“City Life Anymore…?”

Ahh California…the Bear Flag Republic, where the streets and streams are made of gold, the edge of western civilization, where the sun rests at night…let me know if you think of any others. But when I was in Spain and Italy, when people found out I was from California, they almost always asked about the state. Well, to help answer the question, I’ve decided to write about the people of this great state!

You won’t be seeing many of these around anymore.

Instead, the only brown people you’re likely (highly likely) to see are from south of the border. Hispanics make up about 36% of the population, Asians make up 13% of the total and blacks 7%. Besides being a microcosm of the U.S., California is a home of immigrants, legal and illegal. Many making their way from Central and South America via Mexico. As for languages, 26% speak Spanish and 2.6% speak Chinese (of any dialect).

As for religion, the state has by far the most Catholics of any other state in the union. Behind Catholicism, the next dominant religion is Protestantism followed by Judaism. But California is also home to a large amount of weirdo-religions. Those religions made popular by weirdos like Tom Cruise and random “cults” dispersed around the state. Hollywood is home to the largest amount of Scientology followers on Earth, famous or not. Just look at the ongoing soap opera life of Cruise (and now Katie Holmes) to see just how ridiculous this “church” is. Besides Scientology, the most beautiful stretch of road, Big Sur, is home to another rather odd school of thought, the Esalen Institute, while one of the highest income communities in America (Rancho Santa Fe) was home to the Heaven’s Gate cult. Many Eastern religions are quite popular too and it’s not uncommon to hear Taoist mantras blaring from radios while in Los Angeles.

The politics of California, despite having a Republican leader in a former A-list actor (only in California would this happen), the state is rather progressive and is a hotbed for progressivism. Many political trends start here and are later adopted around the world. Californians tend to be more open and liberal than other Americans (though this isn’t saying much compared to the rest of the world). They also tend to be nicer and cooler than the rest of the country. I’m going to stick to my belief that any “sun & beach” culture is a happy culture.

Though the central valley may be more conservative and red, drive a few miles (well more like 200 miles) west and you reach the beach communities of Monterey, Santa Cruz and that one European transplanted city, San Francisco. The City, as the locals call it, is an oddity in America, I think. If California is the progressive leader of the States, then San Fran is it’s capital. Though nothing compared to Amsterdam, I’m going to go out on a whim and say that citizens of San Francisco are the most liberal in all America (which again, isn’t saying much). They also tend to be smarter and more intelligent than your average Californian.

Los Angeles, at nearly 4 million people proper, is America’s 2nd largest city. It’s a massive, sprawling city that is really just a collection of smaller cities tied together by L.A. City Council. And with one city having about a million different cultures (could the neighborhoods of Venice Beach and Watts be any different?), you get about a million different types of people. It’s rather easy to hate L.A. unless you know the right spots (and there are many) or have a local tour guide show you around. But in general, the more affluent “white” population lives on the west coast while the ghettos and “blacks” live in the south. Mexicans dominate the east side and the working class of the northern San Fernando Valley is a hodgepodge of cultures and skin colors. The image of Angelinos portrayed on T.V. as being star-struck is only partly true and is confined to the neighborhoods of Hollywood, parts of the westside and “downtown.” Restaurants seem to dart nearly every other lot in L.A. with enthusiastic waiters who seem to be in love with their job of serving others…but we all know it’s a temporary gig until his band gets signed, or her movie script gets published.

That other big city of the south, San Diego is just…well it’s a sun soaked, surf crazed place that’s cool. The citizens tend to be dark skinned for one of two reasons; either they’re sun tanned or they’re Mexican. Mexican culture is rather prevalent in San Diego and the city is home to some of the best Mexican restaurants on Earth! If California is the state with the most relaxed people in America, than San Diego is the city with the nicest, most relaxed people in America…well at least from personal experience. Southerners can be pretty friendly too…

With California being home to a massive beach culture and Hollywood, it’s no coincidence that Californians tend to be fitter and more into exercise than other Americans, which again isn’t saying too much. You just never know when that movie scout or modeling agent may be out on the hunt for a new star!

Two Quotes by Henry George:

“It is a universal fact that where the value of land is the highest, civilization exhibits the greatest luxury side by side with the most piteous destitution. To see human beings in the most abject, the most helpless and hopeless condition, you must go, not to the unfenced praries…but to the great cities where the ownership of a little patch of ground is a fortune.”

“I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, ‘I don’t know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre.’ Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege.”

Now in my ongoing quest to figure out what makes L.A. tick, I wonder how a city of nearly 4,000,000 (in borders) still has such immense poverty (relative to America) and immense wealth. I was down there again last weekend and while in Corona to check up on some houses, I decided to go to Amoeba Records in Hollywood. Being near the freeway, I jumped on the 91 through Artesia and eventually into South L.A. where instead of transfering to the 110 (and eventually the 101), I got off on Avalon St. I decided to drive through most of South L.A. to see if it had changed. I had been through that area many times when I was younger when I played hockey in Gardena, Paramount and Norwalk. Anyways, going north on Avalon took me through Compton, Willow Brook, Watts, South Gate and Hunington Park. The whole place looks the same. And all the stereotypes you see on t.v. seem to not miss the mark too much. Limo drivers are black, tall, imoposing gates (and they are numerous) are all rust, people cross the street whenever they want with little regard for oncoming traffic, and there are many fried chicken resturants everywhere. Walton Middle School also has to be the most depressing school in America. I eventually reached the 10 and to Hollywood, going through Beverly Hills, UCLA, passing by Bel-Air, etc. I did all that in about 30 minutes, more or less, with traffic. The social gaps are despairing.

Seeing both extremes of the spectrum, which I’ve seen in that city all my life, gets more and more vivid as I get older. The influential political economist Henry George, who I found out about through Mike Davis, has some of the more concrete reasons as to why the city is the way it is. Though Davis himself writes extensively that homeowners associations in the west (near the water) are responsible for pushing non-whites away to the south and east of the city, he also holds equal venom for the LAPD and city council for the utter contempt for the area of L.A.

What Henry George may say today, if alive, about L.A. would be interesting. He had visited New York City (late 1800s) and the paradox of wealth and poverty made him write “Progress and Poverty.” In the work he argues, basically, that a large portion of wealth in a city, created by social and technological advances in a free-market system, which is eventually captured by land owners via economic rent, creates poverty as the wealth is unearned. In essence, work-which we claim to value, is taxed. Sales are taxed. A small percentage is gained from the production of jobs, and it’s not the working class!

The main argument the far right have with Los Angeles is based off of Georgism, i.e. everyone deserves to privately own what they create but everything supplied by nature, especially land, belongs to all of humanity. This notion is understood, I believe, unconciously by many Californians. For example, the saga of the California Water Wars has turned William Mulholland into a not so pure architect of Los Angeles’ “greatness.” The sheer theft in the name of profit (Los Angeles didn’t grow to the monster it is until after this) of water from the Owens Valley has created a trend of thought in which outsiders see L.A. more as a Kleptocracy than anything else. It should also be noted that Mulholland Drive has some of the most scenic views of the L.A. basin, not to mention a birds eye view of the city as a whole- probably the only way it should be seen! The street was also a hotbed for rebeliousness. By the 1950s, the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Homeowners, founded in Bel-Air, was crusading against hotrodding on the famous street. Wow I’ve never meandered this much in a long time…

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