The Random Comic Strip

The Random Comic Strip

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.


Saturday, January 16, 2010

California Continues


I'd like to follow up a little on what I started yesterday. I came across the following Guardian article while surfing about this morning:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/california-failing-state-debt

It is difficult to explain all the things that California is, much less how it has come to its present state of affairs, in a single article. It is extremely difficult to explain it to someone who has never lived there for any length of time. Taking a vacation somewhere gives you a glimpse of something, reading articles about a place only gives you the impression of the writer (or what the writer intends for you to grasp) of the place.

I went to California in November of 1965, a new recruit of the US Navy. I was 19 years old, beginning my adult life, my 4 year enlistment cutting off any retreat to the security of my home. I saw myself as a Floridian, a rival state of California. The two states compete for tourist dollars, in some agriculture (citrus mostly), and for growth in population. We both tout our beaches, our climates, our entertainment, our lifestyles.

I was excited and fearful. Change like this almost always provides a dichotomy of emotion. Especially for me. It must be something I enjoy, that conflicting emotion because I have moved often in my life. As a nascent surfer, I had two places that loomed large in my imagination: California and Hawaii. Hawaii was almost imaginary, almost Utopian and unreal. California was there, real, solid (more or less... since they have earthquakes), attainable.

San Diego boot camp was my only demand from the Navy. I insisted on it as a condition of enlistment. I had no desire to go to Michigan in November, I knew what northern state winters were like. I had no idea that I wouldn't get near a beach in San Diego for 4 months. Nor that the weather would be so unlike the image I had in my head.

The make up of the company in boot camp was over 50% Californian. Most of those were southern Californians, predominantly from the Los Angeles area. California is really two primary states; southern California and northern California. It is actually more than two and the "northern" part is really the "middle". There are no borders and these divisions are subject to perspective and imagination.

Inside the two main divisions, are two city-states; San Francisco and Los Angeles. Each represents a certain life-style, a certain personality and view of life. And they also represent the two faces California most often presents as its image.

Southern Californians are blond, healthy, tanned, and always smiling. None of which is true. But that's the image. It is such a strong image that I once described my own son and his friends as "California Clones". And, of course, he and his friends were mostly blond, healthy, tanned, and smiling at that time.

Northern Californians were quirky, smarter, and paler. Tans, it seemed, were harder to come by.

Southern Californians were more arrogant. Northern more friendly.

Since most of the 20 years I spent in California were in southern California, I know it a little better and it more represents My California.

California seemed to want to be everything to everybody. Everything good, that is. It attracted people like some kind of biological magnet. And it provided for them. In southern California freeways, huge concrete ribbons going seemingly everywhere, spawned and encouraged a car oriented culture. And they seemed to ride above the city (actually, even Los Angeles is a complex of cities with hardly noticed borders) with off-ramps dropping down into little communities that had their own, often ethnic, flavor; Mexican, African-American, Asian, white suburbanite (a distinctly different suburbanite than you might find in New York, Ohio, or Kansas), all separated by the freeways that rode on earthen walls between them.

California catered to the influx by building. More freeways, more houses, more businesses, definitely more fast food places, more entertainment, all greeting more and more people. Welcome to the Promised Land!

And it is a monument to the fact that growth cannot continue forever, to be paid for by more growth and and future generations. The bill, it seems, has come due. That beautiful starlet has moved past middle age and the make-up and botox cannot hide the signs of a life spent in the fast lane.

9 comments:

Fragrant Liar said...

See, now I'm feeling a bit like California, including the differences between the northern and southern parts of me. (sigh)

Douglas said...

Fragrant, you're tanned and arrogant on the bottom but quirky and pale and friendly on top?

Pearl said...

How's the song go? "Looking California, feeling Minnesota"?

I've been to California a number of times on vacation and have, without fail, been offered jobs based solely, it seems, on where I'm from.

It's a beautiful state. I'm sorry it's in such a bad way...

Pearl

Man of Roma said...

Allow this Roman boomer to blabber a bit, Douglas. And I warn you, MoR’s comments are LONG (I learned it from my Indian bloggers - and from my genes).

I read your 2 posts on California with pleasure, and have compared the info you provide - North and South of California – with the one I have in memory. California (and America) always meant a lot to me, although My California has always been the Northern part, SF especially.

I’ll explain, hoping not to bore you & your readers.


1) As for the South Cal LA area, I stayed a bit, hobo-like, in Venice Beach (1993), where I found Fred Allen’s jest to be appropriate: “California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange”.

One of the milieus I stumbled upon was in fact this bunch of people who, while hoping to find a job in the entertainment industry, had this everybody-sleeping-with-everybody type of lifestyle which puzzled me because of its total emptiness, or so it appeared to me - I am no puritan, as my blog attests.

[Btw, there’s a Decameron Reloaded festival at my blog, with people asked to send they littles stories (even 1-2-3 liners) but some of my readers were absolutely scared by it, while others sent me porn stuff I will NOT publish. No in-between thing: weird.]

