Santa Monica, Calif.
Having spent nearly two-thirds of my life in California, I’m still confused when new acquaintances ask me where I’m from. Do they mean where do I live? Or where was I born and raised? I live in Santa Monica. I’m from Colorado. It will always be so.
I came to the West Coast to attend college, and in my early California period, there were constant reminders that I was an alien. At campus orientation, people wanted to know where everyone else was from. More than once when I said, “I’m from Colorado,” the response from students of local origin was, “Oh, back east.”
At first I was disconcerted – this was supposed to be a selective institution; to gain admission you were supposed to have mastered fifth-grade social studies.
Soon I learned that such responses were a kind of regional triangulation that denoted not so much ignorance as geographical self-esteem. To Californians, all places are relative to the edge of the continent. You’re from a coast or from flyover, except maybe Chicago, which to a Californian might qualify as coastal because of that big lake.
The Southern California climate conspires in the maintenance of this custom-made universe. One winter day at my college, which lies at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, a dormmate asked me if I wanted to accompany a few other people who were “going to the snow.” Such a curious concept; where I came from, the snow comes to you.
To demographers and everyone from my old life, of course I am a Californian. Most of the time, that’s how I see myself. I swim outdoors in January. I measure driving distance not in terms of miles, but minutes (“It’s 25 minutes to Westwood, or 50 in rush hour.”) I no longer look askance at people who describe something they like as “bitchin’.”
But every now and then, something happens to remind me that I am not in Colorado any more. The last time was 10:15 on a Saturday morning. I was waiting in a line of traffic on Fourth Street at the I-10, the western terminus of the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway, known here as the Santa Monica Freeway.
Suddenly, a herd of people emerged from the Doubletree Hotel and spilled onto the sidewalk to my right. All were females in their 20s and 30s, dressed alike in primary-colored, 1960s go-go garb – hot pants, striped T-shirts and tall, striped jockey caps. They all had red, string-strapped rucksacks on which was inscribed “Hot Dog on a Stick.”
They swarmed the crosswalk, and I was in the middle of a Fellini movie, and nobody but me notices.
The Beach Boys and Annette and Frankie aside, few things evoke ’60s SoCal beach culture like Hot Dog on a Stick, which, as it turns out, was celebrating its 60th anniversary. Store managers from around the country were convening at the hotel for the weekend to celebrate. On Saturday morning, many were en route, in full costume, uh, uniform, to the original Hot Dog on a Stick stand on Muscle Beach, hard by the Santa Monica Pier.
These days, most HDOS outlets are mall franchises, and what could claim less regional identity than yet one more chain store at the food court? But lookie here: Legions of high school girls still wear those goofy, custom-made hats, they still make lemonade standing over a huge vat, smushing the fruit with a big aluminum stomper and a prodigious physical effort. And at my local outlet in the Santa Monica Mall, they’re all still happy because summer’s here, they’re young and lithe, and the beach is the place to be.
Coloradans find their preternaturally sun-baked demeanor suspicious, Coloradans think they dress like clowns. But Californians find them absolutely bitchin.’
Ellen Alperstein is an essayist and works as an editor with the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service.
