Phil Haack has a great post up about Los Angeles which Rob Connery adds to with his own post.
I don't live in the city (though I do live in LA county). I live in what is essentially a suburb of a suburb in that Pasadena was originally a suburb of LA but then grew into a city the size of most major cities prompting its own suburbs to pop up. That said most of the above posts pertain more to this area of Southern California as a whole than the city itself and for that reason they made me really look around and appreciate what I have.
Plus, as anyone who has lived here long enough will attest to, your friends tend to get scattered all over the LA area after a while so it isn't like I don't end up driving into LA every other weekend anyway.
This May will mark my 15th year of living in the LA area (since High School) and while I'll be the first to admit I've thought of moving on occasion I'm very aware of just how hard it would be to live anywhere else at this point. The above posts do a good job of putting why that is into words (and they make for some nice lazy Sunday reading imho).