Dressing like a local in the winter in Los Angeles, and Phoenix


Since I grew up in Minneapolis, when I moved out West I wanted to blend in with the locals. I still carried a lot of typical midwestern boy in me, but over the years I learned more and more, and something that I learned was how to dress like a local in the winter.

Luckily, this came easily to me, as I never really got used to the cold and snow of Minneapolis, where I lived for over nineteen years. While the cool kids in school would walk around wearing light jackets, and no gloves, I would be bundled up like an Eskimo, and I'd still be shivering. In other words, I had thin blood, and was always wearing a lot of heavy clothing, usually in layers.

Of course when I moved out West I was surprised at how warm it was, even in the winter. For the first few years I did all of the things that the locals never did, I swam in the winter, I wore short sleeves when the temperatures plummeted to below 70. Then after a while I started to feel the chill.

The locals where I lived in the mid-1980s, which was right nearby the ocean, just north of Los Angeles, would always bundle up if the temperatures got too low. And if we went to the beach in the winter we'd wear some heavy clothing. And of course there would be people splashing around in the ocean, or wearing shorts. For some reason, we always referred to these people as "Canadians". It wasn't cold, or even cool, to them. They weren't locals, we could tell by the way they dressed.
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