My Dark California Dream
November 30, 2015 12:48 PM   Subscribe

My Dark California Dream. Confusing one’s own youth with the youth of the world is a common human affliction, but California has been changing so fast for so long that every new generation gets to experience both a fresh version of the California dream and, typically by late middle-age, its painful death.

A cover of Joni Mitchell's California--feel free to play this in the background while you read.

California: Paradise is Burning

A review of Kevin Star's Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge

California belongs to Joan Didion.
posted by mecran01 (50 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Related: The last Boeing C-17 built in Long Beach, CA takes flight, as the aerospace era in California ends.

(FYI: it's Starr, with two "r's".)
posted by notyou at 1:23 PM on November 30, 2015 [4 favorites]


From Coast of Dreams "imported oil-rich eucalyptus trees explode in bush fires".

If you've never seen it, it's actually pretty impressive. In fact, on very hot days, if there's enough eucalyptus the oils can vaporize and combust with very little assistance.

I am subtly trying to get my next door neighbors to get rid of theirs before it becomes an explosive device.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:26 PM on November 30, 2015 [5 favorites]


"And when the ocean rises up above the ground
maybe I'll drown
in California"
Another relevant soundtrack by Grimes.
posted by SansPoint at 1:29 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


I hope everyone continues to contribute excellent California links.
posted by mecran01 at 1:43 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


The best song from Songs of Innocence, for those who stopped moaning about iTunes auto-downloads for long enough to listen to it.
posted by rory at 1:54 PM on November 30, 2015


The conclusion of Duane's article seems far too Panglossian, given the climate changes in store. How long will those 40 million stick around when the water runs out?
posted by rory at 2:09 PM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


Panglossian

A great word.
posted by mecran01 at 2:12 PM on November 30, 2015 [4 favorites]


But maybe the better way to say it is that just like every other Californian for as long as anybody can remember, I have merely witnessed a fleeting chapter in a centuries-long human story in which the lost Eden we all heard about from our parents is eternally changing into the pretty damn nice place we found — and then, much too soon for comfort, into the next bewildering mixture of good and bad that we scarcely recognize.

Growing up in the heart of the city, I lived a few blocks from a kiddy amusement park and pony ride stall. Today an enormous mall stands there. Things change, time marches on. I felt the author missed the mark a little with only a passing mention to this: California Drought: Parts of Central Valley sinking 2 inches a month because what's happening now is not simply part of the passing of time and generational ebb and flow that has been shaping California since the Gold Rush.

But at this very moment in time, as the song says, it's like another perfect day.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:13 PM on November 30, 2015 [6 favorites]


How long will those 40 million stick around when the water runs out?

They will be Saved.

Saved by techbros, or by their Lord, depending upon which of the two dominant belief systems they personally find most salient. Maybe both! At minimum, however, we can safely say that no essential part of their lives will need to change in any way.
posted by aramaic at 2:15 PM on November 30, 2015 [5 favorites]


Or, um, Panglossian!
posted by Room 641-A at 2:15 PM on November 30, 2015


Like Uber, but for drinking water!
posted by entropicamericana at 2:17 PM on November 30, 2015 [10 favorites]


Oh I am never happier than on the western slope of the Sierras.
posted by Oyéah at 2:17 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Related: The last Boeing C-17 built in Long Beach, CA takes flight, as the aerospace era in California ends.

Well, it ends except for SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Boeing, Scaled Composites, Raytheon, etc., etc.

There is still a lot of aerospace going on in Southern California.
posted by sideshow at 2:35 PM on November 30, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm going to say this and y'all can pillory me for it. We'll figure it out. We're both Americans and Californians, and we will make it work. We'll build desal plants, get rain barrels, conserve, stop growing alfalfa, etc. It's always been fashionable to (in a disaster-porn sort of way) predict the downfall of optimistic and hedonistic California (especially Los Angeles. But whatever. We will make California work in an era of climate change. (And work well if we can fix Prop 13!) In the meantime, I welcome the California bears from across the nation; past bulls have driven up property values to most unreasonable levels.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:38 PM on November 30, 2015 [14 favorites]


People are leaving cities in Brazil already because of water shortages.

There's nothing left for us in California. We've gotta move on.
posted by MrVisible at 2:44 PM on November 30, 2015


Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
For it is not wise to ask such questions.

Ecclesiastes 7:10


This is an ancient story indeed. The old Jerusalem was apparently thought to be ruined before anyone talked about the new one.
posted by vorpal bunny at 2:56 PM on November 30, 2015 [5 favorites]


There is a difference between Socrates griping about The Kids These Days and widespread irreversible environmental degradation that we as a society are unwilling to stop.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:10 PM on November 30, 2015 [31 favorites]


My husband and I were both near-native Californians (neither born in the state but both moved there when too young to remember living elsewhere) and we moved away in 2014. I still feel bad about it. I wasn't a person who had a lot of big ideas about my future but I did think if I had kids they'd be California kids, go to public schools there and eventually UC, and settle down there. But I definitely pictured their California childhood as being essentially identical to my California childhood or even my parents', and before my daughter was even a year old it had become clear to me that the kind of childhood I had was not one I could provide for my family in the LA basin in this century.

