Life in California is full of vexing questions. What’s really going on with Bill Maher? Aren’t we due for a new kind of trendy milk substitute? Seriously, can someone check on Bill Maher?
Alta Journal has enlisted two experts to answer all of your questions: Stacey Grenrock Woods and 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!
How long do you have to live here to be considered a Californian?
—Californian by Choice
Stacey: Five years or five hundred 405 miles, whichever comes first.
That was my standard answer until a friend (a fellow native who’s also authorized to rule on such matters) informed me that it’s actually six years (and total avoidance of the 405). Her lived observation is that those who are not, as L.A.’s own Tyra Banks would say, “in the running towards becoming” Californians are out in five years, but if they make it to six, they’re in. This is a purely idiosyncratic, anecdotal yardstick, but I include it as a test: if you read it and thought, Yeah, that makes sense, you’re conceivably Californian.
Of course, there are those who live here for ages who will never be Californian—they’re the ones grumbling as they order fajitas at El Coyote—just as there are those who become Californian the second they mentally remove the B and the r from the first In-N-Out Burger bumper sticker they see. It’s hard to know exactly when the transition is complete, but here are some signs that show you’re getting close: you have a Dodgers pennant in your garage; you wore out your copy of Rumours; you went to Santa Monica State Beach once and then never again; you do your main shopping at Trader Joe’s; you know nothing about San Diego (even if you live there); you perk up when I offer to give you my famous tour of Warren Zevon’s Silverlake; and you think “Californian” is something you can be “by choice.”
That last one is almost enough to authorize you right now, so here’s what I’m going to do, Choice: I’m going to put your application straight through to the board with my highest recommendation. I’m sure that once you unequivocally renounce Boston or wherever, swear allegiance to our supreme leader (Cher), and pass the parallel parking test, you’ll be swiftly and cheerfully approved. So, go ahead and jam those toothpicks into that avocado pit and put it on the windowsill next to the others. We accept you, we accept you, one of us!
Gustavo: I’m reminded of the interview that the legendary ranchera singer Chavela Vargas gave decades ago regarding her nationality. The sultry-voiced chanteuse—a favorite of the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar—answered that she was Mexican. When the interviewer pointed out that Vargas was born in Costa Rica, she snapped back, “¡Los mexicanos nacemos donde nos da la rechingada gana!”—“Mexicans are born wherever the fuck we want!” Now that is an answer!
That’s how I feel about being a Golden Stater. As Stacey pointed out, there are people who’ve lived here their entire lives yet are as Californian as Woody Allen (most of them live in Carmichael and Coronado). And then there are people like my dad, who first came to California when he illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in San Ysidro (the first time) in 1969. He crossed over in the trunk of a Chevy driven by a hippie chick from Huntington Beach and her Mexican American boyfriend. They blasted the Beatles all the way to my dad’s drop-off point in L.A.’s Chinatown. Classic cars, great music, hippie chicks who love Mexicans, and nightlife: my dad got California right immediately. We are a perpetual state of mind and thus can exist anywhere there are dreamers, cool people, and Joan Didion. Who are not Californians? Anyone who tries to bring in ideas from other states, like calling corner stores “bodegas,” or insisting there’s no great pizza west of Chicago. Those fakers deserve exile to Franklin, Tennessee, where all the California quitters live and whine.
Just between us, can you tell me an amazing hidden gem to seek out this summer? Secret beach? Charming town without a website? Gimme the inside dope!
—I Won’t Share
Stacey: I’d love to think there are undiscovered gems and towns without websites, but you can’t go anywhere in this state that great leader Huell Howser hasn’t gone first. “There’s no need for inside information as a Californian,” says Susie Bauer, California adventurer and co-owner of the lifestyle brand Rock Scissor Paper. “Just follow in Huell’s footsteps.” However, she did tell me about a spot of her own discovery that I’m happy to share with you since I probably won’t go there: Surf Beach, at the Lompoc-Surf train station. If you cross the train tracks of the unstaffed train station, you’ll find a pristine central-coast beach with no people, no cell service, and lots of birds. “Because this is technically on Vandenberg Space Force Base,” she says, “you can imagine the California coast before development.” There are no dogs allowed, and you probably shouldn’t swim, because there tend to be those pesky great white sharks—or whatever we’re supposed to call them these days—around. (If you get bitten, use the one pay phone to call for help.) Also in that general area are Jalama Beach, where you can bring a dog and might not encounter sharks, and Gaviota Hot Springs, a sulfur spring where you can put mud on your face and all that.
You want more hot springs? I’ve got Deep Creek Hot Springs on the back side of Lake Arrowhead; Sespe Hot Springs, near Ojai; and Willett Hot Springs, a little southwest of there. You like golden trout? I’ve got a Golden Trout Wilderness in the Sierra Nevadas. You like cute little towns with some kind of festival? I’ve got a special on cute little towns with some kind of festival: I’ve got Boonville, Oak Glen, Ferndale, Lodi, Los Alamos, and Julian, but they’re going fast; they’ve all got websites.
Or do you just want some cool hideaways right in Los Angeles? Ernest Debs Park is nice; it has a pond and a bird sanctuary, and Griffith Park has some secluded, enchanted spots like Cedar Grove, Ferndell Trail, and Berlin Forrest. You might run into some local stoners, but they’re harmless. (Just don’t feed them.) And if you’re not into seclusion and simply want to eat at a restaurant operated by a reported religious cult, then check out the Yellow Deli at one of its San Diego–adjacent locations. (But please don’t tell them I sent you.)
