Life in California is full of vexing questions. Do you really need to get into a doorframe during an earthquake? Can anyone pull off a fedora? Are people still all about eating bowls?
Alta Journal has enlisted two experts to answer all of your questions: newly repotted native Angelena Stacey Grenrock Woods and Instagram cavern dweller Gustavo Arellano, both of whom bring decades of hard-won knowledge and laser-sharp insights into the Golden State.
Have a question of your own? Ask a Californian!
I was recently reprimanded for having my dog on my lap in an outdoor seating area of a Los Angeles restaurant. They said it was a health-code violation, but I see people do it all the time. Is there a special permit I can get for a dog that doesn’t like the cold, hard ground?
—Lap Dogged
Gustavo: Shout-out to my rescue dogs, Hook and Cosmo, whom my wife and I adopted through Frosted Faces in Ramona down in eastern San Diego County, which specializes in rescuing senior dogs! We take the boys to many restaurants across Orange County, so that’s why I can wonder if that restaurant you went to doesn’t know its health code—but in its defense, which restaurant does? Damn thing seems more complicated than trying to book one of those historic beachside cottages at Crystal Cove State Park during the summer.
But don’t let the health authorities scare you—the California Health and Safety Code is straightforward on dogs and dining. It allows eating establishments in the state to let people bring their pups to restaurant patios, provided they’re on a leash, they don’t enter the inside part of the restaurant, and employees don’t pet them. (Now, that is true California tyranny, Tucker Carlson.) Whoever told you your Fido wasn’t allowed to eat with you probably misunderstood the section of the state code that proclaims that diner dogs “are not allowed on chairs, seats, benches or tables.” Last I checked, the state legislature hasn’t regulated laps outside of a strip club, so you and your fur kid should be good.
Stacey: I’m saddened to hear of your recent public shaming at the hands of some Server Karen who still thinks L.A. restaurants enforce health codes, Lap. Having received this rebuke myself at a place on Larchmont whose food my dog prefers to swipe directly from the table, I know just how humiliating it can be.
On the continuum of questionable public pet inclusions, a dog confined to a lap confined to a part of a restaurant where dogs can be doesn’t seem like too serious an infraction. We all know that much worse goes on. (I’m not entirely certain that a dog didn’t make my last Café Gratitude I Am Magical wrap.*) But while what Gustavo says is true—dogs aren’t allowed on tables or on chairs—I think trying to assert that a lap in a chair is technically not a chair is akin to arguing what the definition of is is. Doggo doesn’t get a seat at the table is what it is. As I interpret the law, our lap-sitting case doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Besides, if dogs knew about all the other restaurant rules by which they must abide—no petting by the staff, no wandering around to check on other patrons and ask them if they’re finished with that, drinking and eating only out of single-use, disposable containers while on the ground like a dog—I think more of them would pass on the invitation in favor of an evening at home with a dried pig snout. I know I would.
Which is why, as I was sitting outside what I was pretty sure was Karen’s house, the thought occurred to me. There are two kinds of dogs: café dogs and non-café dogs, and all dog owners know which one they have. Café dogs are hardy, blasé creatures (usually Alsatians) who can post up on the cold, hard, cigarette butt–flecked Parisian ground, ignore ubiquitous food cues, and hold their own in an argument with Gertrude Stein. Then there are dogs like ours, who just want a soft spot and some pizza crusts. There is no special permit for these dogs, apart from a Number-One Delicate Boy of the Year certificate that you’ll have to make yourself on the internet. Your only other option is to provide him with a comfy area under the table, but then you’ll be eligible for Crazy Person Who Brings a Dog Bed to the Restaurant status, and you don’t want that. So, to avoid the worst fate I can imagine—getting yelled at by a waitress—leave your delicate pup at home and ask Karen for a box.
*Not true. I’ve never been to Café Gratitude, or eaten a wrap.
Have you noticed all the lawyer billboards on the freeway? Are people actually choosing a lawyer based on a picture or cute slogans?
