by BJ Beauchamp
The basin that is known as Los Angeles not only includes the Los Angeles County population of 10,363,850, but also Orange County’s population of 3,121,251. That’s a pretty good sized community squashed into 5,700 square miles of Los Angeles and Orange counties. It is a mixture of people from just about everywhere. There is Chinatown in Los Angeles and Little Saigon in Orange County. Olvera Street in Los Angeles is the Mexican cultural birthplace. Previously the state was Mexican California before winning its independence in 1821, and it was still considered a province of Mexico right up to when the Mexican-American war ended in 1848 with the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Shortly after that the discovery of gold, and not the sunny climate, made California the place to be.
Life in Los Angeles is like nowhere else, except maybe Miami, or maybeNew York City. I’ve heard it said by some that if the illegal immigrants left the Southern California area it would turn into a ghost town. Who are they kidding? Short of a 10.0 earthquake hitting, nobody is leaving this town.
Being such a large and hard to miss community, others smirk at Los Angeles and call us weird; as in “Hollyweird the land of fruits and nuts.”
People are aloof here. I'm not saying people aren’t friendly, more like they are just very busy living the California dream. There are no events that bind us together, like, say, a blizzard that hits an entire state in the winter. The closest Southern California gets to that scenario is an earthquake, but even then it’s hit or miss, so the general shared experience changes.
Recently there was a 5.4 earthquake whose epicenter was two miles southwest of Chino Hills. I happen to work out of an office five miles southwest of Chino Hills in Anaheim Hills so I got to see what being on top of an epicenter felt like. I didn’t like it. Worse, people in north Los Angeles were saying it wasn’t anything. Of course it didn’t rattle them since they were 40 miles away — try sitting on it next time.
The ties that bind here are the sunshine and the traffic. The sunshine we take for granted and the other we develop weird ways of handling, i.e. road rage. And it's a weird communal experience in itself, that traffic. For over 13 years I commuted from Anaheim to Burbank. During the riots following the Rodney King trial verdict announcement, the place I worked for shut down early so everyone could get home before the dusk to dawn curfew went into effect. Traffic was at a standstill. Being stuck on the freeway with nowhere to go I could see south Los Angeles up close as the fires raged on and people ran from buildings carrying out whatever they could. I was part of the collective captive audience stuck on the freeway with only a chain link fence between us and chaos. After I drove past the Orange Curtain that is the county line, the sky literally cleared as the smoke from the fires dissipated and the sun shined. I had left an apocalyptic world and arrived in Mayberry.
Once in Orange County I stopped to get gas. I looked around at the other people at the gas station – one man wore a turban on his noggin, and the other customers appeared to be of Asian, African and Hispanic decent. With news radio covering the riot blaring from the gas station’s speakers, all of the customers filling up looked at each other in awe that a group this diverse could be so close to the fray and still be unaffected. It was like we were sending the same question to each via telepathy: “What’s wrong with those people in LA?” When I got home there were several messages from co-workers on the answering machine telling me to call them back immediately so they would know I made it home okay. Everyone else lived in the valley, and only I had to cross the mayhem to get home, so they were concerned, plus this way they got to get a personal account of what it was like going through Los Angeles that day. Orange County for its close proximity did not suffer from the bottled water shortage, but people in Los Angeles were emptying the store shelves digging in for the curfews and whatever else was coming their way.
In general people seem a bit more fluid here. They come, they go, and you never know them. Even when you do stay put for long periods you just don’t know your neighbors. One of my neighbors for almost 20 years I met only awhile ago when she asked me for help in finding her husband who had Alzheimer’s after he had wandered away from home. After that, I helped their son, Bob pick the fruit from their pomegranate trees, and prune the same trees. Two years ago I also attended Bob’s funeral. He was 52 years old.
