Ask a Northern Californian

Dear Northern Californian,

Is it true you Northern Californians say “hella” all the time?

Margo F, Bozeman, MT

Dear Margo,

Yes, it’s absolutely true, we hella use that word here. (See!?) A UC Berkeley linguist asserts (as reported here) that the term originated in the Bay Area, probably in Oakland. I first encountered it as a student at UC Santa Barbara; someone had written “Lisa C is hella good to me” on the blackboard and my TA said, “‘Hella’? What’s ‘hella’?” I wondered the same thing (and also wondered, “Who is Lisa C?”). When I moved up north I started hearing “hella” a lot, and liked it immediately. I was particularly enchanted when I first heard it used to mean more than just “very” … for example, “I ate hella chips.” This term was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002.

Since I’ve lived in Norcal for so long, I can’t be sure “hella” isn’t used everywhere, so I asked my brother Max, in Boulder, Colorado, if he hears it out there. He replied, “It is very rare that someone says ‘hella.’ When that is uttered here, it is answered with consternation, as though it threatens to upend our privilege.”

Dear Northern Californian,

Aren’t you afraid of earthquakes?

Becky Mills, Columbus, OH

Dear Becky,

I wouldn’t say I’m afraid. Of course I’m aware that earthquakes happen around here, and they can kill people, but it’s not a particularly significant risk. As Hans Rosling et al report in the excellent book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, deaths from natural disasters have plummeted worldwide in the last eighty or so years, from 453 per million annually in the 1930s to just 10 per million today. That’s about a tenth of the risk of dying in a car accident.

I’m kind of more afraid of wildfires, but not enough to live somewhere else. The Midwest has tornados, the East Coast has hurricanes, the Great Lakes region has mosquitoes the size of Chihuahuas … nowhere is totally safe.

Dear Northern Californian,

Is the French Laundry worth the hype?

Chase L, Portland, OR

Dear Chase,

I cannot say, as I’ve never eaten there. You have to be very wealthy, very organized, very well connected, and/or have naked pictures of God to get a table at French Laundry. Because it is such an utterly elite place, it is nonsensical to assume that just any Northern Californian would have any experience with it. Go ask Lance Armstrong.

(Here’s a photo I didn’t snap.)

Dear Northern Californian,

Do you get offended when people call San Francisco “San Fran”?

Melissa M, Provo, UT

Dear Melissa,

I don’t get offended by that, and in fact I’m even pretty mellow about “Frisco.” The reason is, like many locals I like to refer to San Francisco as “the city,” which I know would cause any New Yorker to burst a blood vessel. In exchange for being tranquilo about people saying “San Fran” and “Frisco,” I also take the liberty of calling Sacramento “Sacto” (though you can hear the quotation marks in my voice).

Dear Northern Californian,

What would you say is the biggest difference between NorCal and SoCal?

Rebecca S, Seattle, WA

Dear Rebecca,

I would have to say that SoCal’s love for the automobile is the biggest difference. Driving is a way of life down there, even with all the gridlock, sprawl, and road rage. Consider a city like Irvine where every street is a six-lane thoroughfare and walking is practically illegal, and compare it to Berkeley, which according to this article has the highest rate in the nation, among cities of 100K or more, of people who bike to work.

Dear Northern Californian,

Is it “the I-5” or “The Five” and why are you so wrong?

Lydia L, Portland, OR

Dear Lydia,

Neither. Interstate 5 is referred to as simply “I-5” (no “the”) by every Northern Californian I’ve ever heard. In general, SoCal folks say “the” before a freeway name (e.g, “Get on the 101 and head south), and NorCal folks do not. If that makes me wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

Dear Northern Californian,

What do you think of this recent exodus of Californians—especially Northern Californians—to Texas?

Bill G, Palo Alto, CA

Dear Bill,

First of all, I couldn’t care less how many leave the state … humans aren’t exactly scarce here. Second, if people wish to “escape” our high taxes, our regulations, and our politics … well, Texas can have ‘em. Consider this declaration, from Mark Duggan, the co-author of a report on this (as quoted here): “Right now market forces are telling California, ‘Get your s—together. This exodus thing—I think it’s a risk.” What a douchebag. Doesn’t he remind you of the blowhard in the bar who invites you to punch him in the stomach as hard as you can? Well I’d like to. Duggan is the director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy research, and (like so many Stanford types) he’s obviously a tool.

