I wrote:
I believe not having my local with Clear-URLs and/or redirecting to the subdirectory is causing path incompatibility when I import DB from the live site. Any suggestion would be appreciated.
I solved my problem. After finding MAMP being inflexible, I found Headdress to setup virtual host beautifully: http://headdress.twinsparc.com/ Just in case anyone wants to try it. This is only for OSX, by the way.