California Culture: Circa 2000

[B1ue]

As a matter of fact, I was one of the first passengers when they opened the Red Line subway. My dad worked for MTA, so all of their families were invited to attend the opening weekend event, and we did so.

 

As I recall, I was completely unimpressed.

 

But, nah, it's fine. I don't even think about when I ride the subway. I don't do it very often, since I rarely go downtown, but it's no big deal to me.

 

Edit: It's very hard to overstate how much a nonevent an earthquake is to most Californians. You hear about the bigger earthquakes, I'm sure, but do you realize that there are smaller earthquakes happening here pretty much all the time? Feeling a small shake is a weekly to daily event. I don't even get out of bed for anything less than a Mercalli 5.

Edited July 11, 2014 by B1ue

[Mark Arbour]

As a matter of fact, I was one of the first passengers when they opened the Red Line subway. My dad worked for MTA, so all of their families were invited to attend the opening weekend event, and we did so.

 

As I recall, I was completely unimpressed.

 

But, nah, it's fine. I don't even think about when I ride the subway. I don't do it very often, since I rarely go downtown, but it's no big deal to me.

 

Edit: It's very hard to overstate how much a nonevent an earthquake is to most Californians. You hear about the bigger earthquakes, I'm sure, but do you realize that there are smaller earthquakes happening here pretty much all the time? Feeling a small shake is a weekly to daily event. I don't even get out of bed for anything less than a Mercalli 5.

 

I remember, way back in high school, I had a Physics teacher from New York.  We had an earthquake during class, probably a 5-6 on the richter scale.  We were all just sitting there, waiting to see if it kept going or not (length matters with earthquakes ), while the teacher totally freaked out and jumped under his desk.  That wasn't easy, mind you, considering he was about 6'5".  We all looked at him like he was an idiot, especially when he poked his head out long enough to scream at us to get under our desks. 

For us, it was just a cool non-event.  For him, he was evidently staring death in the face. 

[methodwriter85]

The Hollywood Sign Trail- Battle Brewing

 

Does anyone else think it's hilarious that people bought houses near the Hollywood sign, and bitch now because they're dealing with tourists?

 

Although to be fair to them, it sounds like the Hollywood sign tourism wasn't intrusive until recent years with the advent of GPS.

 

I love that movies make it look like you can actually go to the sign, but I'm sure the actual sign is enclosed with laser-reinforced fences or something. Still, I bet back in the 1970's you could have totally done that. It was a shithole sign then before the letters got replaced with the current ones.

Edited September 9, 2014 by methodwriter85

[methodwriter85]

      The Coachella team has paired up with the Firefly team, with massive expansion plans for Firefly including a possible 2-weekend plan.

 

2-week Firefly Fest Possibility; Firefly Partners Up With Coachella

 

     I feel really ambivalent about this. Obviously Coachella seems like a legendary music festival, but that's something that got built up over a decade. Firefly trying to match its size by Year 4 or Year 5 just feels ridiculous. I knew that the small, 30k festival of Year 1 was long gone, but trying to add like another 20,000 fans or so to the 80,000 that came for Year 3 just seems like a recipe for disaster. I'm also really not sure that the people who live around the area are going to be cool with this. It's not like it's a completely isolated field- there are housing developments and residential roads on the periphery.

 

     On the other hand...in 2010, I never could've imagined that there would be a massive 80k music festival where I could have watched people crowdsurf during Weezer and Third Eye Blind, as well as see bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters play without having to go to Philadelphia, so that's pretty cool.

 

     I'm leaning towards just doing one year for Year 4, though. I kind of feel obligated to go every year since I'm now officially a Firefly veteran, but eh.

[methodwriter85]

Yes. Well.

 

My first potentially useful contribution to the topic: Mark, 2000 is a bit early, but Burning Man started to be an increasingly big deal here in the subsequent years. More of a Matt and Wade thing though--I think the youngest attendees at that time were in their mid-20s.

 

 

    I read about Burning Man on Wikipedia, and I'm still confused as fuck about what exactly it is. I thought it might be a music festival, but it seems like some kind of festival where people just groove on different vibes and try and accomplish a variety of different socially-conscious things while burning an effigy and trippin' on a myriad of substances in the California desert.

