I hate California. Who the hell are these people? Maybe I shouldn’t be so broad. I hate Southern California. SoCal. I hate the palm trees, the barren highways, the littered sidewalks. I hate the term SoCal. The people who live here think it is THE place to be. They think so highly of this bottom portion of one of the biggest states in our country that it is almost its own state. The other half, the top section, the greener, prettier, and more scenic (better half if you ask me), is the middle of nowhere. It is the ugly little sister that your parents make you take everywhere no matter how much you contest.
I have to give it some credit. It has the ocean and the mountains. However, in between the gorgeous blue pacific and the glistening ridges of the San Gabriels, past the glamorous L.A city skyline and Bentley strewn streets of Beverly Hills is a pocket of sweltering heat called the Inland Empire. It is inland but it is no empire. What is funny to me is that despite the vast differences and the fact that on a good day it can take two and a half hours to get to and from L.A, the people here consider themselves to be under the LA umbrella. I hate to break it to you but this is NOT L.A. It is NOT fashion forward, NOT progressive, NOT the best weather you can find, NOT the most laid back. It. Just. Is. Not.
Here is my view, my opinion really, except that I believe it to be fact. You enter the I.E. and you are literally HIT with heat. It is dry, heavy and fierce. You would never know you were an hour from the beach. It is like being teased with the ocean breeze dangling by a string over your head. The highways are lined with brown mounds of rock and dirt interrupted randomly by enormous warehouses the size of three city blocks. They are massive, white, concrete squares with few windows. The streets are lined with palm trees, which makes for great pictures especially with snow-capped mountains off in the background. But that’s only if you are looking up. At ground level there are piles of litter everywhere, I didn’t even know littering was still a thing. I thought it disappeared with pay phones. The concept that people actually have trash that they throw out of their car windows or, by the looks of it, a barrel of trash that they empty directly on the side of the street is baffling to me. Everything is brown. Brown, dry and hot. Really, really hot.
I also find it quite interesting the lack of interest there is in any other part of this country. Here in the I.E, Southern Californians think nothing else in the country matters because they think everything that is happening, is happening in Southern California. They have the narrowest view of this country and most other countries as well because all they know is Southern California. They do not travel much outside of the state, they do not think they need to. But for an area that is considered so forward thinking and ahead of the curve, they do not get out much. Don’t you need to though? In order to be the one in the front of the pack, don’t you need to know who you are competing against?
It feels like one big contradiction. You get this idea that everyone is open minded, accepting, free spirited. Almost everyone is covered in tattoos. They have hair every color of the rainbow. And yet, I have heard open discussions at my work about the bible and seen people reading the bible at Panera. I hear young millennials talking about what church they go to. There are small tattoos of crosses on the insides of wrists and that fish symbol with JESUS written inside the body stuck to the backs of cars. I am not saying you can’t have tattoos and be religious and I am not saying there is anything wrong with being religious. But in my whole life I have never heard so much God talk. Quite frankly, it makes me pretty uncomfortable. I thought it was an unwritten rule (actually I am pretty sure it is written down somewhere) that there are two things you do not discuss at work/in public. Politics and religion. It has to be said, I live in the bible belt of California.
Don’t even get me started on food. I have never seen so many fast food restaurants in my life and what’s worse, I’ve never seen so many people go to fast food restaurants in my life. I was embarrassed when I would go to McDonalds for an ice coffee in the town I worked in back in Massachusetts. I practically ducked in my car hoping no one would see me and think I was ordering a Big Mac and fries. I wished they had a separate drive thru lane for coffee only so noone would mistake me for a fast food junkie. The other day I heard excitement over a new Wendys coming in across the street from a co-workers and everyone walks around with those enormous slurpee size cups full of soda. The organic food movement, small plates and farm to table are mysterious concepts here. There are no butchers or bakeries. Good meat is the deli counter at Stater Bros. This is hell for a foodie, unless you are a foodie trying to save money. In which case you are in the right spot, it’s slim pickins.
All everyone says to me about living here is how wonderful it is. In one hour you can get to the beach, the mountains, L.A, San Diego. It is central to everything and you can’t beat the weather. Well that is all true if you can manage to make it through five different highways that are seven lanes across, with millions of people driving on them daily and not hit traffic. If you can handle the motorcycles whizzing past you in between lanes and manage not to rear end the multiple cars that cut right in front of you without using a blinker, you will be golden. The weather is great when it isn’t June, July, August or September and the smog doesn’t cover up the view of the mountains. I want to love it because it appears that so many people do. I feel as though I am doing something wrong, am I missing something? I can’t help but think everyone loves it here so much because they have nothing else to compare it to.
When I tell people that I am from Massachusetts I get hit with a plethora of questions. Does it snow there? Does it ever not snow? Does it ever get hot there? That’s up near Canada right? Is it near the beach? Can you actually go to the beach though? That’s a red state isn’t it? It’s somewhere above Georgia? They are shocked to learn about the houses built in the 1700 ‘s that are still standing, or the abundance of eclectic restaurants or the liberal pride or the beautiful beaches. They think any town with only one high school must have dirt roads and no electricity. They also think if it isn’t L.A or N.Y.C it isn’t relevant. I have plenty I could say about L.A but I do not live in L.A, I live in the I.E and neither is anything like N.Y.C. As for the population here, they should venture out into the great U.S and perhaps they should start in MA.
*I wrote this during the eight months I lived in California.