Suburb Life Is a Bust for Boomers’ Offspring

As he looks over the pseudo-Spanish strip mall where he works 40-hour weeks as a record clerk, 21-year-old Tony Moore offers a pitiful but true commentary on his generation’s social life in this bedroom town.

“This is the center of it all!” he said, feigning excitement. “You’ve got Tower, where everyone goes for records, and the Yucatan Cantina, where everyone goes for drinks.

“That’s really about it for Thousand Oaks.”

In the eyes of many of Moore’s fellow Generation Xers, that really is it. And they are not happy about what they perceive as their dismal lot in life.

They grow up in the posh Conejo Valley, privileged children of the upper middle class. They love their tree-studded suburban enclave.

After heading off to college, many feel an urge to return--something they never could have imagined as teens. But when they attempt to begin their careers in the place they have always called home, many twentysomethings believe Thousand Oaks sends them a clear message:

You are not wanted.

Indeed, in a city where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment hovers around $900, a decent entry-level job is unusually hard to come by and the biggest venue in town is hosting Gordon Lightfoot concerts, it’s difficult to find a young adult who is NOT ready to spout off an earful of complaints.

But don’t call them whiners.

“The older generation calls us complainers,” Mara Antos said. “But I’d like to see them walk a day in our shoes. Would they live in some bullet-scarred apartment in the [San Fernando] Valley because it had cheaper rent? Work dead-end jobs even though they had college degrees? I don’t think so.”

Antos, who just turned 30, is part of a subcommittee of the Conejo Future Foundation, a civic think tank that examined the plight of Generation X in the Conejo Valley.

Generation X is the group of people born between 1965 and 1975, now between the ages of 21 and 31. Nationally, the group is estimated to include about 45 million to 50 million people.

The Conejo Future Foundation issued a report last year, and the findings are not pretty. Frequent layoffs, pricey homes and suburban ennui of chronic proportions are causing members of the 18- to 30-year-old crowd--roughly one-fifth of the area’s population--to bail out of the region as they come of age.

“I was hired by someone who used me and fired me on Christmas Day,” said one college-educated Gen-Xer, who claims he has held 20 different jobs in the past 10 years. “It was just brutal. A totally harsh experience.

“I’ve thought about leaving, going to L.A.,” he added, saying he did not want his name published out of embarrassment. “But it’s really hard to think about going to a place I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in at night.”

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The subcommittee, which is working on a directory to help young adults survive life in the Conejo Valley, is hoping that its findings at least register with the baby boomer generation, which they consider unsympathetic.

Jesse Washington, an administrator with the Conejo Recreation and Park District and a baby boomer himself, is part of the latest Conejo Future Foundation project. He believes that measures can be taken to better accommodate the “baby busters,” as the younger generation is also known.

“Many young adults are frustrated with their situation in this area,” Washington said. “There’s no doubt that it is difficult for them to live in an area like this, and maybe that’s expected. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Mayor Andy Fox, for one, believes he and other Thousand Oaks politicians have already done a lot to help young adults settle in the area, citing the city’s first-time home buyers assistance program as an example.

The unforgiving reality, he said, is that Thousand Oaks is an expensive, much-desired place to live due to its unusually high quality of life, and it will simply be out of reach for many young people early on in their careers.

“I think the council is unanimously concerned with young adults and their needs, but there is only so much we can do--and only so much we would want to do,” Fox said. “I can’t afford to live in Beverly Hills. Does that mean that Beverly Hills should do something so I can live there? Probably not.”

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However, many young adults say they have no interest in leaving Thousand Oaks--and they do not believe that they should have to.

“Frankly, when I look out of my apartment and I see the pretty hills, and I look around and know every street in town, I feel a sense of peace,” Antos said. “I could never feel that way in the Valley.”

She speaks from experience. After Antos graduated from Cal Lutheran University, she and her boyfriend Ted moved east to “an awful place in Reseda” just blocks from the infamous Northridge Meadows apartment complex, which later collapsed during the 1994 earthquake, killing 16 people.

