If you had told me, thirty years ago, that one day I'd be living back in Orange County, I would've thought you were smoking crack.
Actually, the year would've been 1982 and I don't think we yet had crack, but you get the idea.
I was leaving Orange County for the bright lights and big city of college life and I wasn't looking back. Sure, I'd visit from time to time, to see my folks and mock whichever high school classmates were left behind, but there was no way I'd live here again.
Or so I thought.
Much was lost in the Great Recession, not the least of which was my career, my partner's job and the home in the Hollywood Hills. Simply to survive, we had to take what work we could find, which is how we found ourselves banished to “The Place Which Shall Not Be Named”, an ass backward cow town the name of which I can't even type for fear of triggering PTSD. When, quite out of the blue, job prospects arose back in the good 'ole OC, we jumped at the opportunity. Compared to Bumfuck, Orange County now seemed like the French Riviera.
And so, here we are.
Turns out there's a reason they coined the term “The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same”... it's true! I was shocked at how quickly I've regained my OC navigational skills. Every day is like a new case of deja vu. We've ended up living just down the street from my old girlfriend, the one I lost my virginity to. Shame she isn't around to meet the boyfriend. And we're close to my folks, which I love. When I left this place for school, we were barely on speaking terms and now I meet them for lunch at least once a week. Strange times.
Of course, there have been a lot of changes over the past thirty years. For one thing, there are Toll Roads, the purpose of which escapes me. I wouldn't want to drive to Riverside in the best of times and I'm certainly not going to pay $4.00 to do it. My sister informs me that it shaves 30 minutes of the drive to her house. Now there's a choice... 30 minutes stuck in traffic or an additional 30 minutes in the company of her family. I'd call that a toss up.
But by far the greatest change in the past thirty years has been to the whole concept of “Orange County”. When I left here this place was known as the home of Disneyland and the birthplace of the John Birch Society (and the reactionary Rightwing politics we know and love today). There was a reason we referred to living “behind the Orange Curtain”.
And now look at it!
It's had an Extreme Makeover!
It's the New Gold Coast!
Actually, the transformation was already beginning when I still lived here. What happened was that people with money discovered that despite the fact it was more than a little backwards, it had the one thing that Los Angeles ran out of decades ago... undeveloped coastline! So the McMansions went up, the Nouveau Riche moved in and they demanded the same level of shopping and dining experiences found in more cosmopolitan locales. And before you knew it, Orange County was, dare I say it, stylish.
Oh sure, there were sacrifices. Chief among them was the pristine coastline, the view of which is now blocked by Faux Chateaus and phony Tuscan Villas. And sadly too, Laguna Beach. It was once my favorite place in the world, a quaint artists’ colony where I spent many a summer. Now it's chock full of insufferable One Percenters. Oh well, can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
So here we are, the adventure continues. Now that the dust of the move has settled, it's time to see what life in OC has to offer.
Besides “Housewives”.
