California Culture: Circa 2000

[methodwriter85]

      I think Stefan would be that snobby. I don't think the rest of them would be that snobby, though.  Remember, in the opening chapters of CAP, JP took Pete Gordon to a black barbeque joint in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. (Coincidentally, that area actually did have a black community so it was totally possible.) I especially can't see Will "Mr. Casual" himself being that snobby about it. If he was, he wouldn't be hanging out with Kai at his family's dive restaurant.

 

    Of course, according to Private Tim, this isn't really going to be a thing until about 2003.

 

     Anyway, here's a video about the gourmet food truck craze:

 

 

    If I were ever in Los Angeles, I'd really want to try out the lobster roll truck.

 

   It does make sense that Los Angeles, the giangto suburb that basically developed the McDonald's fast food way of life, is at the forefront for a new way at looking at street food on-the-go in the U.S. The one lady talking about how they launched their food trucks in Coachella made me smile a bit...I was at the new baby festival Firefly and I saw a plethora of gourmet food trucks there. I tried a mac n cheese cheesteak and it was am-a-zing.

Edited July 20, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

This may not be 2000 or 2001, but it isn't far off.

 

15 Ways You Know You Go To Private School In LA

 

 

[Mark Arbour]

 

This may not be 2000 or 2001, but it isn't far off.

 

15 Ways You Know You Go To Private School In LA

 

 

That was interesting, funny, and disturbing, all at the same time. 

[methodwriter85]

   That was pretty funny, and made me wish that we could've seen Will and JJ skip off Friday at Harvard-Westlake to attend Coachella, which would have been in it's second or so year in 2004.

 

    Maybe JJ will return to HW in time for his senior year? *gives hopeful, adorable puppy dog eyes at Mark*

 

    Anyway, I thought the bit about how much money SAT tutors are making seems to be pretty true to life on both sides of the coast, because college entrances got just that insanely competitive. Although it doesn't seem like stressing about academics or about getting into college are really ever going to be any kind of problem for Will. Maybe if we follow John, possibly. JJ doesn't even seem like he's interested in college.

 

   One thing I've noticed about CAP is that while they do spend excessively, they're kept at least somewhat grounded in some ways. No one doing's any crazy, trendy diets. No one's doing any crazy new exercise trends. And since girls don't really get a point of view in CAP, we haven't seen them spend 40k on dresses to wear to debutante balls in Paris.

 

    Although the purse thing made me wonder...have we had a bit yet where it's explicitly said that JJ carries around Louis Vuitton purses? I know that was a suggestion that Daisy made about JJ being into purses, and it would fit his characters, but I'm not sure yet if Mark incorporated that into JJ.It'd be funny if he did. I would think JJ probably has some insanely expensive overnight bags considering the amount of travel he has to do.

Edited July 29, 2013 by methodwriter85

[Mark Arbour]

   That was pretty funny, and made me wish that we could've seen Will and JJ skip off Friday at Harvard-Westlake to attend Coachella, which would have been in it's second or so year in 2004.

 

    Maybe JJ will return to HW in time for his senior year? *gives hopeful, adorable puppy dog eyes at Mark*

 

    Anyway, I thought the bit about how much money SAT tutors are making seems to be pretty true to life on both sides of the coast, because college entrances got just that insanely competitive. Although it doesn't seem like stressing about academics or about getting into college are really ever going to be any kind of problem for Will. Maybe if we follow John, possibly. JJ doesn't even seem like he's interested in college.

 

   One thing I've noticed about CAP is that while they do spend excessively, they're kept at least somewhat grounded in some ways. No one doing's any crazy, trendy diets. No one's doing any crazy new exercise trends. And since girls don't really get a point of view in CAP, we haven't seen them spend 40k on dresses to wear to debutante balls in Paris.

 

    Although the purse thing made me wonder...have we had a bit yet where it's explicitly said that JJ carries around Louis Vuitton purses? I know that was a suggestion that Daisy made about JJ being into purses, and it would fit his characters, but I'm not sure yet if Mark incorporated that into JJ.It'd be funny if he did. I would think JJ probably has some insanely expensive overnight bags considering the amount of travel he has to do.

 

I think that if JJ starts carrying around purses, that crosses a line where he loses a lot of his masculinity.  Maybe I'm just too old to appreciate the male purse movement.  Maybe I'm not aware of the male purse movement.  Is there a male purse movement?  Do guys in California all carry designer handbags now?  Do straight guys do that?  I'm trying to visualize Darius with a man-purse, and it's not working.  Convince me I'm wrong. 