 

      I honestly can't see either Wade or Matt doing something like that. Matt is the overgrown frat boy and Wade is the prepster. I think the only person I can *maybe* see doing something so off-beat and weird would be Marie. If Mouse had lived to the 1990's, I think he might have gotten into it. (Mouse was an abused outcast that Brad befriended in high school who eventually got AIDS in 1985, became J.P.'s lover, but then died somewhere before 1991.)

 

      From what I read, the event got too popular for it's own good and it seems to be coming with increasing restrictions as a result. Bummer. I would give anything for Firefly Music Festival to go back to the small, 30k festival it was in 2012, but it seems like its founders are determined to hit that 100k mark in less than half-a-decade.

Edited October 2, 2014 by methodwriter85

[Irritable1]

Sex, drugs, Art, costumes, consciousness-raising, bonfires, "contribution." I think. I've never been. It does really permeate SF culture at this point. I've seen a few of the exhibits that were set up here after, and they were honestly pretty great, like gigantic toys.

The CAP characters... I think it would be a different thing, you're right. Burning Man people are latter-day hippies...

[methodwriter85]

I can see Coachella being right up their Alley. The vibe I get is that it's a big ol' Bro fest with their sorority girls wearing flower headbands. John Hobart especially seems like he'd be a target guy for that.

Edited October 3, 2014 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

The Hollywood Sign Trail- Battle Brewing

 

Does anyone else think it's hilarious that people bought houses near the Hollywood sign, and bitch now because they're dealing with tourists?

 

Although to be fair to them, it sounds like the Hollywood sign tourism wasn't intrusive until recent years with the advent of GPS.

 

I love that movies make it look like you can actually go to the sign, but I'm sure the actual sign is enclosed with laser-reinforced fences or something. Still, I bet back in the 1970's you could have totally done that. It was a shithole sign then before the letters got replaced with the current ones.

 

Actually the hike to the sign is pretty popular and easy to do. There are fences and a sign saying you can't actually get to the sign, but that is mostly ignored.

[Mark Arbour]

Actually the hike to the sign is pretty popular and easy to do. There are fences and a sign saying you can't actually get to the sign, but that is mostly ignored.

 

Rules being ignored?!?! 

 

I'm visualizing you sitting there with your shotgun, guarding that vaunted piece of California heritage. 

[methodwriter85]

Rules being ignored?!?! 

 

I'm visualizing you sitting there with your shotgun, guarding that vaunted piece of California heritage. 

 

 

It's not even the original sign, LOL. Those letters are from the restoration of 1978. They're not even older than Private Tim.

 

In 1993, UCLA frat boys changed the sign to say 'Go, UCLA', which prompted the installation of a 100k security system in 1994. I wonder if people have still gotten around that.

 

Me? I just remember the 1993 class of West Beverly Hills getting commemorated with the sign:

 

 

(Does anyone know if they really did that, or was that faked?)

Edited October 7, 2014 by methodwriter85

[methodwriter85]

For this Throwback Thursday, I wanted to take a moment to remember the 1989 World Series Quake. Check it out these videos:

 

 

 

 

I've always been fascinated by earthquakes...I wonder what it must have been like to have experienced one that big. I was only 3 years old when this one hit, but I do remember the episode of Full House that was about this.

 

It's said that the fact that so many people were at Game 3 of the "Battle of the Bay" series (62k) is the reason why casualties weren't as heavy as they could have been, because the roads were usually light for peak rush hour.

 

Do any of you have strong memories of this quake?

[mmike1969]

Yes. I was stationed in Germany watching AFN (Armed Forces Network) and those were the words I heard "we are having an earth..." before the feed cut off.

 

Took a while before AT&T allowed long distance calles into the Bay Area.

Edited October 24, 2014 by mmike1969

[methodwriter85]

   So it's late 2002 in California...people should be saying things like "sick" and "rager", right? I got those terms from watching The O.C., which is going to premiere in about 10 months.

[PrivateTim]

   So it's late 2002 in California...people should be saying things like "sick" and "rager", right? I got those terms from watching The O.C., which is going to premiere in about 10 months.

 

I think you overestimate the vernacular of CA. It is a very, very big place and what is popular in LA, won't be in Bakersfield and maybe not Palo Alto.