I still don’t know all of the other people in the neighborhood by name, although more of them know who I am, which is odd, but not completely surprising, I guess, since I walk my neighborhood every night for exercise. I have tried to find out who is who and be friendly but not everyone is interested. To get people to make eye contact is sometimes impossible. For the most part regardless of the language barriers, a smile, a nod of the head and a sincere hello cross all obstacles, that is with the exception of sidewalk etiquette. You would think the rules of the road would also apply when walking on the sidewalk, but no, they don't. I have often been forced to walk on the street or on the grass because people refuse to walk single file or even double but insist on walking down the sidewalk like a herd and not allowing for people walking in the opposite direction space. They do not yield – ever! I often think about checking them like you would in hockey, but instead of shoving them into the boards I would shove them out of my way. I haven’t done that, but I think it.
People here are naturally quite stubborn about staying anonymous with regards to the general public. The same cannot be said of Hollywood celebrities and them having any sort of privacy. We have that community here as well, but it’s more like the rich relatives no one visits. But we know they are there. We acknowledge them when we must, and drive around their events, and complain about the congestion they cause in traffic.
The current change in my city is graffiti. The place has been plagued by people moving into the community from the poorer areas by way of those fabulous loans – you know, the interest only, 100% financed, mortgage debacle types. My zip code is now swamped with foreclosed properties. The other sad note of change is more people are abandoning their pets. For years you’d never see a dog without its human following behind on a leash. On the rare occasion a pet went missing you saw its face plastered everywhere on flyers taped to light poles, and inside store windows. Now you see scruffy dogs and cats everywhere without collars and humans.
Beyond the city limits I keep in contact with second cousins and great aunts and uncles by way of e-mail or cell phone chats. I keep in contact with high school chums and childhood friends the very same way. Everyone else in the area stays in contact similarly as you can’t drive down the street and not see someone yapping on a cell phone or rapidly texting as if life itself depended on it. Not so long ago a young woman asked me about my iPhone as her phone was dying a horrible technological death. After a great deal of information being exchanged the young woman determined that the deal killer for the iPhone was its inability to e-mail a picture via text messaging. You can e-mail a picture, you just can’t include said picture as an attachment in your text message. This was important to her, apparently, as she often would be out shopping and come across an item, snap a picture of it with her cell phone, and text a message with the picture asking her friend what she/he thought of the item, and should she get it.
I do from time to time get on a plane or drive the car cross-country to go visit friends and family. I have even spent time in the RV community which is full of people from everywhere living with their spouses, small children, teens, grandparents, and Fido all stuffed into the 22 to 40 foot motor home. Some RVers pull a car or small SUV along behind them. We take our worlds with us. No matter if you park your rig in a RV club approved campground with full amenities (power, water and sewage hookups), or stay overnight at the nearest Wall-Mart parking lot, there is a definite sense of community, which is friendly. I don’t get to travel much in the RV anymore.
I spend more time on the home front, specifically the lawn. Earlier this year my mother decided it would be good exercise for her to mow and trim the lawn. Well her heart was in the right place, and it would have been good exercise except it’s a bit much for someone half her age. It is a good cardio workout and cheaper than paying for a gym membership as well as for lawn care. So I am now the gardener. It works out okay, but it is a large lot of 17,000 square feet, and of that about 8,000 square feet is grass. I am an oddity in Southern California. Nobody mows their own lawn here, not even my neighbor who is an immigrant from Mexico — he hires a service to do his yard. It’s a funny thing. The neighbors often stop me while I am mowing to ask about the avocados. There is a large tree in the front yard, and those who don’t just pick the crop themselves (i.e., steal), stop me and inquire if it’d be okay if after having spent money on fertilizer, food, and water, would I be so kind as to pick the avocados and give them some please. Suddenly, I don’t speak English, “No entiendo.”
From my experience the Southern California community really isn’t all that different from anywhere else. Unless you count the green parrots – yeah, we got those here, not sure how they arrived or who turned them loose, but there is a community of about 80 or more green parrots who live here in Orange County. You can’t miss them as the squawk is unique and loud even from high above. I noticed this morning the parrots were in the avocado tree and noshing away. I don’t mind the parrots eating the avocados, but the people, I don't like that so much.
Southern California isn’t all that different from anywhere else as we are just as nosy about what is going on and who is doing what to whom. The difference between this community and the one in the Cascade Mountain range, or on the plains of Nebraska is the sheer volume of people, the deluge of media coverage — and the avocados and parrots of course.