[methodwriter85]

   Darius wouldn't, but JJ's never exactly been Mr. Macho. Didn't Darius pretty much say that it was JJ who was into girly shit? I think Daisy's point was that it was something particular to the skating community, not necessarily something that all California guys did. It depends on whether or not JJ is supposed to be along the lines of a Johnny Weir or more of an Evan Lysacek.

 

    I do see JJ as more of a Chic Euro type than someone who'd act like a typical SoCali boy. Man-purses were more socially acceptable in Europe, if I'm remembering correctly. I'm not saying that it's absolute sure that JJ would carry a purse, but him not carrying one around because it'd be too feminine seems a bit weird considering that he likely wears sequined costumes and the like for figure skating.

 

    In the U.S., I do remember messenger bags being big among guys, although it wasn't quite a purse.

 

    Finally, I think it's been pretty consistent throughout at least Poor Man's Son that JJ doesn't look up to Darius like Will and John do, so I think using Darius as an example for what JJ wouldn't do doesn't make a lot of sense. JJ doesn't model his behavior on Darius at all. He's probably much more influenced by what he sees in his figure skating friends, and JJ has never stuck me as caring about whether or not he comes off as masculine to people. I would imagine Darius, Will, and John care about having a masculine image, but JJ doesn't seem like he would.

Edited July 29, 2013 by methodwriter85

[methodwriter85]

I think that if JJ starts carrying around purses, that crosses a line where he loses a lot of his masculinity. 

 

I thought our back-and-forth about this was interesting. It did make me think. When you said that JJ had masculinity to lose, I thought, "What masculinity? The guy is clearly someone who relates more to females than he does to males." But then I thought about it, and I realized that the fact that JJ isn't a butch guy, the fact that his sexuality is kind of ambigious, and he's in a sport known for flaming gay guys, would probably make him insecure about whether or not he comes off as masculine enough(for figure skating). He'd probably be weary of coming off like Johnny Weir (when JJ gets to know who Johnny Weir is), and JJ would probably be told to "act straight" like Evan Lysacek was. Then there's the fact that his voice probably hasn't cracked yet, which means he's probably concious of trying to lower the pitch of his voice, etc etc.

 

So while JJ isn't exactly someone I can picture doing keg stands with lacrosse bros, I also get that he's not exactly going to walk around in as effeminate manner as Johnny Weir.

 

Those could be some interesting insecurities to cover at some point.

Edited July 30, 2013 by methodwriter85

[methodwriter85]

    Hey, Private Tim, Blue, and other So-Cal people...how accurate did you guys find the O.C. in terms of representing affluent Southern California culture in the early/mid-2000's? I've got the O.C on my brain right now because of the big anniversary of the show...

 

    Check out this interview with Josh Schwartz on The O.C.'s 10th anniversary.

 

    Here's an interesting quote from him as to why it seems like so many shows during the first half of the aughts were being focused on Orange County: 

 

And it was the mid-Aughts. We had kind of new money in that area that really spoke to the America we were living in at the moment.

 

     The general impression that I'm getting about the Newport Harbor Orange County that Josh was trying to depict is that this area was very, very tied into the mindset of the Bush II era- social conservatism (Luke's dad basically becomes an outcast when he's outed), the real estate boom creating a nouveau riche class, parents who can't say no to their Millenial children, being credit-rich but cash poor, McMansions galore, and the driving of massive, tricked-out SUV's.

 

     Ryan's mother was fit in very well with the O.C. that we saw on the show- I'm picturing her with a fake tan and Juicy Couture sweatsuits right now.

 

     Of course, the flip-side impression that I've gotten about Orange County is the more middle-class, Anaheim version of it, the one with plenty of Asians and interesting subcultures like Ska coming out of it, or the culture that spawned Gwen Stefani.

[methodwriter85]

       Seriously, why does the California college system love quarters so much? Do they really want college kids roaming almost all the way through September? LOL. It's gotta suck for out-of-state kids who go there, because their spring breaks never match up with their hometown friends.

 

        It did strike me doing research that Stanford, UCLA, and Santa Clara were all on quarter systems.