So here I am with my California money, fucking up the Seattle-area real estate market as so many generations of my predecessors have done before me. The more things change...
posted by town of cats at 3:10 PM on November 30, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm a native Californian. My parents' families both came to Los Angeles from the East Coast in the early 50s, and unlike the author's parents, neither of them has much nostalgia for the period--a combination of living on or below the poverty line, dealing with antisemitism, and trying to breathe in the pre-pollution regulations era ("it hurt," my mother has told me more than once). I'm not sure I'd like to go back--among other things, it's nice to be able to walk to work, even if upstate NY has this weird stuff called snow--but more to the point, there's no way that I can go back on a single academic's salary and have anywhere near the same QOL. But I still worry about that inconvenient lack of water ("move here, Mom, we have more than enough!").
posted by thomas j wise at 3:29 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


I moved to California in the early-mid 80's. Back then jobs were plentiful and community college could be had for $50 a quarter. I lived a few miles form Venice beach and on weekends you could go to Santa Monica beach and swim which was my favorite thing to do. By 1990 there was gang writing on my parking garage walls, rents were going up, traffic was insane, all the nice places in Mar Vista had closed down and the Santa Monica Beach was permanently closed due to high bacteria counts.

So I moved to San Francisco which was more affordable and had less traffic. On weekends you could go to the park by Fisherman's Wharf and fly kites which was my favorite thing to do. Artists and the art scene were everywhere and jobs were plentiful and the city was affordable. By 1999 rents had gone up threefold and the artists moved away and no one was left to fly kites in the city park except Google employees who had little interest in flying kites. Jobs were getting much harder to be had and the city became utterly unaffordable.

So I moved out of California and never went back.
Capitalism Kills Dreams.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 3:58 PM on November 30, 2015 [14 favorites]




Cities and suburbs in California will be fine. Agriculture uses 80% of the water in the state to produce two percent of our GDP. There is a 0% chance that anyone not working in agriculture will have to leave the state due to drought in the next 25 years.

Farmers might get crushed, but more likely they'll just have to shift production to less water-intensive crops. There's no reason to grow something like alfalfa in a desert unless you're getting absurdly cheap, or in some cases even free, water, and that should and will come to an end.
posted by Aizkolari at 4:26 PM on November 30, 2015 [9 favorites]


People ask me all the time why I left California to face the cold and darkness of Northern England. I wish I could distill this article into my pithy response.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:29 PM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


I lived all over California for the better part of 18 years, starting in the mid 70s. I loved it and never wanted to live anywhere else. Then I moved to Colorado with my wasbund. I always thought if we split up I'd go back, but we split up and I realized I could afford to buy a house here but not there.

I haven't been back to visit in years. I'm afraid it would break my heart to see it so changed.
posted by caryatid at 4:43 PM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


My wife and I are SoCal natives who moved to northwesterly Wisconsin a little over a year ago for my wife's post-doc. Her appointment is up next summer, so she's on the market again and she's applying for a position at UCSD, and while (like getting any academic position) it's a real long shot that we'll do so, I'm actually a bit apprehensive about going back. On it's own, it's just not worth it, but we're going to have a lot of family to take care of in upcoming years.
posted by LionIndex at 4:46 PM on November 30, 2015


You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
posted by Oyéah at 5:27 PM on November 30, 2015 [3 favorites]


Dreams alive, dead and dying, for a long time.

California was a dream, a paradise for he had seen
Lots of pretty girls in magazines that told him so



The Model A was loaded down and California bound
And a change of luck was just four days away
But the only change that I remember seeing for my daddy
Was when his dark hair had turned to silver gray


California Cotton Fields
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:32 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


The forests I grew up in are all dying. Things that happen on a geological scale are now happening over the span of months; and I've watched the ocean rise.

It's a bit more than "kids these days".
posted by The Power Nap at 5:33 PM on November 30, 2015 [7 favorites]


Somehow this seems relevant: 14 Percent of Los Angeles County Land is Dedicated to Parking

Joni, again.

and the Santa Monica Beach was permanently closed due to high bacteria counts.

Ooh, I remember some guy I was dating came over and his t-shirt started deteriorating as the evening went on. I mean, like it had been soaked in bleach. Shreds. He'd been surfing in it earlier that morning (for some idiotic reason.)
posted by Room 641-A at 5:36 PM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dim world of old streets. Gutters matted with trash.
Dead trees. Garbage Grove.
Old suburban houses, boarding a family per room.
The streetlights not broken are halogen: orange gloom,
an orange glaze on it all.
A roofed world, the basement of California.
You've never lived here, have you.

--Kim Stanley Robinson

The poems in The Gold Coast in the Three Californias expressed so well how I felt moving to California for just high school (and then leaving for college) that I had them scrawled on butcher paper across my dorm walls for years.
posted by crush-onastick at 5:45 PM on November 30, 2015 [4 favorites]


Fuck California
You made me boring

posted by maupuia at 6:23 PM on November 30, 2015


and the Santa Monica Beach was permanently closed due to high bacteria counts.