Not that the writers who have lived in LA did much to better this image of malaise - Huxley, Chandler, Ellroy. Literature is important to foreigners, they need a picture, even if it may be misleading.

2) But I also keep the most beautiful souvenirs of North California. In my 20s I hadn't been there yet but it simply materialised before my eyes, in Trastevere, Rome, with the cute face of a girl from SF who totally bewitched me and accepted to share a cheap flat in via della Lungara. This place soon attracted a long series of odd Americans: a gay pianist who played Bach marvellously, a totally crazy but adorable Californian paintress, a Vietnam vet from SF as well, a would-be actress from Chicago - the list could be long. But THE GIRL was the real character. A few years older, she was much more cultured than I was. Ah lovely years they were Douglas.


So Trastevere became our Haight-Ashbury. We felt all brothers, no race, religion, country mattering, and Trastevere, not yet so trendy, was populated by these unconventional expatriates plus of course the locals, true Romans beyond any belief.


Oddly enough, on the stage of this ancient theatre I first met young America and its sparkling fresh mind. Not only my English began to improve.

I will point out we were not hippies. Being not saints either there was not much place though in our experiences for nihilism or malaise.

Douglas said...

Pearl, I met a couple (several) Minnesotans while I was in California (did you know you were all of a "type?"). They seemed to blend in well, what with the blond hair and blue eyes and all.

MoR, I am honored by your dropping by my miserable hovel of a blog. Feel free to fill as much space as you deem warranted, I much enjoy your perspective and style. Ah, yes... the girls of California (someone should write a song dedicated to them). No true Hippie ever would label him/her-self as one. My California is mostly the California of the 60's and 70's, before the cost of giving everything to everybody became known. Housing developments and apartments popped up like fields of mushrooms alongside the freshly laid concrete ribbons that seemed unneeded when they were begun. Malls filled once verdant valleys. Lifestyles were hedonistic and, yes, everyone was sleeping with everyone else... even then.

IB said...

I love California though past its hey-day it may be. There is still an optimistic spirit in its people. They are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations descendant from adventurers and explorers who went to the end of the continent in search of the good life. Did they find it? Who knows, but at least they believed they might and that was enough for them.

Man of Roma said...

Feel free to fill as much space as you deem warranted
That's a risky thing to say to MoR, beware. I'm just now adding you and Phil to my blogroll. I was amazed his last post is in French.

Man of Roma said...

Allow this Roman boomer to blabber a bit, Douglas. And I warn you, MoR’s comments are LONG (I learned it from my Indian bloggers - and from my genes).

I read your 2 posts on California with pleasure, and have compared the info you provide - North and South of California – with the one I have in memory. California (and America) always meant a lot to me, although My California has always been the Northern part, SF especially.

I’ll explain, hoping not to bore you & your readers.


1) As for the South Cal LA area, I stayed a bit, hobo-like, in Venice Beach (1993), where I found Fred Allen’s jest to be appropriate: “California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange”.

One of the milieus I stumbled upon was in fact this bunch of people who, while hoping to find a job in the entertainment industry, had this everybody-sleeping-with-everybody type of lifestyle which puzzled me because of its total emptiness, or so it appeared to me - I am no puritan, as my blog attests.

[Btw, there’s a Decameron Reloaded festival at my blog, with people asked to send they littles stories (even 1-2-3 liners) but some of my readers were absolutely scared by it, while others sent me porn stuff I will NOT publish. No in-between thing: weird.]

Not that the writers who have lived in LA did much to better this image of malaise - Huxley, Chandler, Ellroy. Literature is important to foreigners, they need a picture, even if it may be misleading.

2) But I also keep the most beautiful souvenirs of North California. In my 20s I hadn't been there yet but it simply materialised before my eyes, in Trastevere, Rome, with the cute face of a girl from SF who totally bewitched me and accepted to share a cheap flat in via della Lungara. This place soon attracted a long series of odd Americans: a gay pianist who played Bach marvellously, a totally crazy but adorable Californian paintress, a Vietnam vet from SF as well, a would-be actress from Chicago - the list could be long. But THE GIRL was the real character. A few years older, she was much more cultured than I was. Ah lovely years they were Douglas.


So Trastevere became our Haight-Ashbury. We felt all brothers, no race, religion, country mattering, and Trastevere, not yet so trendy, was populated by these unconventional expatriates plus of course the locals, true Romans beyond any belief.


Oddly enough, on the stage of this ancient theatre I first met young America and its sparkling fresh mind. Not only my English began to improve.

I will point out we were not hippies. Being not saints either there was not much place though in our experiences for nihilism or malaise.

Man of Roma said...

Feel free to fill as much space as you deem warranted
That's a risky thing to say to MoR, beware. I'm just now adding you and Phil to my blogroll. I was amazed his last post is in French.