I think it’s speculative realtors driving much of this hype, such as Marie Bailey, mentioned in the same article, who “cruises around the Dallas suburbs in her bright pink Tesla Model S with the license plate ‘MOVE2TX’” and who “moved four years ago from Orange County to a 2,000-acre housing development in Prosper, Texas, then started running party bus tours for other prospective California transplants.” Bright pink Tesla with a personalized plate? Bus tours? Texas can have her, too, and all her SoCal pals.

I’m certainly not alone in believing rumors of the migration to be greatly exaggerated. According to the results of a survey conducted by UC Berkeley, “Residents are moving out of state, but not at unusual rates.” UCB’s research “draws on many data sources to investigate the so-called exodus: public opinion data, the U.S. Census, consumer credit histories, home ownership rates, venture capital investments, and information from the Franchise Tax Board.” The study also noted that “California’s economy attracts as much venture capital as all other states combined,” so anyone who thinks Austin will be the new tech hub will be sorely mistaken. Oh, and one more thing: Shiner beer is weak.

Dear Northern Californian,

What are your favorite cuisines that feature in NorCal? Is there any place on earth with better food?

Max A, Boulder, CO

Dear Max,

It’s tempting to blather on about how California Cuisine was invented at Chez Panisse, which is walking distance from my house; and how I’ve also had great meals at Tadich Grill (the oldest restaurant in California), the Cliff House (third oldest), Sam’s Grill (fourth), and the Union Hotel (sixth oldest), all in NorCal; but those places aren’t what get me really excited. I think our specialty is the taqueria. I’m in good company here, as the famous food writer Calvin Trilling, writing in The New Yorker, has paid homage as well, calling the San Francisco burrito “so good that at times I've been tempted to put it on my list of favorite dishes that rarely seem to be served outside their place of origin.” This might sound like faint praise, but remember, this is coming from a New Yorker. Even to his daughter, whom he was trying to lure back to New York, he admitted that the food in San Francisco was “O.K. for out of town.”

(Here’s a photo I snapped at Taqueria Cancun, my favorite place in San Francisco.)

As far as your second question, I am not personally aware of a place with better food, but that doesn’t mean much. I haven’t eaten out in Paris, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, or Vietnam so I’m not exactly a world expert. And I will confess that NorCal falls short in at least two culinary realms: 1) you’ll likely have better fish taco options in SoCal, and 2) you can get definitely get a better bagel in NYC.

Dear Northern Californian,

You weren’t even born in California. Who are you to field these questions in the first place?

Brandon H, San Francisco

Dear Brandon,

In a way, I think being a transplant almost makes a person more quintessentially Californian. According to the Sacramento Bee, among American-born California residents, only about 64% are natives to the state. Besides, I’ve been here in NorCal for over 31 years … doesn’t that make me more of a Northern Californian than any California native under the age of 31? 

Dear Northern Californian,

Isn’t northern California a mecca for tax-and-spend liberals?

Eddie Koskinen, New Ipswich, NH

Dear Eddie,

I’ll tackle the “liberal” part first: it doesn’t appear to me that NorCal is actually more liberal than SoCal. The following map, from Wikipedia, shows voting behavior as of 2018. The horizontal line is how California is typically divided into north and south—more on this in a moment. (Map created by Kingofthedead; details here.

The only red county in SoCal is Kern County, population ~900K, so it’s only about 2% of the state population and thus pretty much irrelevant.

Now, about that NorCal/SoCal dividing line: it’s more historical than geographical. According to Wikipedia, “Pro-slavery politicians initially attempted to permanently divide northern and southern California at 36 degrees, 30 minutes, the line of the Missouri Compromise. But instead, the passing of the Compromise of 1850 enabled California to be admitted to the Union as a free state.”

As for taxation, I can say that Albany, the city where I live, has among the highest sales tax in the country, at 10.75%. The first time I noticed this on a receipt I started to get upset, and then remembered that I’ve voted for pretty much every tax increase I’ve ever seen, including the last sales tax hike. The proposition said something like, “We want to raise the sales tax again because we need to buy some stuff.” I thought about it for a second and decided that seemed perfectly reasonable.