Well not that permanently, since it's open right now.

I can't wait until we have another real earthquake a la '71 or '94. Based on how the newcomers freak out on Twitter every time we get over 4 point whatever, I am looking forward to the mass exodus.
posted by sideshow at 6:39 PM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, when I was growing up, it was Opportunity! Opportunity! Abundance! and I suppose it was always this way, but after spending time away, I realized when I had the chance to go back, I just couldn't do so with the same kind of optimism I grew up with. Hey, I'm glad my parents retired early and rich, entirely because they benefited from buying a house in the center of Silicon Valley in 1971 for about half of what my car cost and very high quality, very cheap public higher education, but the deterioration of education and the cost of housing just made moving back to California something I could not do without feeling daily disappointment with the struggles and sacrifices of being there.

It's funny because I gladly accept the struggles and sacrifices with living here in the new California: Seattle*. And the native born here will go on and on, rightfully so, about how much everything's changed, but I just don't have that emotional connection to those changes, not having spent my childhood here. To me, this was the Off World Colonies, a chance to begin anew and I don't have to worry about the things from 40 years ago that have all but disappeared. This is still a beautiful place with opportunity. Not without problems (cost of housing mainly) but we're not dealing with failing public institutions or the widespread collapse of natural resources.

But like the author of this story, I'm not sure that's what I'm mourning about California -- its that California was a really kick ass place to grow up and all of things that made it that way don't exist anymore; getting a really amazing job in a NASA lab during summer vacation in high school and college, busting out of class early on Friday and racing over the hill to spend the weekend surfing and drinking at a normal, non-mega rich friends Santa Cruz beachfront cottage, spending $700 a semester for tuition at the world's number one public university, getting to see like every single important west coast punk band for free at some house party. Like the author, I wouldn't be so self absorbed to say no worthwhile experience can be had there, it's just that *my* worthwhile experience cannot be had.

* gimme a break I've been here 18 years now; I left CA at 24 so in 6 years I get to officially transfer my native status.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:54 PM on November 30, 2015 [5 favorites]


Seattle [...] Not without problems (cost of housing mainly) but we're not dealing with failing public institutions or the widespread collapse of natural resources.
Baseline error! Speaking as someone who's been here twenty years longer than you. Civic government, schools, transit, and broad employment have all gotten worse. We're just still behind CA pretending we aren't following.
posted by clew at 8:29 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anybody surprised by forest fires or droughts can not be called a naturalist in California
posted by one_bean at 9:59 PM on November 30, 2015 [3 favorites]


I left California just over a year ago and I miss it every day.
posted by deadbilly at 10:21 PM on November 30, 2015 [4 favorites]


Marin County native here.

Our joke growing up was, "You spend the first eighteen years of your life trying to get out of Marin, and the rest of it trying to get back in."
posted by Graygorey at 10:47 PM on November 30, 2015 [4 favorites]


Btw, the cost of college and decline of public schools? A major factor is Prop 13. It will get reformed, and things will get better as a result.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:54 PM on November 30, 2015


We're Californians, we can fix this.
posted by Standard Orange at 11:11 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mod note: One comment deleted. Please don't do the jokey/ironic racist thing. If you'd like to make a point, just go ahead and discuss clearly.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:24 PM on November 30, 2015


I can't wait until we have another real earthquake a la '71 or '94

No.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:11 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]


Amen, Standard Orange.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:24 AM on December 1, 2015


Native Californian, b. 1955. I drank deep the cup of California; it's beaches and mountains still wonderous and dreamy in my mind. Left in 1987 for Northern Taiwan. Still quite sweet here.
posted by rmmcclay at 2:15 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Btw, the cost of college and decline of public schools? A major factor is Prop 13. It will get reformed, and things will get better as a result.

Prisons. We moved that money into prisons.
posted by effugas at 3:47 AM on December 1, 2015




I was really surprised after the 94 earthquake how many people actually did up and leave L.A. As a 3rd gen native, I didn't realize that was something that happened.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:42 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


So here I am with my California money, fucking up the Seattle-area real estate market as so many generations of my predecessors have done before me. The more things change...

Hey, me, too!

*Secret Californian Handshake*
posted by RakDaddy at 8:10 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


Native Californian here. I'm not exactly economically thriving in California, but fuck it, I'd rather be poor here than rich anywhere else (with the exceptions of maybe NY, Austin or Portland).
posted by entropicamericana at 8:14 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


Native Angeleño here. The only thing I don't miss from my childhood here are the smog days. Holy crap, it hurt so much to breathe, back then. But I miss everything else.

One of my best memories was during the 1984 Olympics, when "I Love LA" was on constant rotation on the radio — if you blasted that song on the road with your windows down, everyone would sing along. Gleefully and at the top of their lungs.
posted by culfinglin at 1:03 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]



I was really surprised after the 94 earthquake how many people actually did up and leave L.A. As a 3rd gen native, I didn't realize that was something that happened.


She lived in Berkeley till
the earthquake shook her loose
She lives in Texas now,
where nothing ever moves

posted by purpleclover at 9:10 PM on December 15, 2015


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