The Myth and Magic of California Style
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It was about articles that exist to promote what someone wants to be the style, and which the journalist wrote about because a PR agent did the work for them. (Rather than because the journalist independently spotted a real trend.)
There's a big difference between "oh wow react is on the rise, let me write about that" vs "a google employee fed me a prewritten article about how all the cool kids use angular, I'll just pass that on."
On the flip side, there are also a handful of people that I met around from both areas that are down to earth. Maybe it's just high concentration.... or monkey see, monkey do.
Aside from the Venice Beach / Santa Monica scene (which is absolutely superficial), I find SoCal to be much more laid back. Live and let live, if you will.
I find it a hilarious instance of California insularity that the grandparent post thinks it "doesn't matter what it is" -- I'm guessing that he'd failed to consider the fact that non-left causes even exist.
In this case, you would be guessing wrong. My omission is not evidence of insularity but of walking on eggshells. I've made this point to many up here and found they are more willing to discuss and agree if I omit the narrow scope of "any cause".
On the one hand I'm glad to see the city thriving, but on the other it feels inauthentic and the vast sums of money seem to strip the place of what makes it unique.
Yep, as everyone knows, California invented beaches. There were no "beach kids" before California, and everyone who grows up elsewhere on any coast is emulating southern California.
Which is a style replicated, distinctly with the californian beach in mind, in other locales
Obviously not because californian beaches were the pinnacle of beaches, but because the media treated it as such, and entered a positive feedback loop to entrench its (current) position there
In the same way, the East Coast has beaches are associated with yuppies and yatchs, and the hawaiins with hawaiins and tourists
Its an image ingrained within the American conciousness; regardless of whatever "true" merit it might have, the descriptive language is universal (to all who consume american media, and media deriving from it).
I am going to guess you haven't spent a lot of time in New Jersey.
At best, it covers the majority of the relevant space, for the relevant time.
At worst, it's a hyperexaggerated representation of reality, possibly one that is hoped to exist (but does not), from a minor section of the world applied to a much, much larger area.
But neither I nor this article (and marketing in general, as does much of the arts) does not speak of reality. This is a discussion of the image, shared between most of the country. (Reality itself is only shared between those happen to percieve it, and that is rarely more than a very minor subset of the population that has access to the image)
Thus: it isn't relevant what New Jersey is really like. It is how New Jersey is perceived that matters. (Which I may still be wrong about; I can't say I know much about people's image of NJ).
The yuppies and yachts mostly come from NY and elsewhere ;)
I was also born and raised in San Diego, but left ten years ago, and it feels weirder and weirder every time I go back. Meanwhile, everywhere I am in the world—Thailand, Kenya, Bulgaria, England, etc—I see California t-shirts or hear Tupac rapping about California on the radio. So I've also felt and wondered about the myth (legend?) of "California" over this time. :)
Meanwhile, going to a friends' party in San Diego or Los Angeles and I can walk out with 4 new friends/acquaintances, which lead to more invites and potential connections.
And the differences only get further expounded professionally. I regularly go to work in a T and jeans. Sometimes even board shorts, when summer gets toasty enough. I would never dream of doing any of that working for any companies I've interacted with on the East Coast. In fact, it's regularly something they'll bring up in conversation.
There's a plethora of reasons behind those differences and neither is necessarily bad, but that's where my opinion of "laid back" versus not stems from.
The sun, the sand, the year-round summer-like temperatures -- it all feeds into the lifestyle. This was much more pronounced in SD than in LA. I had trouble conversing with random people on the street or elsewhere in the Northeast or Northwest (Midwest was actually easier than SoCal).
The near-constant pleasantness of the weather encourages you to be more active and "out" more often. It was a very regular thing in SD to go watch sunsets on the beach (regardless of season) after work. The proximity to the border made it pretty hard to find a bad Mexican food place and the tacos -- oh, the tacos -- were amazing. There are whole companies (mostly startups) that brand themselves as a "go surf in the early morning, come to work later" sort of place. There certainly is a myth and sort of "magic" to it that I don't even think the movies and media capture.
>NYC, Boston, northern Virginia, etc... always seemed like people were much more uptight and kept to themselves.
It kind of sounds like you're talking about different things.
A more outgoing person might seem agro, if that's not what you're used to. Or similarly, a more reserved person might seem rude.
That was my experience coming from a large town/small city to bigger places. Random dude I don't know started talking to me, that put me on alert. It was stressful. Why is this guy talking to strangers? Is he crazy? Is he sizing me up to attack me? It did not feel laid back.
There's a stereotype of small towns as being places where everybody talks to everybody, but my hometown was big enough that you didn't know everybody, and people only talked to who they knew. Maybe in really small towns people talk to everybody because they know everybody, and in cities people talk to strangers because they're always surrounded by strangers, but what was familiar (and hence "laid back") to me in my upbringing was to ignore people you didn't know. If you were curious about someone you didn't know, you'd wait until they were gone and then ask your friend, "Do you know who that was?" Any interaction with a stranger would be preceded by a sincere apology and a REALLY good excuse.
I was specifically referring to meeting people in social situations. Parties, bars, etc.