may or may not be able to find it".
Also, the extremely bad traffic engineering makes it very difficult to find your way to some places that you know are actually there.
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The problem is that the sprawl here is so immense (and I say that as someone raised in Southern California) that all useful and/or interesting stores (such as used bookstores) are spread out in no discernible pattern in sort of a random distribution over the suburbs. As a result, nobody knows anything about anything three or four towns over, so questions like "Is there a used bookstore around here" are met with universal negatives "Nope, not anywhere out here", when the answer should be "Yes, but you may or may not be able to find it".
Also, the extremely bad traffic engineering makes it very difficult to find your way to some places that you know are actually there.