Thieves smashed into her car and stole several thousand dollars worth of equipment from her job selling window frames. Ted heard gunshots frighteningly close to his workplace in Northridge. It was your basic urban nightmare, she said.

The Antoses got hitched in 1993 and promptly fled the Valley. But there was no spacious single-family home of their own waiting for them back in Thousand Oaks. Those start at $200,000 in the Conejo Valley.

They had to shack up with Ted’s mother for about a year, then moved in with the in-laws from her side of the family.

Eventually, they ventured back out on their own--but not entirely alone. Unable to afford a place in Thousand Oaks by themselves, even while working full time, the Antoses were forced to sacrifice their intimacy during their first few years of marriage, sharing apartments with a series of roommates.

“I can’t communicate how tough it is,” Antos said. “Your parents start to question why you can’t move out. To spend most of your married relationship living with your parents, then with other people, is not what we expected.

“I guess we’re the extended family of the ‘90s,” she quipped. “We don’t have kids, but we do have Dave.”

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Dave Oeffling, 28, is the latest live-in. And he too has a woeful tale to tell about his generation’s travails in Thousand Oaks.

After graduating from San Diego State with a degree in finance in 1990, Oeffling learned the hard way that his dream of becoming a high-rolling, big-money man would have to be significantly downsized.

It was the beginning of the recession, and it seemed that Oeffling’s resume wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. After several failed tries to latch on somewhere in San Diego, he headed back home to Thousand Oaks.

As he quickly found out, things in Ventura County were not much cushier. Recent college grads with little experience were essentially competing against laid-off baby boomers for what little quality work there was.

He got jobs at a few banks. He sold insurance. He worked at a local hotel. None of it panned out. He quit some jobs and was laid off from a few others.

“We were basically job hunting versus our parents,” Oeffling said. “I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised when we lost out.”

For the past several months, Oeffling has been happily employed as a manager at the Thousand Oaks Environmental Business Cluster, an incubator for nature-friendly businesses.

So for now at least, that part of his life appears to be straightened out. But what about being a single guy in Thousand Oaks? Does living with a married couple cramp his style?

“There’s not a lot of style to be cramping lately,” Oeffling concedes. “I haven’t dated anyone in awhile.”

The dating game--always a complex and confounding puzzle for people of any place and age group--has become akin to the Riddle of the Sphinx amid the carefully tended enclaves of Thousand Oaks, according to many young people.

The reason: There are almost no places to socialize with members of the opposite sex.

Oeffling likes to flip through magazines at the new Borders mega-bookstore, an increasingly popular destination for Thousand Oaks residents of all ages. He goes to Tower Records and Blockbuster Music to scour the CD racks, and often stops at the Yucatan to knock back a few drinks with friends. Somewhat ashamedly, he also hangs out at The Oaks mall once in awhile.

“It’s kind of like having a high school flashback,” he said. “A really long one.”

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The Stargate, perhaps the most popular nightclub in Thousand Oaks, will almost certainly close in coming weeks. Responding to police complaints of raucous crowds, uncontrollable gang fights and violent security guards, the city’s Planning Commission voted unanimously to revoke the Stargate’s permits last month. Club owners are appealing the decision to the City Council.

For the Lizards of Wizdom, a strange, oddly psychedelic rock and poetry outfit that was the last live act to perform at the Stargate, the closure would be the unkindest slight of all to their generation: It would leave fledgling bands like them without a place to play in their own backyard.

The Civic Arts Plaza, with its highfalutin airs, has ignored young people’s music, they claim. The Stargate, cheesy as it may be, is the only game in town.

“Is there a haven for the Lizards in Thousand Oaks? I really don’t know,” said R. Scott Horn, the band’s 33-year-old rhythm guitarist and reptilian patriarch. “I thought the Stargate had real potential, I really did. But things there are over.”

