I’m honestly surprised by your description. I’m from the East Coast of the US (NY and NJ), and I did find Southern Californians to be somewhat suspicious by nature. However, last year, I bought a rental apartment in San Diego in a very socially mixed (in a good way, in my book) apartment complex. I spent a few weeks renovating it, cleaning it up, and getting it ready for tenants.
I found that the neighbors were actually a pretty talkative bunch — I got to talk to quite a few of them, even got invited to a barbecue by one of them. This despite the strange noises going on inside the apartment and the fact that I was wearing different shades of wall paint on various parts of me for a week…
Maybe it’s more neighborhood-by-neighborhood. What area of town are you in? Perhaps everyone is so busy working that they don’t have time or energy to talk.
Maybe you would prefer a more urban area (not urban in the sense of NY or Paris, but with small bungalows like parts of North Park, Golden Hill, or even the more poorer/working-class parts of the city).
