i've lived in california 40 of my 58 years. mostly in placer county. where the first transcontinental railroad (central pacific when being built, southern pacific shortly thereafter, well into the 80s, sever brief periods of other ownerships then, and now absorbed into the u.p.) crossess the hill (donner summit, elevation 7010 feet). (the railroad my dad worked for most of the years i was growing up and 30 years of his life). from the time i was 3 untill i went into the air force to get out of being drafted in 68. then on and off in the 70s after i got out, and ever since i got back from oregon in the late 80s. NORTHERN california sierra's and sierra foothills and along that mentioned corridor between sacramento and reno. most i've ever spent away from here in one chunk was the ten years i lived up in oregon. i wasn't born here, but considering my parents moved here when i was 3, and i'm now 58, i'd say this is as much my home as any one place ever can be. i still feel half way up the hill is more my home then this stinking hot valley where i've lived since 87 though. i wish everything south of a line between san louis obisbo and bridgeport over on 395 would go away and become another state or part of mexico and let us up here in the north do things right instead of dictating to us by remote control because there's so many of them. of course i'd like to see the maidu tribal elders be the county governments of placer, nevada, yuba, sierria, lassen, and so on counties. instead of the kissers of assess of real estate developers and banks and highway interests that have been the bane of placer county. nevada county has the advantage of beeing off the main drag. and little counties like sierra and alpine being above and out behind the back of beyond. this is pine tree country. though it is also acorn country. and manzanita. deer and mtn lion and black bear. though the grizzleys and wolves are long gone. rattlie snakes, black berries and miner's lettice. the gold rush was here. that's where the money came from to build the railroad. but it sure screwed things up for the people who had before then been living here peacefully for more then ten thousand years. the smell of pine needles is the air in my lungs. granite and greenstone my seat along the trails. and what a perfect place this would be for the kind of meter gauge and narrower trains they have in switzerland. or a bamboo patch to raise red pandas. up in my hills i mean. down here in this valley they grow tomatoes. and rice. and about a third of what the rest of the u.s. eats. =^^= .../\...
Big ups to placer county i stay representing El Dorado County. and to driftwood that sounds kind of elitist man
You can call it elitist if you want, but as the population grows its not going to be as nice anymore.
well the poopulation HAS grown and it ISN'T as nice as it was. but that is also WHY it is as expensive as it is. it could be a lot nicer even with the poupulation if we had those little trains like in japan and switzerland instead of everything having to be with the automobile. ok we do have amtrak, and they really do try. but even that and the county busses and some of the once little towns now have their own little bus systems too. but the growth of public transit has been only a tiney fraction of the growth of population and that means too many cars all the time and everyplace like when i was little growing up that was only arround l.a. that it was as bad like that. we didn't have any more tracks up in my hills but percapita there were more trains and bussess and the bussess that were greyhound and trailways, well greyhound anyway, went as many places and more as often and more as the county bussess that are all there is anymore. i like the county bussess and how they don't cost more then city bussess (even less then some cities), but we could and would have LOTS more public transportation if california and the rest of the nation hadn't made the automobile some kind of virtual god. and then the tickey tackey developers building everything arround the car like that was all there ever could be or something. yes we've definately got the more people and it is messing all sorts of things up, especialy down here on the flat lands of the valley. up in the hills, everywhere there's way more people too. population has been increasing here faster then almost anyplace else in the country. we need policy based incentives to start swinging away from the automobile and the tickey tackey and we need that NOW. have needed it all my life really. but anyway, you get far enough away from the main drag corridors where it's convenient for people to commute and it's not so bad. people are still crowding in too many places as it is though. there's ways to accomodate people without destroying everything. ways the've HAD to come up with in europe and japan. instead of wall to wall cars and houses. =^^= .../\...
I'm loving Laguna Beach. Been here about a year and 1/2. Was in LA before for 3 years. Moved out here from Minneapolis. Laguna Beach is a really cool artist community that is not covered what so ever in that stupid MTV show, "Laguna Beach".
The devolpers won't be happy until the entire california coast looks like Orange County. Those bastards are using a loophole (and a hand drawn parcel map from the 1870's) to develop a previously undeveloped 30 mile stretch of coastline west of Santa Barbara.
I live 30 minutes from laguna beach...that tv show is horibley misleading it pisses me off. I love Orange County, specifically Dana Point. I would love to live there.
California isn't a bad place. It's pretty cool actually. Pretty peaceful (sometimes a bit too peacefu it gets boring) especially if you live in a small town like Delano, like me. The only thing that sucks is the San Joaquin Valley, because we don't get the ocean beeze or anything, so our air is never clean.
I want to get out of the Inland Empire. I was here from ages 0-12 then moved away for school and university out of country. Now I'm back, tho I live in a better area and work in Redlands (probably the nicest area of the IE, and most expensive). I just hate the smog, heat, and all the fires. I'd much rather be in LA. That's where all the music is.
music? you want the music without the crap? nevada county has more musicians percapita then even the bay area. and the (san francisco) bay area has more then just about any place else in the country, over heated and over crowded lala basin included. of course if everybody down there started coming up here i'd probably feel about that the way signs used to say they did about californians in general up in oregon. =^^= .../\...
I mean studio-wise. I don't know how those places you listed could have more musicians, tho. I'm speaking of professional musicians who make their bread and butter from it (which is what I do). I lived in Nashville, TN for 8 years and never met as many musicians as I did there anywhere else. The competition is pretty ridiculous tho, and since I have more connections out here, I decided to come back. I would tend to think NYC would have the most pro musicians per capita. About 1/3 of the people I knew in highschool went onto Julliard, Manhattan, Curtis, or some other prestigious conservatory on the eastcoast.