On the other hand, our (at least locally) famous Prop 13 keeps our property tax from going up very fast, which as a homeowner I must admit I enjoy even if it depletes our state coffers. Those who move to Texas are sure going to miss Prop 13 in the coming decades. But, according to this article, “California’s higher income taxes on wealthy earners helps allow the state to generate and spend about 60% more than Texas each year.”

Dear Northern Californian,

What is the dress code in NorCal?

Lauren N, Ashburn, VA

Dear Lauren,

The dress code here is casual yet chic. Just kidding. (My wife once phoned a pricey restaurant in Washington, DC to ask about the dress code and that was their pompous response.) As far as I can tell, in NorCal you can dress pretty much however you want. I do see more style here than I remember from my SoCal days, but they were brief and long ago.

As I’m no expert on fashion, I did a little research on this and found this handy article in Condé Nast Traveler magazine. The photos in the article confirm what I already suspected: that you can get away with wearing whatever you want here. For example, you could hella wear an outfit like this:

One caveat: it’s not always sunny and warm in the Bay Area, so don’t run around in shorts and a tank top and expect to be comfortable. I learned this the hard way as a kid, when we came here on vacation and I froze my ass off.

Dear Northern Californian,

I tend to think NorCal people are a bit smug, so tell me: what embarrasses you the most about your region?

Well, I’ll confess I was tempted to bag on Marin County for its long opposition to vaccinating children, but then I figured I better fact-check myself, and you know what? They’ve really come around. As described on the county’s website here, their lowest vaccination rate was 77.9% back in 2011, but they’ve been steadily improving and are now at 94.3%, just below the state average. It helps that California passed a law in 2016 prohibiting personal belief exemptions (PBEs).

As annoying as anti-vaxxers are, though, they’re not nearly as damaging to society, worldwide, as Facebook, based here in the Bay Area. I would be utterly, completely, overwhelmingly relieved and stoked if those heartless, amoral Facebook bastards relocated their headquarters to Texas.

A Northern Californian is a syndicated journalist whose column, “Ask a Northern Californian,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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Busted for Jaywalking!

Introduction

During a recent business trip to Irvine, in southern California (motto: “The other, lesser California”), I was pulled over by a motorcycle cop—while walking. He gave me a long, brain-freezing lecture and a ticket for jaywalking. The fine is close to $200. I’m going to fight it via a written testimonial. This is my rough draft. Very rough.

Appeal to Citation #[———], Superior Court of California, County of Orange

I humbly request that my citation for Section Statute 21955 VC (Jaywalking) be dismissed, on the grounds that it’s complete nonsense.

First of all, $200 is really steep for a victimless crime. If I’m driving a car in an unsafe manner, I’m endangering others—I get that. I understand that driving a car is a privilege, and that by obtaining my Driver License I am agreeing in advance to follow the vehicle code. Walking, however, is not a privilege. It is a God-given right, pre-dating all laws and societies, and I never agreed to anything when I first put one foot in front of the other at age two. What right do you have to fine people for not walking how you’d like them to? When’s the last time a pedestrian hurt anybody?

Moreover, holding my Driver License or Vehicle Registration hostage if I skip out on this fine is totally baseless. How can you restrict my driving privilege on the grounds of any misbehavior I committed when not driving a motor vehicle? What’s next, suspending my license due to moral or intellectual turpitude? And if you actually make it impossible to register my car, which my wife shares, you are punishing her as well, along with our two kids. Why stop there? Why not go after my brothers, my cousins, nieces, nephews, and our parents? It’s insupportable and absurd.

The motorcycle cop who came after me—long after I committed my misdeed, which suggests you’re using video cameras to crack down on errant pedestrians, which is bizarrely inappropriate—has already subjected me to a long safety lecture which was, I feel it safe to say, humiliating to the cop and me both. So haven’t I suffered enough? The lecture insulted my intelligence because the cop said, “Safety is a two-way street. I can’t protect you if you don’t obey the law.” Protect me? When’s the last time a cop protected a pedestrian? There is nothing a cop can do to protect a pedestrian except perhaps block an intersection, which he would never do. Pedestrians are utterly defenseless in an era of increasingly distracted drivers.