 

        UD had what we joked was almost like a quarter system. It's called the 4-1-4 system. Fall semester is September to December, while spring semester is February to May. In the middle is a month-long session we called Winter Session. Winter session was often used to take classes, or go off to study abroad. (University of Delaware had the first study abroad program in the United States, so it's a major part of the school's philosphy.) I wound up taking winter session my senior year. It was cool. But it meant that you were also out of whack with a lot of friends who were going to schools with semester systems, and our graduations happen during Memorial Day week. It's why the city of Newark has to celebrate Memorial Day the week before it.

Edited September 5, 2013 by methodwriter85

[B1ue]

From what I've been told, science departments favor the quarter system, while arts and social science departments favor semester. I was not told why (Mark may know), just that this was the general trend, and that you can tell which half of the institution has more clout by which system that institution favors. The University of California science departments are extremely well-funded compared to their counterparts, and several schools of engineering and science within the University are world class.

 

Also, wasn't there a deliberate effort to desync spring breaks across colleges? Not only do you extend the tourist season across a longer period, but crowds of rampaging barbarian dude-bros are a lot easier to deal with when they are limited in size.

[PrivateTim]

Most UC schools are quarter, except Cal, all the State Universities are semester schools and the Cal Poly schools are quarter and all the JCs are semester schools, so it just depends.

 

As to the OC stuff, no one in my family (parts of which have been in Orange County since the 1920's) had ever heard Orange County called "the OC", ever. Someone might have said, "I live in OC" or "next time you are in OC", but never ever with "the" in front of it.

 

As to the interview where Schwarz said of USC, "It was more a reflection of this idea of going to USC and being surrounded by all these kids from Newport Beach who were water-polo players", it is a completely absurd statement. Newport Beach only has two high schools, Newport Harbor and Corona del Mar and while both are huge powers in water polo, they still are only going to have 5 or 6 seniors every year and not every one goes to USC, maybe one or two. The rest will be at Stanfurd, Cal, UCI, UCSB, Navy, and other schools so at most at any given time there might be 8-10 guys from Newport Beach at USC who played water polo and USC is a school with 17,000 undergrads. That is hardly "surrounded".

 

Newport Beach has always been a playground for the rich and famous, it was never a middle class town. It didn't suddenly prosper in 2000. What changed was the culture, not of Newport Beach, but of the entire society of the U.S. where ostentatiousness became the norm and it didn't start in 2000, it started well before that when people started wearing labels (polo ponies, alligators, golden rams, etc) on the outside of their clothing, not the inside. The Official Preppy Handbook was published in 1980 and it was gently mocking the trends already and at the same time you had the Sloane Rangers in the UK so it was not just a U.S. trend, it was a general shift in culture.

 

It is also very, very hard to discuss trends in CA, even OC, because it is not DL where when someone sneezes in one part of the state someone else in another says, 'Gesundheit'. CA is so big and multicultural that areas 10 miles apart (downtown Santa Ana & Newport Beach) can be vastly different. The average Newport Beach kid has more in common with a La Jolla kid (70 miles), Santa Barbara kid (140 miles) and Santa Cruz kid (400 miles) than they do with Santa Ana kids.

[B1ue]

Tim's last paragraph is quite correct. I live in downtown Long Beach. The difference even a couple blocks can make is staggering, though I suspect that's true of most cities.

[methodwriter85]

   Really fascinating breakdown, Tim. (Though it's DE, not DL. LOL.) My state is very small(the state is 110 miles long)  and as a result, there's not a lot of variety. We have the typical urban ghetto part of the state (Claymont, the Wilmington slums, and New Castle), the upper middle class part of the state (suburban North Wilmington, Hockessin, Pike Creek), the University of Delaware mega-area, the Joe Biden Millionaire's that we refer to as Chateau Country and is our old-money area, the cookie-cutter middle class suburbs part of the state as best seen by former-farm-town-turned-Philadelphia-bedroom-community Middletown, the Slower Lower redneck south part of the state, the Dover AFB area, and then finally, the beaches. We're mainly influenced by Philadelphia, although further south you see influences of Baltimore and D.C.

 

    In your opinion, Tim, what was the nouveau-riche part of SoCal? Wasn't there some California area that was getting hyped during the Boom and then got hit really hard by the crash? I'm thinking Inland Empire, but my impression was that it was a burgeoning middle-class area, not a McMansion area. I know the Real Housewives of the O.C were from Coto de Caza, so was it that area? I did get the impression that inland areas of the O.C. were hit hard by the real estate crash.

