The weird and wonderful behavior of California people


I haven't lived in California since the '80s, but I visit often, and the there people really haven't changed.

My California is Los Angeles, by the way, so maybe what I've seen doesn't apply to the rest of California. California is a very big state, but whenever I see a California license plate here in Arizona, I always jump to the conclusion that they're from Los Angeles. And I'm OK with the weird behavior of Californians, which always follows a definite pattern.

Here are some typical California behaviors that I've come to recognize:

• They're rich. People in California scoff at any house that's under a quarter of a million as "a run-down shack". What they pay for everything just seems like another world, and they take it for granted. My California friends are rich, but most of them hate "rich people", which are the people who are richer than they are, you know, the ones who live up higher on the hill than they do.

• They eat weird stuff. Every Californian I've ever known loves to talk about some mysterious food that I've never heard about. It always seems to be only available at specific places that only certain people know about, and if you eat that food, it will have miraculous qualities. Of course, it costs a lot, and even something as simple as almonds will have most California people jumping up and down, and looking at you with a glittering eye as they explain. And don't get them started on the subject of coffee! "There's this one place, see, where you can get, like, the very best coffee beans, grown organically and free range, and then you grind them with this special machine... etc. etc."

• They don't mind crowding. There may be places in California that aren't crowded with people, but I've never seen them. Even when they "get away" somewhere, the freeways are crowded. I like hanging out with California people for this reason, as they don't immediately panic if there are a couple of cars in the parking lot of the restaurant they're going to, or if they have to wait for a few minutes to get a table. Here in Arizona, most of the people I know go into a panic if there isn't a parking spot right up front of a restaurant - my Arizona friends say "Wow, there's no parking!" - even when I can see a couple dozen open spots. When people in California say "there's no parking", there's no parking, and you can't stop there.

 • They go outside. I love sitting outside, especially at restaurants, but my Arizona friends just think I'm crazy. Even when the weather is absolutely gorgeous in Phoenix in the fall and winter, most Arizonans will sit inside. If I want to sit outside, I apologize, and I'm sure that many of them just know that I still have some weird California behavior left over, and they humor me.

I love living in Arizona, and I love visiting California. I feel very comfortable in both places, and I love both places. I moved to Arizona when I decided that I would never be able to afford a house, and I've tried to keep myself as Californian as I can - I've even landscaped my house to make it look more like California than Arizona.

Oh, and by the way, the one thing that you can always get in California and Arizona is great Mexican food! I just love living in the Sunset States!

Image at the top of this post: Calabasas, California. It's not really LA, but it's my California.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more