California, Here I Come

Perhaps the best-known cliché about California is that nationwide trends appear here first. As a visitor to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, about thirty miles south of San Francisco, I have accordingly been keeping ears and eyes open, ready to spot a trend on the wing. But to date I have come up with little, beyond noting that the supermarkets hereabouts stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and at the local Safeway they come around with free doughnuts at 11:30 p.m. Whether this is a marketing strategy that is destined to sweep the country I cannot say. But in my nocturnal grocery expeditions I have noticed that food prices are about 10 per cent higher here than on the East Coast. Odd, because I’m sure most of the food is grown right here. Gasoline, on the other hand, I have seen as low as 59 cents for a gallon of self-service regular.

Despite its unconventional shopping hours, California strikes me as more middle-class than outre. I think it’s the vacation-style weather and the Mediterranean flora that give the state its reputation for the exotic. Palm, eucalyptus, and olive trees, endless sunshine, and purpled hills in the distance do wonders for what would otherwise be humdrum suburbs.

TB

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Tom Bethell

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Perhaps the best-known cliché about California is that nationwide trends appear here first. As a visitor to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, about thirty miles south of San Francisco, I have accordingly been keeping ears and eyes open, ready to spot a trend on the wing. But to date I have come up with little, beyond noting that the supermarkets hereabouts stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and at the local Safeway they come around with free doughnuts at 11:30 p.m. Whether this is a marketing strategy that is destined to sweep the country I cannot say. But in my nocturnal grocery expeditions I have noticed that food prices are about 10 per cent higher here than on the East Coast. Odd, because I’m sure most of the food is grown right here. Gasoline, on the other hand, I have seen as low as 59 cents for a gallon of self-service regular.

Despite its unconventional shopping hours, California strikes me as more middle-class than outre. I think it’s the vacation-style weather and the Mediterranean flora that give the state its reputation for the exotic. Palm, eucalyptus, and olive trees, endless sunshine, and purpled hills in the distance do wonders for what would otherwise be humdrum suburbs.