I lived in Long Beach for years. I have some friends there with whom I occasionally play MTG. I lived in Culver City for the last few years and that's how I hooked up with the UCLA group. I'm in Torrance now.

If you build an EDH deck you should come to the UCLA group. Heck, even if you don't have and EDH deck, sometimes you can use a loaner - most of us have multiple decks. If you like the group and want to keep going, maybe we can carpool. LBC to Torrance is not too far.

I'm a convert to EDH. It makes games much more epic. Also, it's a good way to use cards you would normally never even think of using. Since you only need 1-ofs, it can actually be more cost effective format in which to build decks. Sure, there are some staples to the format that can be costly, but overall I think it's very easy to get into. My suggestion would be to try and get a pre-con deck if you can and then augment it.