. . if you go up the Angeles Crest a little ways. The big problem here is sky light - there's a couple of thousand square miles here where it's never really dark.

There are efforts to reduce this - streetlights that don't shine upwards and such things, but there's a long ways to go. The skylight combines with the natural and unnatural haziness (the LA basin was noted for haziness even before the Spanish explorers arrived) to keep the sky bright.

Of course, if you go all the way up to Mount Wilson and find the right spot the stars are a bit upstaged by the view of over 1000 square miles of city lights, seeming to start right at your feet.