 

    I used to watch House Hunters and Flip That House quite a lot around 2005-2007, and it seemed like California had such outrageous real-estate prices. It seemed like three-bedroom house after three-bedroom house was getting appraised at a million or above. I'd understand that if we're talking beach or inner-city San Francisco, but it seems like they were in just typical suburban areas.

Edited September 6, 2013 by methodwriter85

[methodwriter85]

As to the interview where Schwarz said of USC, "It was more a reflection of this idea of going to USC and being surrounded by all these kids from Newport Beach who were water-polo players", it is a completely absurd statement. Newport Beach only has two high schools, Newport Harbor and Corona del Mar and while both are huge powers in water polo, they still are only going to have 5 or 6 seniors every year and not every one goes to USC, maybe one or two. The rest will be at Stanfurd, Cal, UCI, UCSB, Navy, and other schools so at most at any given time there might be 8-10 guys from Newport Beach at USC who played water polo and USC is a school with 17,000 undergrads. That is hardly "surrounded".

 

 

     Water polo players on The O.C. were depicted as being kind of evil. I had a distinct feeling that Josh Schwartz really, really didn't like water polo players, and as a result built them up in his mind as this overpowering prescence.. Me, I've personally never been around one. It seems like they've got the reputation that lacrosse players have here on the East Coast, though- being the "rich boy's" sport.

 

     Anyway...

 

New Urban homes tiny and trendy

 

    This article talks about the "small lot" home movement in the Los Angeles area. They're basically like townhouses or row homes, but without actually sharing walls. Pretty interesting, I thought. Pretty antithetical to L.A.'s historic mid-20th century/onwards development as place of suburban houses with lawns out front and swimming pools in the back.

 

      700k houses are considered affordable workforce housing in L.A.? Geeze.

Edited September 7, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

The nouveau riche are every place in So Cal, I don't know that they are concentrated in anyone place. Maybe a place like Manhattan Beach that was always solidly middle class, but because of property values found itself becoming upper class. That didn't start in 2000 though, it probably started in the 1980's.

 

The places that had the high foreclosure rates were the lower middle class areas like the Inland Empire where people who were making $50k were buying $400,000 homes thinking the value was going to go up the way it always had.

 

There is no "small lot" movement in "LA". The City of Los Angeles is one, small geographic part of Greater Los Angeles. The expansion and building in COLA with the lawns and pools that happened post WWII was in the San Fernando Valley largely and suburban areas and cities.

[methodwriter85]

    Do any of you Californians remember the Los Angeles Bling Ring? I saw the movie, and I thought it seemed pretty incredible in a sense- that these teenaged kids set up multi-million dollar crime ring:

 

 

    The movie made Calabasas look like Valley Girl on steroids.

[methodwriter85]

     *calling Private Tim, calling Private Tim* So if Mark doesn't go for my idea of having Ethan being a former St. Catherine's Military School guy, do you know of other private schools in California that board elementary school students? (Because Webb is a high school-only boarding school, he had to have gone somewhere else for 3rd grade through 8th grade.)

[B1ue]

The problem with St Catherine's is that only 4-8 boards, K-3 is day school only. Looking at a boarding school list for California, it doesn't appear that any school would take a student as young as Ethan normally. If I had to take a stab, I would venture that Ethan's pre-highschool was quite a bit closer to home. Virginia itself, maybe. And later Elizabeth got a wild hair about it, and had him shipped off to the opposite coast. And, obviously, she put some thought in how to punish him for daring to exist, because she sent him to the Inland Empire *shudder*.

 

I had to make that gouge. Both halves of my upbringing, the inner-city neighborhood I lived in originally and the forest small town I grew up in are united on this point, let alone the beach cities I've chosen to spend my adulthood, are all united on this point.

[methodwriter85]

    Hmm. I like your theory- maybe what happened is that Ethan's mother was promised that he'd be given a guardian while he went to a the D.C. area school, like say Georgetown Day School. Then when he reached the 4th grade, Elizabeth shipped him off to St .Catherine's, or whatever boarding schools have elementary school grades in them on the West Coast.

 

    That would actually be a pretty typical Elizabeth Danfield move- a Catholic military boarding school on the West Coast.