Since when do cops protect anybody, for that matter? They only show up after an accident and occasionally assign penalties, and maybe call in the actual paramedics who try to mitigate the bodily damage. When’s the last time you saw a cop and thought, “Oh, thank goodness”? The vast majority of the time, seeing a cop approach you is a basic “Oh, shit!” moment. But this was not always the case. Cops used to be respected members of the community. They walked their beats, got to know the citizens, and built up some rapport and trust. That all changed when they started driving cars. Now they are just faceless badges, ensconced in vehicles, that go around busting people. (This is not just my own supposition. A college history course I took devoted a couple of weeks to the subject of law enforcement, and presented this as a widely accepted assessment.)

The other totally absurd thing about the cop’s safety lecture is that he delivered it while stopped on a six-lane thoroughfare that had no shoulder. I was up on the sidewalk at least, but he was right out there in the road, absolutely at the mercy of the cars whizzing by. Anybody drunk, texting, or otherwise distracted could have just wiped this guy out. As annoying as the cop was, I did not want to see him get run over, so I was cringing the whole time. And you wanna talk about reckless? This guy is riding around this congested megalopolis on a motorcycle forty hours a week! What, is he fricking crazy?! Who is he to lecture me about safety? I was tempted to ask him, “Does your mother know what you do for a living?” But of course I couldn’t, because you just can’t mouth off to cops.

And that’s the most degrading part of all. I had to try to be all contrite and docile, in the vain hope that he’d let me off the hook. I tried my best, but I’m sure he caught a whiff of contempt—even if he didn’t catch mine. I’m sure he didn’t feel this was his finest moment, pontificating to this hapless pedestrian, sensing the passing cars snickering at both of us. I’m sure when he dreamed of being a motorcycle cop—a dream based on watching CHiPs, needless to say—he was thinking he’d be catching bad guys, solving actual crimes, and being a hero. He’d watched Erik Estrada in that one CHiPs episode dancing onstage to “Celebration” and thought maybe he himself also had what it takes. I doubt he figured he’d one day find himself taking his life in his hands merely to slap the wrist of the only person stupid enough to try to walk somewhere in southern California.

By the way, the cop was apparently unaware of how egregious your fines are. I asked for an estimate and he said, “Well, the ticket itself is only like $20, but then you get all the local and state governments piling on, with all these extra fees, so it ends up being like $85.” He acted like this was a real shame, the result of a bloated government apparatus that was a hindrance to us both, when of course he had the option to let me go with just a warning. Maybe if he’d known it was $200 he’d have spared me the ticket, or at least the lecture.

Now, let’s get back to this safety-as-a-two-way street business. You, the so-called Superior Court, see fit to fine me for behavior that put my own safety at risk, but actually, you are going after the wrong party. If you really want justice, challenge a road and sidewalk layout that discourages walking, and seek out the city planners that make walking legally in your county a unreasonably inconvenient thing to do. The setup of your roads and sidewalks is actually putting pedestrians like me in far greater danger than we ourselves ever could.

Yes, I crossed a street in the middle, rather than at an intersection—I admit it. You know why I did it? Well, I was walking along the sidewalk, which was unpleasant enough because all your streets are like highways—nothing even slightly resembling a residential street seems to exist in Irvine—and suddenly the sidewalk just ended. I found myself walking along in the plants growing alongside the road, literally off in the weeds, with nothing between me and the cars. This is not only unpleasant, but unsafe. Why provide a sidewalk for like half of a long stretch of roadway and then suddenly end it? What city engineer masterminded that design? Or did the city or county just run over budget with the sidewalk half built? Or maybe the construction guys got sick of building it?

(Here is a photo of what I’m talking about. No, it’s not the scene of the crime, which location I’m not sure of because your cop pulled me over far away from where I committed my transgression. Meanwhile, I didn’t know I’d be ensnared in your legal imbroglio at the time so I didn’t photograph the civic inadequacy. I snapped the below photo later, in another location which was equally representative of what I’m talking about. One more thing: I jaywalked in broad daylight, not at night.)