None of these places will be empty, but really, there’s no truer California experience than watching some place you think should be yours get overrun by TikTokers. Actually, scratch what I said earlier. You know you’re a real Californian when someone asks you for your favorite secret spot and you say, “My house.”
Gustavo: Since summers across the state are increasingly mimicking Death Valley and my favorite Buttonwillow speakeasy is no more, I’m going to direct you to…archives! There is nothing like the smell of musty paper under bright fluorescent lights in air-conditioned rooms that look like the sets from The Remains of the Day to make you forget about overcrowded, polluted beaches and overpriced, sweaty amusement parks and make you love Californians even more. Time was when you had to be nerd-vouched by the academic version of the Freemasons to access rare collections, but many repositories have thankfully loosened their policies and become more accessible to the public. You’ll still probably need to fill out forms and show a photo ID—the Huntington Library ain’t going to let you hang out with Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy just for the hell of it, you know?—but that initial, necessary hassle is worth it. Go check out California’s attic: the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. Enjoy the offerings of the UCLA Special Collections at the bottom floor of the Charles E. Young Research Library. Marvel at the LGBTQ stories kept at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, the largest of its kind in the world. Those four are some of my favorites, but there are archives all across the state—big and small, famous and not—overseen by people who love their jobs and want to help.
Or? If you really want to get lost until September, go to a baseball game at Angel Stadium—it’s emptier than Elon Musk’s soul, and just as sad.
Was the Valley girl accent real? Why don’t we hear it anymore?
—Fer Sure
Stacey: When I first read your question, I was like, “Duh! It’s fully real! I hear it every time I open my mouth!”
But then I was like, I’d better do some research, and I found that a lot of people who are not Valley girls have had a lot to say about how other people who are not Valley girls talk. The Valley girl accent, they say, was popularized by upper-middle-class girls (thank you) from the San Fernando Valley and is characterized by “uptalk,” which is ending your sentences with a rising intonation so that they sound like questions, which is super weird (notice how I went down there?); using filler words like like (like, who doesn’t?); and slipping into something called “vocal fry,” which is when your words peter out in a gravelly sputter like Paris Hilton, who’s from New York, and Kim Kardashian, who’s from Beverly Hills.
I was born on Ventura Boulevard and was there when they cut the ribbon on the Sherman Oaks Galleria, so my native tongue is Valley. We don’t say, “OK, fine, fer sure, fer sure,” as the lyrics to “Valley Girl” by Frank Zappa and his daughter Moon Unit (born in New York, raised in Laurel Canyon) would have you believe. We’ve never said “grody to the max” or asked to be gagged with spoons. We do say “totally,” but we pronounce it near the back of the throat with a little extra air, like a gust of Santa Ana wind blowing through Coldwater Canyon: like, toughtally. What we mostly say is “like.” Or “like all.” Like, we’re mostly just like all, “I was like all…” And we say “I was like” so much that it all runs together, like “I’s like.” To speak Valley, you start establishing yourself in the past tense (“I’s like), and then add the thing that you were like (“What?” “Seriously?” “Duh!” or “Ew”). For emphasis, you can also be “like all,” as in, “When I heard they took the roof off the Galleria, I’s like all, No way!”
So really, you might think you’re not hearing the Valley girl accent, but that’s only because you’re so used to it. It’s like the bass in “Free Fallin’” (by Tom Petty, born in Gainesville, Florida): you might not think about it, but if it weren’t there, the whole thing would, like, toughtally fall apart.
Gustavo: Stacey just gave you an education on one Valley girl accent, so let me offer the other one: the East Valley Chingona accent. That’s how the ladies from working-class Latino suburbs like San Fernando, Van Nuys, Sylmar, and Panorama City speak. There, a form of mexicanized English—think East L.A. Chicano Spanglish but more garrulous, less singsongy, more Mexican in syntax and vocabulary, not as many “you knows?”, and landing harder on consonants—developed at the same time as Stacey’s lingo (one wonders if Stacey wore her bangs as high as the homegirls from Canoga Park). The East Valley Chingona accent historically never got much national attention because Hollywood thinks the San Fernando Valley exists only west of the 405 freeway, but you hear hints of it on television through the work of comedian George Lopez (who was raised in Mission Hills), in Capitol Hill via Pacoima natives Alex Padilla and Tony Cárdenas (the U.S. senator and congress member, respectively, who are also roommates in D.C.), and in its unexpurgated form in L.A. City Hall gracias to council members Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez.
Sadly, the most famous example of the East Valley Chingona accent is former L.A. city council president Nury Martinez, who was caught uttering all sorts of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous nonsense in a secretly recorded conversation with three other L.A. political heavyweights that leaked in 2022. It sent shock waves across California politics, led to Martinez’s resignation—and sounded like a bunch of friends hanging out at Lenchita’s. When I first heard the tape, I was disgusted but also sad. East Valley Chingonas truly are badass mujeres who can throw down on the streets, in the boardroom, and in politics with equal aplomb and deserve more-widespread recognition—and this is how the rest of the United States found out about them? Martinez always claimed puro Pacoima. Now she’s, like, toughtally pura pendeja.
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.
