Disneyland <i> Oui</i> , Ojai <i> Non</i> in Michelin California Guide : Books: The venerable French company’s first assessment of the state is opinionated, detailed and likely to ruffle a few feathers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the authorities have spoken, and it turns out we’re a four-night town.

This may be amusing news to those who have spent four or 40 years in the Los Angeles area--or to those who fled in horror after a day or two here--but here it is in print under the grand imprimatur of Michelin.

In the new Michelin Green Guide to California--the venerable French company’s first effort at assessing this state--the editors’ suggested driving tours allow four days for Los Angeles, the same for San Francisco. San Diego gets three; Santa Barbara and Monterey, two. Laguna Beach and San Luis Obispo are worth one.

Michelin’s main business is still making tires, but over nine decades, the company has also built a reputation as the western world’s most highfalutin guidebook publisher, issuing star-ratings in its Red Guides that send repercussions throughout Europe’s restaurant industry. In recent years, the company has increased emphasis on its green touring guides--which don’t list hotels or restaurants--and extended its reach to cover New York, Washington, D.C., New England, Canada and Mexico.

But it wasn’t until this summer that the company took on California. The result is the 264-page Michelin Green Guide to California ($16 in most bookstores), sturdily bound, handsomely illustrated, conveniently shaped to squeeze into a pocket, heavy on history and light on the pie-in-the-sky rhapsodizing that undercuts the credibility of so many guidebooks. But the most entertaining elements are the uncredited authors’ decrees of just how much attention a city, town or landmark is worth.

Among the missions, Michelin likes San Carlos Borromeo (in Carmel) and Santa Barbara best. At Disneyland, Michelin likes Tomorrowland and Fantasyland best, Main Street USA and Adventureland least. In Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Falls gets three stars; Bridalveil Fall, only one.

The most anyone can hope for from Michelin is three stars, a judgment that a destination is “worth the trip” by itself. Among the attractions to make that category: Yosemite, Hollywood, Death Valley, Big Sur, Hearst Castle, Disneyland, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Avenue of the Giants, the 32-mile parkway through redwood forest near Garberville.

Among those that rate two stars (“worth a detour”): Palm Springs; Pasadena; Lake Tahoe; Lava Beds National Monument (in California’s northeasternmost corner); the wine country north of San Francisco; the gold country north of Sacramento; Sacramento itself; Monterey; Mt. Whitney; the missions at San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey and Lompoc (La Purisima Concepcion), and Joshua Tree National Monument.

Those that rate a single star (“interesting”) include: Catalina Island, Berkeley, Idylwild, Julian, Long Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley.

Among those that fall short of “interesting”: Bakersfield, Fresno, Riverside, Ventura and Santa Rosa.

I immediately went looking for goofs and causes for outrage in the new book. I found no howlers (unless, I suppose, you work for the chambers of commerce in Bakersfield, Fresno, Riverside, Ventura or Santa Rosa) and learned more than a few things. (For instance: When Disneyland opened in July, 1955, the live television coverage was hosted by an actor named Ronald Reagan.) But there’s still plenty in the book to fuel healthy arguments among longtime Californians.

Sacramento, more interesting than Berkeley? The Lompoc mission, more worthy of a visit than Catalina?

“Historical importance,” explained Michelin editor and project manager Ann-Marie Borkowski, whom I found at the company’s U.S. office in Greenville, S.C.

Borkowski, raised in Ohio and Indiana, had spent just two weeks in California before she undertook this project and logged 15,000 miles in 22 weeks of inspections around the state. Nine other researchers and editors together spent another 48 weeks on the road here--traveling anonymously and paying their own way to avoid any appearance of impropriety, even though the guide doesn’t evaluate hotels and restaurants. In all, the research lasted three years. Few guidebook authors do so much homework, or pay their own way.

So what exactly did they look for? That certain something goes undefined in the guidebook, but Borkowski said the criteria include historical significance, accessibility, beauty, how representative the site is of the region, “and also how much fun it is. Is it amusing? Does it entertain the visitor?”

I threw out a couple of other quibbles. Ojai, the artsy, oak-shaded Ventura County enclave between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, isn’t even acknowledged on maps, let alone granted a star. Cambria, whose pine-studded slopes, rocky shores, many art galleries and snug, fog-shrouded beachfront hotels are a standard addition to a Hearst Castle trip, gets no listing of its own and only a passing one-sentence reference in a section on the Central Coast.

Ojai was a little too far off the beaten path and not quite striking enough to merit a detour, Borkowski said. And though she spent a night there, Borkowski and her colleagues ultimately ruled that Cambria didn’t quite offer broad enough appeal to merit recommendation.

“Our point really isn’t to please everybody,” Borkowski said. “We really are trying to help people who aren’t familiar with (California), and are only coming for a week or two.”