 

The way teens in Santa Cruz talk will be very diffenent from Palo Alto and the way teens in Palo Alto talk will be very diffenent from San Jose.

 

The holds true for the beach areas of LA and Orange County (which no one ever called "the OC") versus the inland areas, especially when you bring the Valley into the mix. University High (West LA) and Van Nuys High are only about 10 miles apart, but I guarantee you that they have completely different cultures and language.

[methodwriter85]

    Tim, you reminded me of a story that E.G. Daley said about when she was making 1983's Valley Girl....she absolutely refused to do a Valley Girl accent, and instead decided that her supporting character Loryn was a Malibu transplant.

 

    In any event, I see your point, but "sick" and "rager" are pretty universal...and Will's first boyfriend WAS from Orange County, so he could have picked it up that way. Still, you do have a point. We might just wait until The O.C. comes out in August 2003 before we start having these characters throw around those terms. And, of course, Laguna Beach. Oh my god it was like every teenager was watching that show.

 

    These characters should actually have pretty wide-ranging accents/dialect, because they travel so much, and they're exposed to so many parts of the country and the world. I doubt Will, JJ, and Darius have pure Malibu accents even though they grew up there.

 

    It'd be funny to picture Will having an accent like Chad Rogers from Million Dollar Listing, though:

 

 

     Can you picture Will having his big, "Fear of God" speeches in that slurred, slow Malibu accent? That would actually be kind of funny, but again, I don't think Will is going to have any kind of definitive accent because of how continental and worldly he is.

 

    Are most SoCal accents slow like this? The Valley Girl accent is actually pretty fast and lyrical, while the Calabasas accent seems to have this "whine" to it. The O.C. accent seems more slow like Malibu's, at least if you go by Laguna Beach.

 

    Northern East Coast accents generally tend to go fast, although that's not quite true of Southern New Jersey/Philly/Northern Delaware...it's not quite as fast-sounding. I remember getting off the bus at New York City and having a hard time understanding what this cop was saying when I asked him for directions. LOL.

Edited October 29, 2014 by methodwriter85

[B1ue]

No, most accents aren't quite that slow. That's more of a beach/surfer thing than Californian. From my experience, Californians pace about the same speed as the Midwest, with inland Californians being slightly more laconic than coastal ones. And by that I mean we're glacial compared to New Yorkers but can talk rings around someone from Texas.

 

All of that is general though. Since many people living in California aren't actually from California, and of those that are their parents usually aren't, there are plenty of individual variations that you'll run across. My own accent changes depending on who I am talking to, and I have all but eliminated the Spanish accent I had as a kid.

 

His speech doesn't sound quite natural, by the way. He slows himself down when emphasizing numbers and sound bites, and speeds up when speaking off the cuff (such as about specific listings). Compare his professional voice with that of the other two, his is slower in a genuine attempt to appear knowledgeable, while they speak faster to sound more casual and friendly.

 

He also says "um" too many times. Drives me nuts when salespeople do that. They should know better.

Edited October 30, 2014 by B1ue

[methodwriter85]

Yeah, like I said- I don't think Will, Darius, and JJ would have strong Malibu accents/dialects. JJ especially- he travels around a lot, doesn't go to school anymore, and he's transplanted himself to Boston. Awhile back, I pointed out to Mark that JJ referred to a Boston expressway as a "freeway", and he told me that he did that because JJ's a Californian. Still, I'm not sure I entirely agree with that- I think JJ would actually pick up different ways of slang and talking as a result of his travels, and maybe the idea that he wants to seem worldly and continental as opposed to just being seen as some California kid.

 

I think he'd pick up on Boston slang at this point, and he'd definitely say British slang as a result of Alex. For sure.

 

I mean, I lived in Western P.A., and I learned to say "pop" instead of soda. At least while I was there. I can't see JJ stubbornly hanging on to his California accent, now that he's living in Boston.

Edited October 30, 2014 by methodwriter85

[B1ue]

I can see that pretty easily. He stands out, his every particle of his being crying out, "I am better than you," although you have to be at least something of an acquaintance before he'll say that directly.

