Having lived on both coasts and a fly-over state in the past three years, I thought I would share a few reflections on some striking differences of living la vida La Jolla.
5.) Termite tents - I am sure these big circus-striped tents are used to seal up houses for fumigation elsewhere in the country, but I had never seen one until we moved to California - except on an episode of X-files where it was wrapping up a house full of creepy circus freaks, if memory serves.
4.) Temperature disregulation - any time the temperature dips below 65, people out here seem compelled to break out their furs and fleece lined boots. Someone was actually wearing a heavy cable-knit sweater last week when I think the low may have hit 62. If it was 62 degrees in the Midwest in December, people would be wearing shorts and tank tops.
3.) Exceptionally well-dressed bums - in the Midwest you can expect to be panhandled by people who look down on their luck in several stereotypical ways. Maybe it's just the economy, but out here it is tough to tell bums from bank managers. Maybe because the bank managers are now the bums? It is also difficult to differentiate the wasteoids from the winos from the merely weird.
2.) Mismatched Monets - I frequently have the experience of seeing a forty-year old from a distance, only to find out she is actually closer to fourteen once I get a little closer. Conversely, I see a lot of young-looking girls who end up being on the wrong side of seventy. The latter are frequently anorexic and jogging, and have re-arranged their faces in such a manner as to reference both Paul Klee and full-on Monet (this is a Clueless reference, youngsters).
1.) Outdoor shopping malls - in other parts of the country, the mall is a place where you can go to escape bad weather (e.g. rain, snow, extreme heat or cold). Lacking such extremes, in California malls are typically outdoors - even the escalators! so bizarre! - so you go to the mall on nice days to run around, not to run off steam when it's raining.
I found some of these same things confusing about arizona too. The outdoor malls particularly and the mismatched monets. WHY oh WHY would you have an outdoor mall in arizona? It is the hottest state! As for the monets, the sun does some bad things!
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