For now, the Lizards have scurried away to gigs in the Valley and Camarillo, and jam sessions at the “Lizard Lounge,” Horn’s Newbury Park garage. It has been converted into a kitschy rock shrine with oodles of colorful, esoteric chintz and hippie regalia.

Playing Thousand Oaks spots like the lounge at the Hungry Hunter restaurant, a cramped den that seats only a dozen, is out of the question for them. Even Simi Valley is more welcoming to rock culture than Thousand Oaks, with its roll-up-the-sidewalks-at-night attitude, according to the Lizards.

“Our generation is all grown up, but we haven’t had kids yet,” said 25-year-old Steve Potter, a student at UC Santa Barbara and the Lizards’ lead guitarist. “Why can’t we just party a little?”

They don’t shout so loudly and they may be fewer in number, but there are certainly young adults in Thousand Oaks who believe the city is fine just the way it is.

Jeff Lewis, 26, is one of those Gen-Xers, although he distances himself from any association with the much-maligned label at every opportunity. He believes there are many others like him in Thousand Oaks, with good jobs and few complaints.

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A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Lewis was able to parlay an internship at Amgen into a full-time position at the biotechnology giant. The young scientist met his wife-to-be, Nancy, at the Thousand Oaks-based company when he was just 21.

Two years later, the successful couple married and bought a house in Newbury Park, only a skip and a hop away from the home of Lewis’ father, former Thousand Oaks Councilman Bob Lewis.

“I love this community,” Lewis, said. “I’ve never been a fan of the big city. We’ve got a small-town atmosphere here, and it’s great. Going to the Civic Arts Plaza, all the new stores, that’s enough to keep me entertained.

“Now that I’ve settled down, I appreciate Thousand Oaks a lot more,” he added. “The city has changed. It’s not the same city it was a few years ago.”

Jennifer Nahmod, who also works at Amgen, agrees. When she went off to UCLA after Newbury Park High School eight years ago, she never thought she would come back to the Conejo Valley. Now she is glad she did.

“I always thought to myself, ‘I can’t wait to get out of here to go to the big city,’ ” Nahmod said. “But when I went to UCLA, I learned how much I really liked this place. All the smog, putting money in a parking meter just to go to the bank, it was awful.”

Nahmod, 26, got a job at Amgen’s security department thanks to the initiative she showed at UCLA helping design a campus ID card network. She has since been promoted to an administrative position that places her in charge of organizing inventory.

Right now, Nahmod is living with her father in Newbury Park. But it is not out of necessity, she insists. She could easily afford an apartment of her own if she wanted.

“I think life is what you make of it,” she said, launching into a tirade against the slackers whom she believes have given her generation a bad rap. “To sit in a coffee shop and complain about your shabby role in life is really a cop-out. If they are so upset, they should do something about it.”

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According to Ursula Barnacle of the Conejo Youth Employment Service, which helps people up to 25 years old find jobs, many Gen-Xers are working extremely hard to get ahead--even if that means taking positions that are clearly below their level of education and experience.

“What we’re finding is that many young people are looking for a second job because their day jobs are not paying enough,” she said. “Many of the wages for these kind of jobs start at $5 an hour. They find themselves in the same part-time, temporary positions as 16- to 18-year-olds.”

Shelee Jones, 26, is one of those who would rather work harder than flee her hometown, which she finds deeply endearing despite what she considers to be a chronic shortage of cool restaurants and clubs.

Her 9-to-5 job as a bookkeeper in Westlake is not enough to pay her rent and other bills, so she toils on weekends at Office Depot.

“I love it here,” she explained. “My family’s here, my friends are here. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Her 29-year-old neighbor and close pal, David Wood, is in the same boat. He works six days a week at a picture frame store on Moorpark Road.

Still, he is living from paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay rent at the small addition to a house that he calls home.

“It’s true, there’s nothing to do in Thousand Oaks,” Wood said, hanging out with Jones after a long day of work. “But we do nothing together.”