California Driving: A California Primer

California's Geography & Culture

California's a large place by European or East Coast standards, and spans a surprising variety of landscapes and cultures. Most foreigners probably think of palm trees, deserts, Hollywood, Disneyland, Bay Watch, and (maybe) Yosemite when they hear the word "California", but there's a bit more to it than that. California has both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous forty-eight states (Mt. Whitney, and Badwater in Death Valley, respectively — almost within sight of each other), volcanoes and rainforests, deserts and redwoods, huge rivers and frozen glaciers, beaches and ski slopes, rolling high country plains and deep mountain lakes, Silicon Valley and East LA, Hollywood and Marin, Berkeley and Bakersfield, Arcata and Barstow. California's geography and geology have shaped California's cultures in interesting ways; it pays to keep these in mind when you're planning your trips or out observing the Californians.

The first thing to remember here is that virtually all of California is earthquake country — there's just no escaping this. This basic fact shapes everything from human neuroses to freeway design to the conspicuous lack of brick houses. We all know that the Big One will hit sometime, but most of us either try not to think too much about it or refuse to admit the possibility at all. As a tourist, you probably shouldn't get too obsessive about it, but don't be complacent — the Big One is just as likely to strike while you're reading this as it is to hit in thirty years time. We just don't know. If you want to learn more about how to cope with a quake, the US Geological Survey (the USGS) also has a good Earthquake Preparedness site with links to various sites; this should be required reading for anyone visiting California (the local printed phone books in most parts of California also usually have a few pages devoted to what to do when one hits as well). As a driver, the minimum you should do is carry enough water and food in your car to last you and any passengers for a day or two for when the quake strikes and you're in your car (a likely enough scenario in California). Few Californians actually do this, of course.

The second thing to remember is that much of California is naturally either desert or mountain. Water is scarce in most of California — very scarce — and for the desert areas (especially Los Angeles) water has to be piped in from elsewhere, often from hundreds of miles away, and often up and over high rugged mountain ranges at great expense. Most of Southern California does not have enough water to sustain itself, so water is power in this state, especially in the Los Angeles area (see the movie "Chinatown" for a barely-fictionalized account of some of L.A.'s water wars earlier last century). Green suburban lawns in L.A., mall fountains in San Diego, the ability to grow rice in the Central Valley: all of these are ostentatious signs of power and wealth — and all of them are signs of a heavily engineered environment that is proving harder and harder to sustain as the population grows and the climate changes. Every decade or so we also get long droughts whose effects get worse as the population increases; 2008 has just been officially designated a drought year by our Governator, but it's too early in the drought cycle for most Californians to take it seriously, unfortunately (i.e. there are no mandatory state-wide water restrictions yet). If it lasts another year or so, mandatory restrictions on everything from lawn-watering to showers will be in effect in most parts of the state.

The third thing to remember is that there's Northern California and Southern California (of course, there's really more to it than that — see e.g. the State of Jefferson, and sometimes the Central Valley feels like another state entirely). Northern and Southern California are physically and culturally quite distinct (enough so that every few years Northern California contemplates leaving California and becoming the 51st state). San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area are definitely in Northern California, Los Angeles in Southern California; the dividing line is less easily defined, but is usually thought of as being somewhere south of Monterey on the coast, and a little south of Yosemite inland, depending on who you talk to. We Northerners tend to resent the fact that outsiders think all of California is like the Southern California they know from television and movies (God forbid that life would be so empty!), and that Southern California (L.A. in particular) and the San Joaquin Valley callously and wastefully take all of Northern California's water for things like swimming pools and golf courses.

There's some truth in all this, but it's mostly exaggerated (urban Northern California goes in for some of its own water theft, too, of course). It's the cultural gap that's most significant: you all "know" about Southern California (airheads and babes; rollerblading actors and actresses between jobs waiting tables in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica; geriatric golf in Palm Springs; drive-by gang shootings; Watts, East L.A., etc. etc. ad nauseam), but much of California isn't like that at all (much of Southern California isn't like that either, for that matter). San Francisco and Berkeley, for example, are quintessentially Northern Californian in their pretensions to a smaller, more European, more cultured existence than L.A. or San Diego. Don't ever accuse a San Franciscan of being a Southern Californian — they will be mortally offended, especially if (as is often the case) they're actually originally from L.A. These pretensions are often laughable — and the sign of some deeply troubling insecurities — but they're a strong part of California's cultural makeup (the truth is, of course, that while San Francisco tends to think of itself as being locked in a mortal cultural rivalry with Los Angeles, L.A. barely knows S.F. exists, and cares even less… (Australians: think Melbourne vs. Sydney, with Melbourne being the San Francisco). The really painful truth for most Northern Californians is that L.A. is most definitely the cultural capital of the state, with much better galleries, music, art scenes, etc., spread across the vast L.A. basin, than could ever exist in the north).

The fourth thing to remember is that for all the high tech glamour of Silicon Valley or the budding biotech industry, California is still largely an agricultural state. A big part of California's wealth comes from the fruit, vegetables, and grains grown in the huge Central Valley. Much of America's produce comes from the Valley; much of this produce comes to us cheaply due to federal water subsidies (see below) and seasonal near-slave labor imported from Mexico.

The fifth thing to remember is that for all its self-image as a cultural or physical frontier, California is the way it is due to huge federal subsidies and a large defense and civil service sector. The wildly-productive Central Valley, for example, would still be mostly desert or swamp if vast publicly-funded engineering works hadn't been used to make it possible to grow rice, cotton, fruit, and vegetables "cheaply" with subsidized water from elsewhere. Similarly, much of California's early development was underwritten by the federal government, and continued to be until fairly recently.

