Thread: "Well West Coast cars are hip..."

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That's true about stuff starting in California and years later showing up in the rest of the country. We lived there in the late 70's and moved back East after a while. Things we saw in California finally hit the East Coast a couple or more years after we were back there. I hope some of the vehicle restrictions our West Coast friends are seeing implemented now stay there though, but I fear they will not.

Don

Being a native Californian, born in what is now called "south central", and growing up on the suburban fringe as it grew out from L.A., I never could figure out just what was so special about cars and people from California to other folks in the country; they didn't seem unusual to me. But the fact was, maybe still is, that others see them as such. When I was in the Navy and was stationed in Memphis, I, and a lot of other guys from California had girls crawling all over us, and if we had our cars with us, they and we, were the stars of any gathering. My '51 Ford was left at home, but pictures of it were very much commented on, even though it was just a simple tudor that was raked and lowered a bit, and had crazy pipes, and different hub caps on it, and it had all of those carbs under the hood along with the polished finned heads and other flash on the 8BA. It was my first baby, but I really didn't think it was all that it was made out to be by other folks. I had two buddies from San Francisco, and one of them had his '55 Buick hardtop back there; it was mildly customized, and people would flock around to get a look at it. The other guy, like me, only had pictures of his '55 Bel Air, but you would have thought it was a Barris original from the way folks made over those pictures. Another guy had a '51 Olds coupe, black primer, raked and lowered much like my Ford, with bigs and littles and loud pipes, and people would stop and stare as he drove by. We were often refered to as "that (those) California boy(s)", and were almost universally hated by local guys wherever we went; their girls loved us though.

Ken, I think Colorado was the first place to use the word or phrase "Californicate"; probably in the late sixties or early seventies. By then, the influx of east coast liberal meddlers had thoroughly messed California up and were wandering off to other places, Colorado being foremost at the time because of the swank of the ski resorts, and local folks were blaming the mess on California; didn't matter that those people had "fornicated" California and then moved on, they were late from California so California got the blame.

Geezer, unfortunately, that does seem to be fact. For some reason, California is still thought of as "out front" socially, and people still want to emulate whatever happens there - I have absolutely no idea why, but that seems to be the way of things.