 

    But yeah, Ethan couldn't have just been dropped off at the Webb School- his journey can't be that linear. I wonder if it used to be more common to have boarding schools that also took in elementary school kids, and that's something that became less common as time went on. I can't help but think of Little Christina Crawford being dropped off at Chadwick School in Mommy Dearest. (Although Chadwick School disbanded their student housing in 1968.)

 

    As for the Inland Empire...pretty funny stuff. I had an online friend who told me about how they had this big real estate boom/bust by people who banked on the idea that the Inland Empire would become the next Valley or something.

 

    It sounds like the Inland Empire is the New Jersey of the West Coast. (No offense to New Jersey people. Stone Harbor is truly lovely.)

Edited October 21, 2013 by methodwriter85

[Mark Arbour]

    Hmm. I like your theory- maybe what happened is that Ethan's mother was promised that he'd be given a guardian while he went to a the D.C. area school, like say Georgetown Day School. Then when he reached the 4th grade, Elizabeth shipped him off to St .Catherine's, or whatever boarding schools have elementary school grades in them on the West Coast.

 

    That would actually be a pretty typical Elizabeth Danfield move- a Catholic military boarding school on the West Coast.

 

    But yeah, Ethan couldn't have just been dropped off at the Webb School- his journey can't be that linear. I wonder if it used to be more common to have boarding schools that also took in elementary school kids, and that's something that became less common as time went on. I can't help but think of Little Christina Crawford being dropped off at Chadwick School in Mommy Dearest. (Although Chadwick School disbanded their student housing in 1968.)

 

    As for the Inland Empire...pretty funny stuff. I had an online friend who told me about how they had this big real estate boom/bust by people who banked on the idea that the Inland Empire would become the next Valley or something.

 

    It sounds like the Inland Empire is the New Jersey of the West Coast. (No offense to New Jersey people. Stone Harbor is truly lovely.)

 

IMHO, the Inland Empire is analogous to the East Bay (Oakland, Hayward, et. al).  There are really nice areas in the hills and foothills (which is where Webb is located, as are the Claremont colleges) and really crappy areas in the flatlands.  But it is like a big sack that accumulates smog, so there's that. 

Claremont, CA

 

 

The Webb School.

[PrivateTim]

The Judson School in PHX, AZ.

[methodwriter85]

    Hmm, interesting. The school closed in 2000, but it would have been open for the 1993-1994 and 1994-1995 school year, when Ethan would have been in 2nd and 3rd grade. That makes it a pretty good candidate for his pre-Webb School, too.

 

     "The market changes" the thing is alluding to just seem to fall into the idea that boarding schools in general seemed to have declined, especially the boarding-only kind. I kind of wonder if that has to do with changes in parenting styles or something. I also wonder if charter/magnet schools have to do with it.

 

      Two articles:

 

Private Schools Are Declining in Popularity (Time, 2011)

 

Fewer Students Attend Private School (U.S. News, 2011)

 

    It's an interesting thought to me, because I grew up in Delaware, where the public school system was absolutely wrecked by desegregation busing, so a lot of people either go private, choice out of their school district, or attend a charter/magnet school. Although it definitely seems like the Catholic schools are dropping off like flies, the sectarian public schools in my area, like Caravel Academy or Tower Hill, seem fine.

[PrivateTim]

    Private Schools Are Declining in Popularity (Time, 2011)

 

Fewer Students Attend Private School (U.S. News, 2011)

 

    It's an interesting thought to me, because I grew up in Delaware, where the public school system was absolutely wrecked by desegregation busing, so a lot of people either go private, choice out of their school district, or attend a charter/magnet school. Although it definitely seems like the Catholic schools are dropping off like flies, the sectarian public schools in my area, like Caravel Academy or Tower Hill, seem fine.

 

The decline in private school attendance has more to do with the reduced buying power of the middle class than anything. Among the well heeled, private school is the only way they go these days.

[methodwriter85]

   Alright, you Los Angelenos...would a teenager from Malibu use the slang term "salt" his/someone's game? It was used on The O.C. in the mid-00's, and the generally meaning is similar to cramping a person's style.

 

   Like, say there's this guy who's hitting on this girl. His best bro decides to cockblock by telling the girl all this embarrassing stuff about him. The guy can turn around and say, "Way to salt my game, dude."

 

    Or a person can be "salty" by being rude.

[B1ue]

If so, it's news to me. I have never even heard of that until this moment.