Nathaniel

Shockey

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May 26, 2008

Two Years In, California Grows On Me

Any Californian worth his organic salt will tell you, the hills here are not brown. They’re golden.

When I lived in Seattle, I can remember falling into the sloppy habit of uttering criticisms about the people, the politics, the weather and pretty much anything differentiating it from the City of Brotherly Love. But looking back, my two years in Seattle are among the best I can remember.

Now that I’m approaching the two-year mark for time spent in the Golden State, it seems worth reflecting on how it has evolved from a place in which I live to a home.

My first impression of California was Los Angeles, which is where my future wife was living when I met her. One of the things that stands out in my memory was when she took me to a rather elite club and I was wise enough to bring my most stylish attire – some khaki pants, a wrinkled, yellow, long-sleeved, button-down shirt and brown loafers. Although we currently have an honest enough relationship that she tells me when I don’t look my best, at the time our relationship probably would not have withstood the honest truth about it.

I think she said something like, “You look very East Coast,” which I considered a compliment. Now when I look back at pictures from that night, I realized I looked a bit like the big dopey bird in the Pixar short For The Birds.

Needless to say, my first visit to California since I was 10 left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. After three or four visits, I figured out that L.A. probably wasn’t the place for me. And naturally, I was already forming an opinion about a state I barely knew at all.

Then there’s San Francisco, a city any conservative will tell you is probably the smuggest city in the world that doesn’t rhyme with “Maris”. When I moved to the Bay Area, it didn’t take long to learn why Michael Savage refers to the city as San FranPsycho, or San FranFreako. Every weekend, scores of people are walking, running or biking naked. I call it disgusting. They call it protesting.

Then there’s my church choir. Oh yes, the California genes go deep, penetrating even church choirs. I’d gotten the impression from previous church music gigs that punctuality is generally expected for rehearsals. But in California, punctuality means calculating one quarter the length of the event and arriving about that long after it is scheduled to start. For baseball games, you arrive around the beginning of the third inning. For a party that starts at eight, you show up no earlier than nine. And for a choir practice that begins at seven and goes until nine, the conductor is quite satisfied if it has filled up by 7:30.

Clearly, neither punctuality nor clothing is sacred in Schwarzenegger’s kingdom.

But there is more to California than this?

It’s beautiful, for starters. I have a gorgeous view of Mount Diablo from our second story apartment. It almost never rains, which I sometimes talk about as a way of psychoanalyzing the people, but when it comes down to it, it’s really quite wonderful. And we have great wine, which I probably would have never been able to appreciate had I not moved here, and let me assure you, good wine is worth learning to appreciate.

California does not have as deep a history as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania or Virginia, which is yet another way to explain why the people sometimes seem less than grounded. But still, there has got to be more to this state than beautiful geography, weather, no Liberty Bell and people who never learned when public nudity became age inappropriate. There is much more, actually.

California is a state of activity, of writers, musicians, every other known and probably many unknown kinds of artist, protesters, immigrants, conflict, languages, palm trees, redwood trees, vineyards, Yosemite, cable cars, five professional baseball teams, three football teams, four basketball teams, three hockey teams, even three soccer teams, 100-degree heat, farmers, affluence, the Gold Rush, movie-making, dreamers, moochers . . . and what less would you expect from 38 million people? It’s a melting pot of innumerable tastes, some of them delicious, others you need to spit out immediately.

California, if for no other reason than its incredible variety and electoral votes, commands reverence. And let’s be honest, those who claim they can’t find anything to like just haven’t looked hard enough.

It’s taken a few years, but this wacky place is starting to grow on me. And when you hear me complaining about it, which you likely will, bear in mind that my comments are no longer just shallow complaints from an apathetic spectator. They’re shallow complaints from a concerned Californian whose formerly brownish perspective has taken on a distinctly more golden hue. 

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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