When the evacuation order came, Paleto Bay was where Los Santos was told to go. Most people arrived expecting a few uncomfortable nights in a motel before heading home.
Days later, Los Santos is still closed, and something unexpected is happening on the streets of Paleto. People are settling in. Some of them are starting to like it.
So Weazel News asked the question: is life in Paleto actually that bad?
What Paleto has
More than most people from the city assume. Paleto Boulevard has two 24/7 stores open around the clock, a liquor store, and a Fleeca Bank branch with ATMs across town, so wages and savings are never far away.
For clothes there is Binco and a Discount Store, and you can get a proper cut at Herr Kutz or fresh ink at the tattoo parlour. Paleto Bay Medical is open for anything from a sprained ankle to worse, and the Sheriff’s Department has a visible presence on the streets.
After dark, Club Galaxy keeps the town from going to sleep too early.
Room to live
Housing is where Paleto surprises people. There are apartments on the market along Procopio Promenade, Paleto Boulevard and Cascabel Avenue, a handful of houses, and small business units on Duluoz Avenue waiting for someone with an idea.
Compared with Los Santos prices, and with Los Santos homes now under threat from the State’s “presumed abandoned” rule, some families are quietly doing the maths.
And the view
Then there is the setting. Mount Chiliad rises over the town, the Paleto forest starts where the streets end, and the beach and the Pacific are a short walk away. Hunters and anglers have the Department of Fish and Wildlife station on their doorstep.
The streets are calmer than anything Los Santos has seen in years.
What is missing
It is not perfect. Paleto is small, and a town built for a few thousand people is now carrying the weight of a city. The town fuel station is being rebuilt, so filling up means a drive out of town for now. Queues are longer, rooms are harder to find, and plenty of evacuees still just want their own bed back in Los Santos.
“I honestly might not return”
One new resident, who moved north with the evacuation and asked us not to use their name, told Weazel News they had stopped counting down the days.
“I came up here thinking it would be a week of hell,” they said. “Now I walk to the store, people actually say hello, nobody is shooting at anybody, and I can see the ocean from my window. I honestly might not return.”
Have your say
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