Lastly, most people you'll meet in California will probably be from somewhere else. California is a nation of immigrants and movers; it's rare to meet a native of whatever city or town you're in.

All this combines to make a state that is far more geographically and culturally diverse than most other states or countries. A large proportion of the state is Latino, Asian, or African-American; "Anglos" are a minority in significant parts of the state; the Asian-Pacific influence is very strong, especially in L.A. and the San Francisco Bay Area; and there are influential pockets of Italians, Native Americans, Britons, Portuguese, etc. here and there around the state. Above all, there's a huge range of economic and social classes, from the desperate poverty of the inner cities and farm workers through the disappearing suburban and urban blue collar workers to the suburban middle classes to the good burghers of Beverly Hills and Sausalito. Needless to say, for all California's self-proclaimed egalitarianism, social mixing happens a lot less than most Californians would like to admit, and there's a great deal of racial and cultural strife in some areas. However, most visitors will probably not be directly affected by such problems, and the real miracle is that by and large California's multiculturalism actually works as well as it does.

If you want to know more about what makes California's culture and economy tick, I'd recommend starting with both "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner (Penguin, ISBN 0 14 010432 1) and "City Of Quartz" by Mike Davis (Haymarket, ISBN 0 86091 303 1). These books do a good job in explaining why California is the way it is, and how water and government politics (and "pork", to use the delicious American term) have shaped California. Neither book is recommended for the faint-hearted or the Libertarian reader with blood pressure problems. I also like Joan Didion's "Where I Was From" for a deeply-felt and thoughtful look at the various myths we Californians often live by. For a good guide to California's different geographical and cultural regions, I recommend "The Seven States of California: A Cultural and Natural History" by Philip L. Fradkin (Henry Holt and Company, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8050-1947-2). A really excellent first-hand description of the early exploration of California by Europeans from Back East (and the impressions California made on them) is contained in "Up and Down California in 1860-1866: The Journal of William H. Brewer", Ed. Francis P. Farquhar, UC Press (1966, numerous reprintings), ISBN 0-520-02762-0. Reyner Banham's "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies", although terribly dated, is good at explaining and showing some of the Los Angeles Experience, as well as being a lot of fun to read (it's hard for a Northern Californian to admit, but Los Angeles on a clear sunny winter's day with the snow-capped mountains sparkling in the background glimpsed through the palm trees can actually look very beautiful, especially from Santa Monica or Pasadena, or from a fast-moving freeway above the sprawl. You might also want to check out Banham's "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles" on Google Video; again, it's very dated, but a lot of fun).

Californian Weather

California has four seasons: flood, fire, earthquake, and riot (and you might want to add a fifth season, "drought", every few years...). More seriously, it's fair to say that most of California really doesn't have any weather, just a relentless series of minor variations on a rather sunny theme. For six to nine months of the year in most of California you can confidently forecast the next day's weather (and the next week's weather) by simply looking out the window and describing what you see outside right at that moment. The endless procession of mild dry sunny days on the coast can get a bit creepy after a while….

The majority of California has only two real seasons: a short cool winter wet season, and a long (six to nine months) dry season. In most of California it simply doesn't rain at all during the dry season (roughly May to November); if it rains in the San Francisco Bay Area in (say) July it is quite literally front page news, with breathless live reports heading the evening television newscasts.

On the coast, temperatures are usually mild the year round, with summer often being cooler (due to fog) than late spring or early autumn in the northern parts. In San Francisco and nearby coastal areas, it actually gets quite cold in summer when the fog rolls in off the ocean (Mark Twain supposedly once wrote that he'd spent the longest winter of his life one summer in San Francisco, which seems about right). We locals just love the sight of tourists in T-shirts and shorts freezing on Golden Gate bridge or at Fishermans Wharf as the fog and wind reduce the outside temperatures to the 40's or 50's (fahrenheit) in the midddle of summer. Elsewhere, most days of the year are fine and sunny, sometimes with a bit of morning fog that burns off by lunch time, or evening fog that creeps in off the cold Pacific in the afternoon and early evening. The L.A. area is warmer, dryer, and somewhat less foggy, but as long as you're within visual distance of the sea, the temperatures are still fairly mild, the weather clear. The north coast (above about Mendocino) is correspondingly cooler, foggier, and wetter (it actually rains quite a lot north of Mendocino; it's sort of where Seattle weather begins for most of us). One thing that surprises newcomers and visitors is that except in the southern-most parts of the state, the Pacific Ocean along the coast is cold — usually too cold to swim in without a wetsuit (the water's circulating down from Alaska). This makes for beautiful fog banks and relatively mild summers, but it's quite a shock when you first rush down that alluring ocean beach and dive into the water… (hint: look at that lovely beach and beautiful waves. Why is no one swimming?!).

Away from the coast, temperatures can be ferociously hot during late spring, summer, and much of autumn (fall), especially in the Central Valley and the deserts. If you're driving in these areas, an air-conditioned car is recommended, particularly if you're from a cooler climate like Europe or Britain. The same places can get remarkably cold in winter; the Californian high country and Sierra regions also get lots of snow in the wet season.

Most of California doesn't have storms in the sense that many of us from elsewhere are used to. For example, along the coast thunderstorms are very rare; in the years I've been here, I think there's been an average of about one or two thunderstorms per year in the Bay Area (and none of them were anything like the spectacular displays I remember as a child in Sydney). When you hear the words "storm warning" (or similar) on weather forecasts for California, the word "storm" is being used in the meteorologically-correct sense of "disturbance" — the incoming "storm" will usually be little more than some rain and wind with a low-hanging cloud cover.