[methodwriter85]

I can see that pretty easily. He stands out, his every particle of his being crying out, "I am better than you," although you have to be at least something of an acquaintance before he'll say that directly.

 

I can see JJ trying to fit into East Coast Old Money society, easily. He wouldn't affect an Southie accent, but I'm sure he'd try to sound more like Boston Brahmins.

 

I mean, Mark said that he can see Zach ditching his Ohio dialect to sound more like a Californian. Wouldn't the reverse be kinda true for JJ- that he'd ditch sounding like a Californian in order to sound more like old-money aristocrats from the East Coasts? Or just try and sound like something that sounds vaguely Continental, like Audrey Hepburn or that weird accent the Kentucky-born Johnny Deep affects? Or you know, Queen Madonna and her English accent.

 

It's a character trait that would actually make a lot of sense for JJ- him adopting and changing his accents/dialects to suit wherever he is to the point where you can't pinpoint where he's from- it'd fall right into how JJ uses his passport instead of his state I.D. to show off how worldly he is.

Edited November 1, 2014 by methodwriter85

[B1ue]

Consciously, I don't know. That's up to Mark to decide, so I'm not certain how he'd want to write JJ. I don't see why JJ would want to distance himself from his original accent, which probably wasn't all that strong to begin with (his grandfather is Parisian, his parents from California, the Midwest, and New Jersey, and all of them are polyglots and world travelers), but if Mark decides that is the case, I'll roll with it. Zach ditched his accent because he was ashamed of his origins, I ditched mine for similar reasons. Despite all the arguments that you've put forward that JJ wouldn't want to be associated with his family, we haven't really seen him think like that yet. Perhaps when and if that does occur, his speech will consciously shift.

 

Unconsciously, I will agree that he'll pick up British idioms, and possibly part of Alex's accent. He may even start to sound like Wade. I doubt he'll pick up much Bostonian though. He would have to actually interact with someone form Boston for that to occur, and he doesn't seem inclined.

[methodwriter85]

Right. I agree completely. I do think that Mark's idea that JJ would stick to saying "freeways" instead of saying "expressways" because that's how they talk in California doesn't really suit JJ and how he thinks.

[Mark Arbour]

Right. I agree completely. I do think that Mark's idea that JJ would stick to saying "freeways" instead of saying "expressways" because that's how they talk in California doesn't really suit JJ and how he thinks.

 

Well, you're wrong.

[methodwriter85]

Well, you're wrong.

 

    No, you're wrong.

 

    Seriously though, JJ does strike me as someone that could be pretty fluid about the slang/idioms/dialects that he uses, because he travels so much and he's not particularly rooted in one place. It would totally make sense with his character.

 

    Blue's right that it's not like he'd consciously try to lose his Cali accent (which probably not strong in any event), but I can't see him sticking to regional sayings and expressions just because he's from that area.

Edited November 3, 2014 by methodwriter85

[B1ue]

Why though? Is this coming from your idea that JJ is one day going to become itinerant, wandering about the globe wherever he feels like going and doing whatever (and whoever) he feels like doing? Because, even if that happens one day, he's not there yet. He's too focused, and frankly too dismissive of other people as unimportant next to his goals. He's hardly the only character with that trait, but it is expressed especially strong in him. I don't think he'd be against picking up local slang or dialects, but in order to do that he has to interact with locals, and we've seen no evidence that he does that. The closest thing he has to peers are his fellow skaters, with whom his primary mode of interaction is three high snaps at fifty paces. The other people he lives with may eventually shift their language (I would be surprised if Matt didn't, at least) but they haven't yet.

 

So I disagree about his speech shifting. He'll continue blundering on for a while, because his California slang is good enough to be getting along with for now. If anything, he'll defy that shift, if only to make himself stand out more, and really drive home his constant aura of, "I am better than you."

[methodwriter85]

I think I was just being petulant with Mark. In any event, it's not something I'd get into a knock-down drag out fight with Mark over. LOL.

 

You're actually right, by the way. Very good point that locals are nothing but backdrop to him. When I picked up Pittsburghese, it was because I actually interacted with the locals.

 

Have you ever been there, by the way? That is one hell of a funny accent. I'd say it's a weird mix between East Coast and the Mid-West.

Edited November 5, 2014 by methodwriter85