Two girls for every boy in Los Angeles, California


If you're a fan of Jan and Dean, you may remember their 1960s song called "Surf City". It's a catchy tune, and the refrain includes the phrase "two girls for every boy", which indicated how wonderful Surf City was to them. The song was written by Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys.

Brian lived in the Los Angeles area, and aside from the cheerfulness of the song, there's a sinister note that for girls interested in romance, they were going to have a lot of competition. Good for the boys, not so good for the girls!

I moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s, and it was still Surf City. You know, two girls for every boy, probably even more. And from what I understand, this imbalance remains to this day.

For a young man in Los Angeles, of course, this was wonderful for me. Like the song says, "All you gotta do is wink your eye!"

Of course, for the women who who looking to find a good man, the pickings were kinda slim. Before I met my girlfriend, I remember going to a "dance party" that was held every month by one of our female sales reps. She was happily affianced, but she had a lot of girlfriends who just couldn't seem to meet any decent guys. So she (the sales rep) would look for single men (like me) and invite them to the party.

Walking into a roomful of hopeful women may seem like a male fantasy, but for me it's one of the saddest memories of my life. I remember the girls - decent, good-looking girls, and they had long since given up being subtle about what they wanted. They wanted a man, for romance, for love, for commitment, for marriage, for a family, for life.

Los Angeles is a wonderful place, but I know that a lot of women had to settle for what they could find. That's because there were two girls for every boy.

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