TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111891/11189913.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5KB | 105 lines

                                                                                FEUDS, Page 78

CALIFORNIA

The War Between The State

South to North: "You're just plain tacky!"


BY MARTHA SMILGIS/LOS ANGELES


    At first you're seduced by the sweeping ocean views, cute
Victorian houses, picturesque tangerine bridges and storybook
bed-and-breakfasts. But on closer inspection, the sheer volume
of scented candles, glass-blown swans and seashell ashtrays
sends the mind reeling. Banners that boast I LEFT MY HEART
should rightly read MY WALLET, since San Francisco's real raison
d'etre is separating tourists from their money. This
too-too-precious chilly, hilly city is determined to stupefy you
with caramel corn, sourdough bread, chocolate cable cars and
painting-by-numbers that goes by the name of sidewalk art. "It's
like living in a theme park," says Lee Houskeeper, a local
resident.

    The town -- the greater Bay Area, for that matter -- is
sicklied o'er with restaurants. Culinary czars rule a population
where schoolchildren learn the meaning of chanterelle and
shiitake before they study the alphabet. Beer can come in a
bottle with a champagne cork, and spaghetti automatically means
fennel-raspberry pasta. To ask for a glass of ordinary tap water
or regular coffee is to admit that you hail from Tulsa.
Pretentious readings of bogus poetry have now been supplanted
by SF Net, a coffeehouse computer linkup that enables pseudo
avant-gardists to cross-chat electronically over their caffe e
latte.

    The entire culture, for that matter, is derivative. The
cramped, dark Victorian houses (going for $2 million) are
borrowed from the English, the ivory (mostly opaque plastic)
figurines from the Chinese, and the vineyards from northern
Italy. There's no homegrown movie business; in fact the town has
missed the video age, focused instead on grainy foreign films,
which seem to be unreeling in every theater. Although the smug
intelligentsia of Stanford and Berkeley blanch at the mention
of her name, the area's best-selling author is Danielle Steel.
To be sure, Los Angeles is no stranger to mass-market novelists,
but that kind of pedestrian vulgarity is increasingly
overwhelmed by the energy, quality and variety of the town's
truly provocative attractions: a first-class symphony orchestra,
lively art galleries and museums, adventurous theater, special
events like the biennial L.A. Arts Festival, a good Mexican
dinner for 10 bucks.

    In the southland people get Pulitzer prizewinning news
from the Los Angeles Times. San Franciscans rely on the
clubhouse newspaper, the Chronicle ("comical" to locals), whose
existence depends almost solely on Herb Caen, 75, America's
longest-running columnist (circa 1938), and whose chief function
is the nurturing of San Francisco's insatiable narcissism. The
Chron's competitor, Hearst's Examiner, is hardly better,
specializing in the scandalous activities of local politicians.

    Politics, in any case, is monopolized mainly by vociferous
gay organizations, gangs of neoprohibitionists and, of course,
the ever resentful ecomaniacs, who have forsaken chocolate chip
ice cream for Rainforest Crunch and who insist that the city's
unspeakable degenerates (cigarette smokers) ask permission
before they light up outside. While the city drifts, the board
of supervisors issues wacky foreign policy statements. During
the gulf war, the board declared the town a nuclear-free haven
for draft dodgers. Across the bay in Berkeley it's even daffier:
along with Fidel Castro, the city council is all that is left
of the communist elite.

    The parochial social scene in San Francisco is hardly more
engaging, consisting as it does of a few dozen gadflies who
spend much of their time phoning each other to discuss who
didn't get invited to the New York parties. Everybody else seems
to be in the business of resolutely currying the town's status
as the capital of the sexually weird. Where else can you join
a cross-dressing club? Where else would they be restoring the
sign flashing the pulsating neon nipples of aging stripper Carol
Doda? At the same time, in such a setting a straight male has
a hard time seeking out a pair of shapely legs in thigh-high
Lycras. A fashion statement in the Bay Area means pearls and
sensible walking shoes or the Birkenstock look. "Down in L.A.,"
says single lawyer Peter Haley, ruefully, "you've got wicked
dames coming in from the night. Here, there are no dangerous
women. Too many bird watchers."

    As if all this were not enough to make Los Angeles a
relative Eden, the weather in the Bay Area is windy, cold and
foggy; you can't swim in the ocean; and the earthquake knocked
down the freeways, so it's hard to get across town. The smug
superiority of northerners is simply a case of shabby gentility.
These people who came to California first always looked down at
the village in the south, which to their dismay has become a
booming megalopolis.