So yeah, I could have turned around and walked a quarter mile back to the previous intersection, but to be honest, I just didn’t feel like it. I was not enjoying my walk whatsoever and just wanted to get it over with. I was like, “Okay, Irvine, you win! I won’t walk anymore! I didn’t understand before! I get that you hate pedestrians!” I had come to understand why I was almost the only pedestrian in the entire city, unless you count the quasi-homeless-looking woman I saw herding her small child the day before. But as it happened, an instance of amazing fortuity presented itself: in both directions, all the traffic was stuck behind red lights off in the distance, giving me ample time to cross the road to the other side where there was a sidewalk. I calculated that no believable rate of acceleration could bring either wall of cars in range of hitting me. I was in a position to manage my risk very effectively.

Crossing a road in this situation, I believed in the moment and continue to believe, is a safer scenario than crossing at an intersection, where motorists are allowed to turn right whenever they deem it safe. It’s up to them to look for pedestrians in the intersection, and in SoCal the motorists do a very poor job of this. Why? Because there are hardly ever pedestrians in your sprawling, poorly planned so-called community! We’re about as common as space aliens! In pretty much any intersection in your wretched county, I am putting myself at the mercy of people who have all but forgotten pedestrians exist. Your jaywalking law essentially mandates that I outsource my safety to complete strangers who routinely neglect to use their turn signals, fail to pay attention, and have been taught to believe cars are “the heartbeat of America” and that driving is some kind of game.

When I ponder the fact that you’re slapping me down for my measly infraction, in support of a civic engineering apparatus that demonstrates not just incompetence but practical contempt for safety, I almost throw up in my mouth. You know what’s dangerous? These labyrinths of asphalt, more than driveways but not quite roads, that connect the giant boulevards to the scattered buildings within the bloated office parks dotting your sprawling landscape. Even Google Maps can’t really make sense of these little connectors. Once you’ve parked your car, you have to cross first the giant parking lot, then these twisty quasi-roads, and this is far, far more dangerous than what I did, which was merely crossing a straight road at a perpendicular.  When drivers try to navigate these rats’ nests of tarmac, they get very confused, and end up paying more attention to their GPS screens than to what’s in front of their cars.

You want proof? I took three Ubers during my brief visit to Irvine. The first Uber driver had to crane her neck quite a bit, and stopped dead in the roadway at various intervals, but nonetheless managed to find her way around. But the next two Uber drivers, despite their navigation systems, managed to get very lost indeed. I submit to you Exhibits A and B.

In both cases I watched their groping progress on my phone. That first guy found himself navigating a loop to nowhere. The second guy missed a turn and ended up driving a long way in one direction, making a 90-degree left, driving another long distance—trapped by a little road to nowhere and having to make a U-turn at the end and backtrack both long stretches before getting back on track. Now consider that all these little roads are eclipsed by parked cars, and that you’ve got people walking diagonally across these vague unmarked spaces, without a sidewalk to be seen anywhere. It’s like Frogger on LSD! For you to pretend that you’ve figured out not just a safe way, but the safe way for a person on foot to navigate this automotive nightmare, and that anybody who strays from this safe scheme deserves to be heavily fined—well, it’s like something out of a darkly satirical work of dystopian fiction.

If real justice were to be served, it would involve evacuating your irreparably screwed up county, bulldozing everything in it, and then bringing in intelligent, learned city planners from a properly functioning city—I’m thinking perhaps San Francisco or Amsterdam—and just starting over. Then you could have a place where people aren’t driving fifteen minutes or more to every destination, putting up with constantly bad traffic, and voicelessly accepting an asphalt tyranny that leaves no room for responsible transit like walking and bicycling. By starting over from scratch, you might actually develop a community where people can enjoy getting around. But instead, what do you do? You put in surveillance cameras so you can punish pedestrians for not complying with your absurdist, half-baked, ultimately utterly benighted “safety” principles! You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Obviously there’s nothing practical for the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, to do about a massive civic problem that has been steadily building for decades. You could, however, admit the farcical error inherent in punishing me for your community’s sins, by dismissing my case and striking it from the record. Thank you for your consideration.

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