Posted on 11/24/2020 8:35:24 PM PST by Kevin in California
I’m only a first-generation native, but this ludicrous place feels like my ancestral homeland. My home as a baby was just a few blocks from Santa Monica State Beach in Los Angeles. As the years passed, I moved progressively further east, away from the glorious Pacific Ocean of my childhood. At one point I lived as far away as France, but gradually wandered home, washed inexorably back.
Before I was born, my east coast parents moved here so my dad could surf on the weekends. I never surfed, but my friends and I became proficient boogie boarders. I met my first boyfriend and encountered my first shark on Santa Monica beach. Maybe on the same day, I can’t remember. The shark, an eight-foot blue, nearly bumped me off my board and was unceremoniously dragged onto the sand by enthusiastic locals (the leviathan was saved by the Coast Guard, relax).
Boogie boarding all day is hard work, so we’d usually have lunch—or just pie—at Patrick’s Roadhouse, a legendary diner in Santa Monica Canyon. In the back was an ornate wooden table reserved exclusively for Arnold Schwarzenegger, who frequented the place (never when we were there). The owner, a white-haired old character named Bill, would greet us by name and crack jokes with us. Once we found out after we’d eaten that we’d forgotten to bring money, or wallets of any kind. He let us write him an IOU.
I can top that...... I used to live in San Jose ,California when it was a hick town....
It seems the dnc has realized all the democrat voters are wasted in California. They’re turning up the heat to drive them to conservative states, where they’ll vote for democrats.
Do you know the way there?
Not anymore..Haven’t been back for almost 30 years..The home my parents sold for 175,000 in 1993,sold for 958,000 last year.
APPLE is in Cupertino ,Calif and Google has a hub in north San Jose.... If only my dad was Donald Trump and understood real estate...
This is about so cal.
Screw so cal It’s been a WASTELAND for decades
NorCal is it. Redwoods. Fog. Perfect weather. Mountains 🏔
Still a liberal hell. But more international and sophisticated.
Buttt... What about the Kalifornia story where without computer thievery we went 2020 for Trump.
Been here 70 years South then North.
Not leaving
Secret ??? ... Don’t do anything productive and you’ll be just fine
I lived there when they had freeway overpasses that went no where. My house was across the street from an idyllic country barn. Now it’s next to an expressway sound wall. Got out while the getting was good.
I was born in California. I’ve lived most of my life here.
Came back when I was 18, and have spent 51 years here since
then.
While you’ll often hear someone tell you there’s no other
place on earth like their home, in California you can say
that and it’s actually true.
We have the highest mountain the 48 contiguous states. We
have the lowest spot in the 48 contiguous states. We have
good skiing and great beaches. You can ski in the morning
and watch the sunset from your favorite beach.
Our Redwood forests and national parks are world class.
I could go on, but it’s a hollow thing to talk about what
an amazing place this is, when we have the ilk we do
governing the place.
I can’t defend what is taking place here these days. It’s
disgusting how the Left has tarnished the state.
I’d like to die here, but I’d not like to die here now.
For Conservatives it’s becoming a dangerous place. We are
seen as the terrorists. We support law and order and never
terrorize, but those who do have now found favor in our
leader’s eyes.
That DA in Los Angeles, now that’s troublesome.
It’s not going to get better in the sort term.
Hard choices ahead...
Spoken like a true NoCal snob.
I grew up in the Los Angeles of Adam 12 - until I was 12!
Great post and true from my point of view.
I was born in Washington State but moved to the Bay Area when I was 10. I discovered warm sunny summertimes and swimming pools which we did not have in the Tacoma area up north.
I left CA twice, once to live in Austin Texas and once to live in Hoover Alabama. Both places were exciting and politically more accepting than CA, However jobs forced me back to CA where I taught school and did Engineering and Software work. The job market in CA is what pulls most people in to the state, and for retirees, it is the fact that our kids still want the good jobs that are abundant that keeps us here.
It was very sad to be socially unacceptable to support the GOP. Trump, and be a conservative in this wonderful state. My last teaching job was taken because the there was no grant money to hire a new teacher (especially one with so many years as me). But they literally drove me out with bad reviews when I was the same teacher who received outstanding reviews when younger.
It is the distaste for the people on the other side that is ruining the state for everyone.
I hear ya. When my great-grandfather immigrated from Denmark, he traveled up and down the West coast looking for land to buy for his dairy farm. He pondered a lovely location in Southern California for some time before deciding to pass on it, since getting water to his cows was going to be an issue.
The location? Signal Hill. Which 30 years later was the very spot where the gusher for Signal Oil was tapped. 😣
I’ve been there ... breakfast was OK. Potholder in Long Beach is better (the one on Broadway and Euclid).
Hope to move back some day after I make a million and voters finally wake up.
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My east coast parents moved to CA so that my dad could spend not just 40 hours a week at his desk job, but 60 hours a week!
Different priorities, I guess.
Regards,
DH's grandfather once had the drilling rights to Signal Hill but he could not put together the financing.
1972 I was visiting and drove down the main drag of what was to be named Silicon Valley. On both sides of the street in this downtown were crude huge handmade signs for selling peaches, nectarines, apricots for 19 cents a pound. This area was all fruit orchards before tech came in and decimated it.
Come hell or high water, I am out of California next summer. I will get an apartment sight unseen if I have to, in some red state. California can burn in hell for all I care. And it will.
Northern California. Still a liberal hell, hence still a place to leave. Will the last conservative to leave please turn out the lights. Or not. The coming utility blackouts will take care of that anyway.
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