Even Killjoys Can Tell When They’ve Got It Good

So you’re at the breakfast table with your morning cuppa caffeine, and you open your paper, and there it is. Another snootful of news about what’s broken in Southern California, which seems to be: everything. Schools? Broken. Jails? Broken. Public transportation? What public transportation? Health care? (Long burst of mad, hysterical laughter, ending in sobs.)

Which begs the question: What on earth are you doing here? Are you a sucker for a living heck? No, you’re a Southern Californian, which is to say you’re looking out at that sun glancing off the nice chrome fender of the car in your driveway and thinking: Are these newspeople from, like, New York?

Right on, neighbor. And in that spirit, your correspondent recently watched the sun glancing off the car in her driveway and decided to let somebody else do the opining today. In that perky tone she uses to cleverly wheedle one of the kids into fetching her cuppa caffeine for her, she contacted informed observers (that’s news-ese for the smart people who sit around your correspondent at the office) and asked them: What does work in Southern California?

Shockingly, for suspected New Yorkers, their answers were pretty upbeat:

* The beaches. Yes, the bad news is that the sand is eroding. But contrast that with this miracle: 235 miles of coastline, more than 50 public beaches--and

somehow, we manage to keep them fairly clean. And safe. Los Angeles County alone logged more than 14,000 rescues last year on its beaches, with only one drowning. No wonder Gotham covets our lifeguards. And when has the swell of the Pacific failed to cleanse, inspire and redeem?

* Pollution control. “I grew up in Santa Ana Heights,” recalls one colleague, “and I remember lying on the floor to breathe because the smog was so bad. And we used to have to breathe through straws deep in cups of ice when we’d go to Disneyland, because making the air cold was the only way to get it down your throat.”

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Looking at that bathtub-brown ring on the horizon, it’s easy to forget how much better the breathing is now than a generation years ago. (But also easy to remember why we should stay vigilant, no?)

* Ventura County. There aren’t many places in this region where you can look out of your car window and remember why the California Dream is still worth fighting for. Ventura County is one of them, and for an interesting reason: Back in the early ‘70s, the county government enacted a set of planning guidelines that restricted new growth to the areas in and around existing cities and that set aside tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land as open space. The result: a verdant blend of new and old, where you can live in a manageable city and still be surrounded by the cabbage and strawberry fields and orange groves that once gave this region its romance. This even though the population has exploded since those guidelines went into effect.

* The food. Once the best you could do restaurant-wise here was a plate of something vaguely Continental at a joint that was vaguely French. Now you can’t even eat badly at Santa Monica Airport.

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One colleague and his wife spent their courtship grazing their way through Monterey Park; another recently ate his way down Pico Boulevard. Not to mention Little Saigon, Little India, Little Tokyo. . . .

* The water system. Whether they’re a monument to public works or (if you’re the Owens Valley) the dastardly deed of a criminal mastermind, the waterworks here are a doggone miracle. “It’s faulted for being run by a bunch of old white guys locked up in their own world,” one editor offers, “but they have created a system that is the marvel of the world.” (Plus, for those not in the thrall of Sparkletts, the tap water in most places tastes good.)

* Race relations. Don’t believe it? Check out your local high school. Yes, there’s segregation, but just try to find a kid whose clique is ethnically homogenous. It’s not that way in other parts of the country. “I am half-Japanese,” notes a colleague in Orange County, “and when I was growing up in the Midwest, I constantly had to tell people who asked: ‘No, I’m not Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Eskimo, Hawaiian, American Indian, Eastern Indian.’ Out here, people don’t ask or care.”

And so on. The suburbs, the freeways, the Los Angeles Central Library, left-turn pockets, the phone service--until finally, your correspondent ran out of space. Informed observers doubt that she’ll ever run out of sloth, however, so here’s another question: Who wants to get Mom another cuppa--oops! I mean: Can you think of anything we missed?

Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address: shawn.hubler@latimes.com