Behind All That Feuding

Let me save San Diegans some postage and apologize for a crack in my last column. Through events too tangled to retell--the plot involves editors, Italian sailors and a teething baby--a paragraph was altered to make it appear that I believe America’s Finest City is boring.

It is, and I do, but to say so was not my intent. The remark about dullness was directed, not at the city itself, but at the America’s Cup competition--a televised yacht race capable of inducing sleep even quicker than pro bowling.

Since Californians are so prickly about their hometowns, I await a counterattack. In these cases, it typically arrives in the form of over-punctuated letters: Saw the L.A. RIOTS! on TV!! If that’s EXCITING, I’ll take ‘boring’ any day!!! P.S., quit picking on Sonny Bono! Sincerely, ‘Hopping Mad’ in La Jolla!!!

Well, Hopping, I understand the urge to lash back. I’m from Fresno, where wounded civic pride is the official town sport.

Strange how Fresnans never learned to take criticism. We’ve had so much practice. From Johnny Carson to the little Little Hoover Commission, the line of Fresno bashers is a long one. They poke fun at the town’s infernal weather, its polyester fashions, raisin moguls and “skyline” of architectural missteps. Bottom was reached a few years back when a survey of the nation’s most livable cities ranked Fresno dead last.

Fresno always overreacts to these affronts. Public relations firms are commissioned to promote the city’s charms, or whatever. Petitions are circulated. Indignation expressed. Once, the mayor threatened a Fresno boycott of San Francisco, which produced only more Fresno jokes among trembling Friscans, like: “Boycott us. Please.”

Of course a thin skin never kept Fresno from looking down its sunbaked nose at the neighbors. As a kid, I was taught that our town was inhabited by industrious dust bowl refugees, while Bakersfield was a depository for lazy Okies who simply dropped over the Tehachapis into the alkali dust and stayed. I suppose this stereotype, as wrongheaded as any, made us feel less insecure. I also suppose Bakersfield citizens entertain theories of their own about Arvin.

In truth, many California cities have taken broadsides, and like Fresno they often overreact. Chico reeled when San Francisco columnist Herb Caen described it as “a place where Velveeta is found in the gourmet section of the supermarket.” Lodi, as in “stuck in,” was marked forever by Creedence Clearwater. Oakland has never escaped Gertrude Stein’s “there is no there there,” a line that, in context, actually is meant to lament the loss of Stein’s childhood home.

The most cutting criticisms result from intercity rivalries. San Francisco-Los Angeles, with Caen and Jack Smith tossing literary grenades at one another across the decades, is the most famous. There also are blood feuds between San Francisco and San Jose, San Diego and Los Angeles, and so on, down to little Newman and Gustine in the San Joaquin Valley.

Of course, the favorite target of 20 million Californians traditionally has been Los Angeles. For the last decade or so, the city’s reputation had enjoyed a modest renaissance--City of the Future, jewel of the Pacific Rim, and all that. Even Caen tossed in the towel and conceded San Francisco had been overtaken.

The riots have ended all that for now. Los Angeles can expect to resume its role as the Calcutta of California, an urban disease, highly infectious. Places like San Luis Obispo will fret even more about becoming “another L.A.” I noticed just last week Caen was back on the attack, reporting what he described as a new Los Angeles bumper sticker: “Cover me. I’m changing lanes.”

Somebody write that man a nasty letter!!!

I’ve lived all over California, in San Francisco, Newport Beach, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, Pismo, Porterville--”Pee-ville,” the valley wags called it--and, now, Pasadena, a city once put down as “a cemetery with lights.” All this mileage has taught me that even California’s worst places have something special to offer, and so it’s understandable that we tend to hyperventilate when the old hometown is attacked.

I look at it in a different way. I prefer to consider myself less a resident of any one city and more an occupant of all California. In this state, to hide inside city boundaries is to miss the whole point of living here. California is the one true city-state. Claim it all, and that way, you won’t have to worry about Herb Caen--or some wiseacre columnist from Los Angeles.