I’m not trying to pick a fight, which is why I didn’t want to put this in GD or BBQ. But more than once I’ve heard people from the Bay Area say this, and I don’t know what they mean. I can’t say that I notice that San Franciscans seem any different to me, i.e. less superficial. At least, I can’t do that in a way that would justify making that kind of judgement on the whole population. I realize that such statements are almost always anecdotal, but what are the anecdotes then? Does my nonplussment only prove the point?
We do have some airhead celebrities down here, I’ll grant you that. But so does that other pole of the U.S. media axis, New York. In any event, as someone who lives in L.A. and has made a number of trips up North, and went to college with many Northern Californians, I have never been able to discern any such difference.
I think the common preception is that Californians are a lot more image conscious than folks from other parts of the country. It’s a stereotype, obviously, but there you go.
Next time they say that, remind them that San Francisco is the plastic surgery capital of America.
Growing up in Boston, my impression was that most of the country thought all of California was superficial. It’s only once you get in-state that the north-south schis comes to the fore.
Once you spend some time here, you realize that what Northern Californians mean by “Los Angeles”, (and what most of the country often means by “California”) is West LA (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Westwood, Brentwood, Venice, etc.). IMO, that area does indeed have more than its share of stupid, superficial, oblivious people. You can find plenty of superficiality in all of LA (city AND county), but it’s concentrated there. And given that there are straight line segments you can draw across a map that extend tens of scale miles while remaining entirely within city limits, West/East is not a small distinction.
Superficial, in this sense, probably means the following “pearls of wisdom”…
Clothes make the man
Appearance is everything
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
I guess the worst example of this would be the “West Hollywood clones”. Everything you wear has to be the right style, and no knockoff copies. You have to have hte “right” haircut. Appearance snobbery. All show, no go.
It also includes any and all fake “kissy kissy” followed with a “let’s do lunch”. It isn’t limited to L.A., you can find it anywhere you go. L.A. simply looks like it has more of this, because of Hollywood and the so called “beautiful people” (without the professional lighting and makeup, these people look just as average, just as regular as the rest of us - it’s an illusion).
Yep. I grew up in West L.A. (Venice High School) and you do tend to see more people who are concerned with image there. By that I mean they put a large importance on the car you drive and the style of clothes you wear. Like anywhere else in the world, there is a huge variety of people but that attitude is way more prevalent there than most other places.
People from San Francisco are just as affected but in a different way.
I was born in L.A. (well, Lakewood; which is in L.A. County), lived in Lancaster (Northern L.A. County) for 11 years, and lived in the City of L.A. (West side) for 17 years. I have to say that I noticed the same things hajario noticed. And I noticed the same thing in some places Behind The Orange Curtain as well.
Totally agree with this post. Except, IME, most Angelenos are not really any more image obsessed than anyone else.
Since leaving the Bay Area, where I grew up, I’ve become increasingly annoyed with their own schtick. The “look at us, we’re so liberal and tolerant (unless you’re Republican, of course) and we live in the BEST PLACE ON EARTH and everyone who lives anywhere else is pathetic.”* And then it pisses us off when we leave California and people ask us if we see movie stars a lot and we have to explain that the Bay Area is hundreds of miles from Los Angeles.
*My mom is a major proponent of this viewpoint. She once told me “I’m so glad I don’t live in the Midwest, everyone there is a loser”. Gee, mom, THANKS.
People do tend to be clothes conscious here, but counteracting that to a huge extent is the tendency to just wear what you’re comfortable in. When we were having our Valentine’s day dinner in an upscale Italian restaurant in Brentwood, my wife and I were the only ones who bothered dressing up. And tucked shirts are becoming such a rarity that even jeans practically qualify as ‘business casual’ if you wear your shirt tucked.
Appearance is everything is just another way of saying you only have one chance to make a first impression, more or less true everywhere, and common fodder in books written to advise both job seekers and those looking to hook up with their preferred sex.
The last point, it’s not what you know but who you know, I think is probably a show-business thing. Hollywood does definitely have an effect on how the country views the region as a whole. In the early days of television, blame for the glass teat could be put squarely on NYC, since most shows were produced there, but now it’s all come out here like all the other loose bits!
Compared to other parts of the country, I think Californians in general and Angelenos in particular are less likely even to fake an interest in people they don’t like or care to know. Other parts of the country place a greater emphasis on, I guess, “getting along.” So superficially at least, you’re more likely to be able to engage in that kind of desultory social chit chat with people from other places. We just don’t care, so we don’t do it.
This was kinda confirmed for me this past week, when at the grocery store for only about half an hour, I was engaged in conversation by two different people. During the course of each conversation, I learned that they were visiting from Arizona and Idaho, respectively. They both said that they were kind of surprised how unfriendly people here were. That’s not unfriendliness, it’s I-don’t-careness.
I never noticed that we’re stuck up, as Campion says. On the other hand, I have often heard it said that it’s easier for single people to hook up in NYC, so there’s that I guess.
To clarify: I’m not suggesting we’re stuck up. To the contrary, I’m suggesting that we’re less concerned with superficialities like pretending to care about other people. (You can’t tell me that everyone who jibber jabbers to complete strangers cares what the strangers think.) If I don’t want to talk to you, I won’t. That doesn’t really appear rude to other Angelenos, but to people from other parts of the country, who are used to having horribly superficial chit chat sessions with everyone they pass in the grocery store, we appear stuck up. We’re not. We just have a lower level of social chit chat as our norm.
I realize this only makes sense in my head. I’ll go back to talking to myself.
IME in L.A. if someone wants to talk to you, they want something. Have someone come up to you and ask for money enough times, and you’ll start ignoring people too. It was a bit of a culture shock the first time I went to New Orleans and people would casually start conversations.
Well, you know, those northern winters keep the riff-raff out.
I think part of the whole “superficiality” thing is that there seem to be a lot of people hoping to get into the entertainment industry. So they behave and appear a certain way just in case Spielberg happens to be seated at their table.
Robin, native Angeleno who had the good sense to get the hell out before she killed someone.
