Plain as the Nose on Your Face: Northwest’s the Place

The traffic stinks. The smog stinks. The Angels stink. The summer stinks. Mel Brooks has a new movie out called “Life Stinks.” I haven’t seen it, but I bet it stinks.

Who’s being negative?

This is exactly why people have begun moving out of Southern California. They’re fed up with things that either don’t work or that, to coin a phrase, stink.

We know they’re leaving because real estate agents have said so. And we even know where they’re going. They’ve headed for the Great Northwest, kind of doing a Lewis & Clark thing more than a century later. Much like Colorado was during the 1970s, the Great Northwest has become a haven for people, many of them from California.

One of my best friends, a lifelong Californian who once told me he’d never leave the state, moved to Tacoma 2 1/2 years ago. He’s never been happier, that louse.

What’s so great about the Northwest?

Never one to cut short on the research, I telephoned Robert Ray, a former Irvine-ite and author of the “Murdock” detective series set in Orange County. Ray, now 56, lived in Orange County for nine years before moving to Seattle a year and a half ago.

He wrote four Murdock books here, but left Orange County when his wife, Margot, got a job at the University of Washington. Ray says he “was ready to leave” anyway.

So, how’s life in the Great Northwest, Bob?

“Bring a rain suit,” he said. “It’s really wet. Margot scheduled a garden party for the 9th of August, thinking it would be sunny, and it rained for three days. Our downspout got plugged up and we had water in the basement, so we had the party in the basement with the dehumidifier on.”

Gee, Bob, didn’t you know it rained in Seattle? “Yeah, but not in August. I did OK until it came into the basement. I don’t mind if it just doesn’t come into the house. I run in the rain in my rain suit. I dry out; it’s the house that’s the problem.”

OK, so it rains.

How about things to do? “They have a lot of concerts and a lot of summer stuff, folk festivals and stuff like that. If you’re literary, they have a bookstore called Elliott Bay, where they have readings six times a week and they usually have someone (an author) coming through.”

Culturally? “It’s better here because Seattle is a city. They’ve got an opera, they’ve got a huge city center complex with a lot of stuff in it, so it’s a little more cosmopolitan than a suburb.”

Ray said he likes the identity that a city, as opposed to a sprawling county, provides. “You really feel off-balance without it,” he said, although he acknowledged that Orange County is maturing. “Orange County is getting an identity because it finally figured out what it is, and it didn’t know before.”

The Seattle-area press was rife with anti-California stories a year or so ago. Those news reports have slackened, Ray said, but he added, “If I had California license plates, I would change them pretty quick.”

“Seattle is a really tight town, because the people here are pretty provincial and if you don’t have contacts, it’s kind of hard to make contacts. Margot has her family here and has real good connections, so it’s been relatively easy for us, but I think if you just came up and threw yourself on the body of the city, the body of the city would throw you back.”

As a writer, Ray may have made the perfect match. “Statistics say it has the highest reading level per capita, so it has more books per household than any place in the country. There’s probably a pretty good education level here, because a lot of people who came here are bright and educated. The other thing is that you’re indoors a lot.”

The down side?

“The Mexican food is better in Southern California. They’ve got it here, but my favorite place was the El Torito Grill in Fashion Island. The coffee up here is superior. You can go any place and get a real major good cup of coffee, espresso and stuff like that.”

However, as a Texas native, Ray was chagrined to discover that chili is unpopular in the Northwest.

Although he misses his friends down here, Ray is a happy emigrant. “I never put down any roots (in Orange County). The soil is not conducive to roots.”

While the disenchantment over Californians moving to the Northwest has subsided, the latest targets are people from Hong Kong, Ray said. “You hear stories like the real estate agent who shows a woman five houses and she buys them all with cash. They’re coming into Vancouver and the next stop is here.”

So, no doubt, someday people will begin fleeing the Northwest.

In the meantime, Ray is content. But if only to prove that you can take the novelist out of the county but you can’t take the county out of the novelist, Ray’s upcoming book features Seattle only in the middle part.

The rest is set in Orange County.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.