Put the Plastic Right Inside the Machine

I have had a strange month. I have been away from home now for 29 days. I haven’t slept in the same bed for more than two nights in a row. Some of this was a week’s planned vacation, which, due to a variety of circumstances, got flanked by other travel plans.

One of these other circumstances was a campus visit in Los Angeles, at a job I’d interviewed for in December. They offered me the job.

I live now in the Northeast, but I’m from the Northwest. And if you’re from the West, and anywhere north of Monterey, I think it’s encoded in your DNA to believe that Los Angeles is the place where quality of life and human decency go to die. It's all smog and gangs and plastic titties as far as we're concerned.

I've noticed that there's not quite the same antipathy to SoCal in New England, where California is still sort of aspirational. But then again, New Englanders still eat something called "boiled dinner," so there's no accounting for taste.

I'm kidding, sort of.

So while I was wrestling with the decision about the job I went on my vacation, which coincidentally was a hiking trip in California's central coast area. My hiking buddy is an old friend who lives in the Northwest but is French. We got to the top of some very pretty mountain which looked out over a beautiful valley, the sparkling ocean, and about four other gorgeous mountain ranges, and he asked, "So why exactly is it that everyone hates California?"

My first reaction was to clarify: "We don't hate California, we hate Southern California." But he pointed out that two years ago we had an equally terrific hiking trip, and a more visually stunning one, in the Mojave. He also pointed out that I actually like Los Angeles when I'm there, just not when I think about it.

So I tried harder to explain why we have this fascination with and simultaneous antipathy toward Southern California.

I thought through all the stereotypes and all the resentments and all the (admittedly unfair) generalizations.

California is too big. It's too powerful. It has too much say in the government.

California has an enormous rich/poor gap. Rich hypocrites go on about meritocracy while hiring labor at less than a living wage.

California is violent. Drugs and racial hatred run rampant.

California is shallow. It cares only about appearences. It's a cultural wasteland that churns out garbage that we consume only to hate ourselves for it.

Then I realized something. I told my friend: "California is for us what the US is for Europe." If Oregon is California's Canada, then California is America's America: big, rich, powerful, and vulgar.

But hell, I like America. I like California. I am taking the job.