For most New Yorkers, the only other place they’d live is California

There’s an advert on the New York City subway showing two dinosaurs talking to each other over the top of the skyline (no, I don’t know why either). “I’m thinking of moving to LA,” says one, his scaly head poking out from beyond the Empire State Building. “You’re dead to me,” replies the other, curling a claw around the top of an apartment block.

Moving from east coast to west (and vice versa) is such a common occurrence here in the US that jokes about those conversations – the ones where sodden, snow-covered, shivering New Yorkers swear over picklebacks in dive bars that they’ll never endure another east coast winter again so they’re decamping to the sunny, palm-lined west coast once and for all – are prime advertising fodder.

They also power huge sections of the economy: there are entire moving companies, with fleets of pet-friendly trucks, which specifically shuttle between New York and California and back again. If you’re moving from your home in Wisconsin to a new life in New Mexico, you might struggle to find people willing to help you lug your bed, sofa and 17 puppies across the country – but if you’re San Francisco-bound from a studio in Brooklyn, people will fall over themselves to offer you business.