Have you noticed how people outside of California tend to be condescending when you tell them you live here?
As if they’d just heard that you live in the slums of Mumbai and want to express their pity.
I once went to a reporting conference up in Asilomar at Pacific Grove (which you should visit if you can), and wandered out onto the rustic wooden boardwalk, where I watched a fawn grazing on a grassy stretch of beach. It was a perfect moment, still and mesmerizing.
Then, a man walked up to me and said hello. We started chatting, and I learned that he was a professor from Chicago who was there to conduct one of the training sessions I’d be attending. He asked and I told him I was from Southern California.
He looked at me pityingly and said, “I’m sorry. How can you stand it there?”
I was taken aback, because I hadn’t yet started hearing this refrain. I didn’t even know how to respond.
I thought to myself, “You mean, how can I stand living near beaches so gorgeous that people come from everywhere to visit? Where the sun shines most days and there are no mosquitos to drive you indoors? Where I can be hiking in the desert in the morning and sitting by a beach bonfire that night? Where I can drive up to the mountains in 90 minutes?”
I’ve been to Chicago and, believe me, it’s no garden of earthly delights. My theory is that they build all the beautiful skyscrapers along Michigan Avenue because they need something to look at, since it’s flat as a pancake there and no mountains to gaze upon.
Now, Chicago does have genuinely wonderful, friendly, Midwestern-type people who are naturally kind and generous. Which we don’t have all that many of here. But they also have tornadoes and blizzards, drippingly humid summers and their only body of water is Lake Michigan, which, trust me, is no Caribbean Sea. I once was there when they had two, count ’em, two tornado warnings in two days, meaning we had to turn on the radio and go hide in some cellar until we got the all clear. Um, no.
Since that encounter, I’ve heard this refrain more and more often from people, either feeling sorry for me or thinking I’m slightly deluded for living here.
I went to a rodeo in Montana a few years ago, and the announcer made a point of insulting Californians over the loudspeaker, to great applause. Obviously, a popular sentiment.
But I’ve done a deeply scientific analysis of this, and here’s the truth: Yes, there’s terrible traffic here. And guess what? Every big city has horrendous traffic. Often even worse. Yes, we should have a better Metro system to cope with it, if the politicians weren’t wimps. But I travel constantly, and I can’t think of a single city that doesn’t grind into gridlock at rush hour.
Yes, the fires are bad and tragic and we all suffer. No one deserves to lose his home. And we have earthquakes. My house was red-tagged after Northridge. But they have hurricanes in Florida and tornadoes in Kansas and floods all sorts of places. We’re not alone in our vulnerability to Mother Nature.
There’s no question that it costs a frickin’ fortune to buy a house here. I feel lucky that I already own one, and I know my kids are unlikely to ever be able to buy one, unless they become major drug lords or crooked politicians.
I have several acquaintances who’ve moved to Texas for cheaper real estate, reporting they can buy a mansion there. But … then you have to live in Texas. Where it’s legal to walk around in public with a loaded handgun. Where schools have banned 801 books. No thanks.
This is one of the reasons my beautiful daughter, Curly Girl, moved up to northern Washington state, because land is still affordable there. Not cheap, but her cousin and her half-brother have already been able to buy their own houses. She couldn’t afford a ramshackle garage here, I’m sad to say.
But that’s the price we pay for living in a beautiful place on the ocean with a vibrant, diversified economy. Where you can see a world champion baseball team on Friday, and go see your favorite rock legends on tour the following night. Where you can go to the world’s richest museum for free, and then visit the observatory at one of the world’s largest urban parks the following day — also for free.
Where you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. This is true, because my colleague Andre actually did it. It’s a moot point for me, because I don’t do either, but that won’t prevent me from using it as an argument.
Yes, it can still be hard and expensive to live here. But I love it, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Even if just to avoid the mosquitos.