—Sweet Something Wrong
Gustavo: Belated #respect to the OG of this genre, Larry H. Parker, the Southern California–based attorney who passed away earlier this year at age 75 but never won me $2.1 million (if you know, you know). His heirs—Call Jacob, Anh Phoong, the motorcycle attorney guys, and Los Defensores for those of us who hablar español—have continued Parker’s tradition, because it works…for them. A Courthouse News Service story last year on the subject revealed that legal services in Los Angeles had increased their billboard budgets from $12.2 million in 2019 to $18 million in 2021. Are billboards effective for the public, though? Of course! Even in this digital era, those billboard barristers know we all eventually have to get on the road, get stuck in traffic, look up and curse, and see the kind visage of an attorney promising sweet revenge right as we rear-end whichever dope in front of us is also staring off into the dreamy eyes of sweet, Sweet James.
Stacey: In Ravelstein, his final novel, Saul Bellow writes that “anyone who wants to govern the country has to entertain it.” I could update that to say, Anyone who wants the lower tier of their legal staff to represent as high a volume of desperate clients as possible in a multitude of personal-injury cases has to come up with a nickname and a catchy slogan, get some sunglasses, and put themselves on a bunch of billboards along the 405.
It must come as a shock, Sweet Something, to learn that not everyone in Los Angeles has Barry Scheck on speed dial. Some people’s best recourse when they need legal help is a big, red, well-placed billboard that looks through their windshield, deep into their hearts, and asks, Who hurt you? I don’t have exact figures, but we can safely assume that, with the cost of one traditional billboard in Los Angeles averaging around $5,000 to $10,000 a month, people are indeed choosing lawyers this way. The lawyer billboard will always be a thing as long as there are people who need lawyers and lawyers who want more money. Who hurt me? We don’t have the time to get into it, but let’s just say that when my dog and I take our case to court, these lawyers are the ones I’m going to call.
I take a regular Pilates class with a lot of nice people who have recently started going out for matchas and such. They always invite me, and they really seem like they’re starting to bond with one another, but I fear we don’t really have anything in common and if I go, I’ll be stuck with them. How do I make it clear that I don’t want to be anything more than Pilates friends?
—Stretched Too Far
Gustavo: I once did Pilates. A bunch of beautiful women in Lululemon, lanky men in Under Armour everything, and me in a Suavecito T-shirt and Dickies shorts that hung far below my knees. I lasted all of a day before returning to my usual five-push-ups-once-a-month regimen. So the only corollary I can find to your quandary is the regulars at my local pub whom I’ve seen for years, who have become friends with one another and whom I’m totally friendly with—but whose invitations to go kick it at their other bar I always politely decline. Use the excuse I tell them: Y’all see me at my best when we hang out for an hour. Let’s keep it like that. Any more of me and you won’t even want to hang with me at our regular spot. In other words, I’d become the Jeff Kent to your Barry Bonds—and while the both of us are cool on our own, no way would we ever win a championship together.
Stacey: I’m surprised, Stretched, that you don’t want to avail yourself of the camaraderie being so freely offered to you. Shared pain brings people together in a way that nothing else can. Who doesn’t know that grandpa who stayed tight with his old Pilates buddies from the war and still gets together with them every year to strap into reformers and do a side lying leg series?
But, yes, if you take this outside the studio, you will absolutely be stuck with these people forever. That old saying about one being too many and a thousand never enough definitely applies to hot drinks with strangers, so it’s important that you establish your après-class policy early on and not waver from it. Otherwise, you might find yourself cursed with the second-worst fate a person can endure: spending an afternoon at the baby shower of someone you barely know.
I think it’s OK to just say nothing and dart off, not looking back. I’ve employed this strategy in several situations throughout my life, and it’s worked out fine, as far as I know. But it never hurts to have an ironclad excuse at the ready in case someone pries. For a situation like this, it’s best to out-health them. Say you read that socializing after exercise causes wrinkles and that you’re going home to meditate. Who knows? You might break up their little group altogether, but until then, get your matcha a safe distance away.
Gustavo Arellano is the author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. In 2025, Arellano was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He was formerly editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and penned the award-winning ¡Ask a Mexican!, a nationally syndicated column in which he answered any and all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. Arellano is the recipient of awards ranging from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Columnist to the Los Angeles Press Club President’s Award to an Impact Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and he was recognized by the California Latino Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work ethic.” Arellano is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
Stacey Grenrock Woods is a regular contributor to Esquire and a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She writes and consults on various TV shows, and has a recurring role as Tricia Thoon on Fox’s Arrested Development. Her first book is I, California.
