No Place Like L.A. is our series that asks L.A. transplants and immigrants: "When was the moment you felt that Los Angeles was truly home?"
This is the story of Cynthia Brando from Atwater Village.
I moved here four years ago from Northern California.
I thought about moving here to Los Angeles to pursue music. I was kind of scared because I wasn't familiar with Los Angeles.
When I told friends up north that I was moving to Los Angeles, a lot of them were nice and supportive about it, but I could see the look on their faces. They were like contorted and pained.
A lot of the things that they would say were that, "They're snobby. Everyone there is egotistical."
I never heard any positives about Los Angeles. Like, at all.
But I wanted to keep an open mind about it because I wanted to do music and I knew this was the perfect place for that.
I came down in my Jeep, I sold a lot of my belongings, and I had a cat and I came down here.
My experience in these last four years has just been incredible.
A lot of people were super supportive that I was a musician. They welcomed me with open arms.
But after a couple years here, I was still calling Northern California home.
I had a friend in North California that I was talking to and she said, "How can I stand living down here? It's so crowded and ugly, and how I can stand the people down here, they're so fake?"
It really upset me because I wasn't having that experience.
I hung up the phone with her, and then I put this Facebook post out thanking everyone for their support.
I got this overwhelming response saying that I'm such an asset to the community and they love my music – just all this support.
It was that very day that the words from that experience inspired me to write a song about my love for L.A. called, "Oh, L.A."
It was that moment that I said, "Okay. This is my new home and I just need to own that and start referring to Los Angeles as my home now.