Ten Coordinates for Exploring the New Californias

C a l i f o r n i a D r e a m i n g 1 4 7 T E N C O O RD IN A TES FOR EXPLORING THE NEW CALIFORNIAS J a c k H i c k s “True South starts right here,” the Bey of Oxford instructed, tap­ ping a greasy fingernail on the formica table. The Bey was so taken with his Southernness as to give himself an exotic title and a virtual fiefdom carved from his native Mississippi. True South, he asserted, began in Po-Boy’s Drive-In in Petersburg, Virginia, because we could get grits and fried okra with our pork barbecue. “Plus which,” he went on, “True South is a feeling— I don’t feel like I’m back home until I get down past Richmond. It’s really a mythic place. In here." He thumped his chest. I lived inside his kingdom for 5 years in grad school, and while I never felt more located, at home and right in the world, sometimes I also never felt more contingent, a hostage of my own blood and armed to take offense. The lesson I took away was that regional identities are important and deeply carried but can also be self-delusional and inflammatory. Now I trust only watersheds and bioregions, and places with a defined character, handling even those with the respect explosives deserve. My friend and colleague James D. Houston reminds me that the initial eastern border of California— drawn at the Constitutional Convention following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo— went all the way to Boulder, Colorado. California once subsumed most of what we now call the American West. As a historical and constitu­ tional conservative, I hark back to those boundaries. The question for me now is what part of California is “the West”? I prefer the des­ ignation California Este for the provinces sprawling west of Truckee in the North and Needles in the South. The major province of the Califomias— once known as Alta California— is henceforth California Major. I am also reminded that the median population line (the point at which population is divided equally between North and South) in California Major has slipped southward. The line was at one time almost identical with the geographical center, around Visalia. The median population line for California Major now runs slightly north of downtown Los Angeles, bisecting Beverly Hills. Therefore, I suggest that an accurate contemporary term for the multiple literal and imaginary terrains once conflated in the term 1 4 8 W A L 3 4 ( 2 ) SUMMER 1 9 9 9 “the American West” is now the Californias, Este and Major, with the latter clearly dominant; and that by dint of population density, strategic location, economic variety and robustness, cultural richness , and the capacity to evoke anxiety and excitement, Los Angeles is its appropriate capital. Los Angeles is the future— for better and, especially, for worse— for the Californias, both Major and the outlying province of California Este. No one dares to like Los Angeles— except behind closed doors— including many Los Angelenos. March 4, 1999: ENGLISH 182 (The Literature of California), University of California, Davis. 114 students present (129 enrolled). Group asked (a) to indicate if term “Los Angeles” has positive or negative connotations: approx. 85% respond “negative”; (b) to list I- or 2-word responses to the term “Los Angeles.” Sample responses : chaos, smog, cesspool, nightmare, plastic (even in 1999), super­ ficial, earthquakes, “nights that taste fine,” Santa Ana winds. Roughly 45% of enrolled students in class are from Greater Los Angeles. Later e-mails and anonymous telephone calls ensue from Los Angelenos wary of speaking in class. “I really like it,” one young woman says. She goes on for 10 minutes with “why-and-all,” but she will not reveal her name. “I’m not into me today.” More exactly, not 1 person in the group polled or later responding specified they were from LA: Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Riverside, Irvine, Redlands, South Central, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Little Saigon, yes; LA, no. Thus the capital of the Californias is immense (140 miles from lip to lip), terminally unloved, and...