Wednesday, December 31, 2008

It's time for another installment of Late Night Rambling.


Brought to you by Sunny Brook whiskey, Vicodin, and Marijuana!

The NEW breakfast of champions!

For when you just want to push the "pause" button.

I don't give a fuck what you think, I'm not writing this for anyone but me! I hope no one ever reads it because you are not worthy.
;+}


There's something almost indescribably "magic" about the Bay Area of the west coast of California. I say almost indescribably because Satan knows enough people have tried to put it into words, much wiser heads than mine. Kerouac, Kesey, Ginsberg, Leary, Wavy Gravy, just to name a few. HST came closer than anyone to date, but even the good doctor never put it into laymans terms. Perhaps it can't be done. Is it some kind of strange hippie haven, a misfit Mecca of sorts? Did the "Summer of love" cause some kind of vortex that continues to draw in the eccentric? Call it what you want, it is undeniably, indisputably, the freak kingdom Hunter said it was. But why?

Why here, and not someplace warmer? Even those amongst the best and the brightest who don't reside in this particular region have some inextricable connection. The influence of Nor Cal is worldwide. Fuck fake ass Hollywood and their phony bullshit, the real culture is right here! NYC is a close second, but still no substitute!

As far as I can tell, it started with the great California gold rush back in 1848 or so. The miners needed bars, casinos, whores, and opium dens, and so the first remnants of counterculture for the area were imported from all over the world. After the gold began to become scarce, new sources of revenue were needed.

"In 1930, California had 5.7 million residents, and the population shrank as 120,000 Mexicans were repatriated. In the 1930s, farmers from the Midwestern Dust Bowl states, especially Oklahoma and Arkansas, began to move to California; 250,000 arrived by 1940, including a third who moved into the San Joaquin Valley, which had a 1930 population of 540,000. During the 1930s, some 2.5 million people left the Plains states.

The Modesto Bee on September 30, 2008 reviewed Dust Bowl migration to California. A series of wet years in the 1920s led farmers to believe that the Plains could sustain annual plowing to produce wheat. Drought in the 1930s allowed dust storms to carry away top soil, darkening the sky even at mid-day.

As families realized that the drought and dust storms would not end, some sold what they could not take and began to drive west on Route 66. Many hoped to become hired hands on California farms, learning how to grow fruits and vegetables while living on the farms where they worked. However, California farms typically hired seasonal workers only when they were needed, and used farm workers to perform specific tasks rather than learn how to become farmers in their own right.

The experiences of Okies and Arkies were memorialized in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." It told the story of the fictional Joad family's migration from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California, which was considered the Promised Land. Dorthea Lange's 1936 Migrant Mother photo (www.migrantgrandson.com), taken at a pea-pickers' labor camp in San Luis Obispo county, is often used to symbolize the plight of the Midwestern migrants in California."

From: http://migration.ucdavis.edu/RMN/more.php?id=1355_0_6_0

Thanks to the dust bowl, the central valley became a farmer's dream, westward expansion kept the population steadily increasing and to this very day there's no end in sight. Move ahead a few years and you find the beginnings of what would later be called the Beat generation. Yes, it started in New York, but like all good things it made it's way to the west coast, improved, and stayed right here.

"The sun may rise in the east, at least it's settled in a final location."

The Beats begat the Hippies and Flower Children, and later the Punks, and from all that is everything counterculture is today. I live in the coolest place in the world, bar none.

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