Life in California is full of vexing questions. Will the heat ever stop? Is Paul Thomas Anderson making a movie of Vineland? If Paul Thomas Anderson is making a movie of Vineland, will Wanda Tinasky review it for the Anderson Valley Advertiser?
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.
I had a small party at my place, and one of my guests’ cars got bipped. Should I offer to pay for half the glass-replacement cost?
—Shattered in San Francisco
Stacey: Was it one of those Bring Lots of Valuables and Leave Them Prominently Displayed on Your Passenger Seat parties that used to be so popular? Because if it was, you should’ve told your guests to leave their car windows down. You have to say that on the invite.
But if it was just a regular Lock Your Car and Take Your Chances party, you needn’t offer to chip in for the bip. Life is risky: it’s risky to be a driver, it’s risky to be a pedestrian, and being an intact piece of glass in San Francisco is perhaps riskiest of all.
And besides, Shattered, you missed your window—not as much as your guest misses theirs, but still. The time for this polite proposal would have been right after the crime was discovered, when, in all the commotion, your offer was more likely to be politely refused. Now the wounded party’s had a chance to rack up additional costs for things like Yeti bottle and Crocs replacement and expensive CBT (cognitive bip therapy). Don’t set this dangerous precedent, and don’t fret over it one more minute. You splashed out for a party—you created an Evite, cleaned your house, had people over, served things, made sparkling conversation, rented a bouncy castle, and God knows what else. You’ve done more than enough for your fellows. Entertaining is like jury duty: you do your civic duty, and then you’re usually good for a whole year. And when it comes time to have another party, leave this person off the guest list. They’re obviously unlucky.
Gustavo: Bip? Lord, why are San Franciscans so into homegrown, childish slang—hella, the City, 415—yet get their knickers in a twist that rivals Lombard Street when the rest of us call Baghdad-by-the-Bay Frisco or San Fran? Call a car break-in a car break-in, not something that should be called a bop anyways—BAM.
Etymological rant over. You should feel no guilt about the misfortune of your guest. Didn’t they know to pay the nice young men on the street corner to make sure no one touched their Subaru? Didn’t your guest know to drive an ugly car, like a Pontiac Aztek; a Smart car; or a Cybertruck that no thief would want to be seen next to, let alone touch? Don’t they know that the most valuable item that can be left behind in a car nowadays without fear of a break-in is a gum wrapper, and thus everything else should have an Apple Tag, up to and including the DMV sticker? Besides, insurance will take care of the broken window for your guest, so unless your guest pays you an annual premium, then that’s a hella no on helping them.
I recently read something by a Boston transplant, who said that being from a place where people think faster, talk faster, and are more “intellectually rigorous” was like a superpower living among Californians. What do you make of that?
—The Smarter They Come
Stacey: I didn’t catch that piece, but I don’t have much time for scrolling through old content on Vice (RIP).
What do I make of that? When I get past my initial suspicion that this is simply a trick to get me all riled up so you and your Bostonian friend can make funny faces and squawk-squawk hand gestures behind my back, my subsequent assessment is that this person, whom I’ll call “he” for simplicity’s sake, thinks he’s better than I am. (And please note that I said “I” and not “me” because a product of the Los Angeles public school system such as I knows when to use “I” and when to use “me” better than I will assume he does. And please also note that I include the verb of being “am” and the action verbs “do” and “does” after the pronouns so I don’t sound like an ass, as he does.)
But unlike our pale transplant, who’s probably, right now, mispronouncing Wilshire and bemoaning the lack of seasons to everyone at Chipotle, I am not a coast-ist, which is why my third, well-considered, and massively Zen opinion is that thinking and speaking fast are not much of a superpower. Do you remember that superhero the Auctioneer? Of course not. He doesn’t exist, and if he did, his movies would be really short. In fact, the descriptor fast-talking has never been used adoringly in life or fiction. When you talk quickly, you’re likely to say something stupid that my readers and I will make fun of behind your back.
I must also question, Smarter, how much intellectual rigor it takes to tower over us Californians, a people our mystery writer considers beneath him. It seems a bit of paradox that I can best illustrate by way of this classic schoolyard exchange, in which I have cast us both:
BOSTONIAN: I’m the boss and you’re nothing!
CALIFORNIAN: Oh, yeah? Then you’re the boss over nothing!
But let’s not act like children, my eastern friend. Also, there’s something on your shirt. Aw, too slow!
Gustavo: You should never take seriously the musings of someone from a municipality with hella-bad slang (wicked, pissah, the Hub) and whose three greatest athletes were Californians: Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams was born in San Diego, Boston Celtics center Bill Russell attended high school in Oakland and college at the University of San Francisco, while New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady remains the pride of San Mateo. “Intellectually rigorous”? Is “Pahk the cah on Hahvahd Yahd” supposed to be on the same level as Tales of the City?
I’ve never believed the stereotype of the laid-back, dim Californian, because I’ve never met one. Everyone’s too busy hating one another, for starters, and hater games do not favor the slow (see Kendrick vs. Drake). When we’ve had enough of that, we direct our ire to East Coast transplants who pen dispatches for the Style section of the New York Times out of a National Geographic dispatch circa 1907. And when all that’s done and we’re ready to relax, we retire to the beach or the forest and fight over parking, which favors the fast and mathematically inclined. Give me the algebraic rigor of squeezing an SUV into a parking spot labeled Compact—something any Californian can do wicked-good—over any MIT grad any day.
Who the hell bought all these Cybertrucks I’m seeing on the road? And why?
—Metal Machine Musings
Stacey: Let me first commend you on your cleverness in linking Elon Musk’s Cybertruck to Lou Reed’s 1975 double album of electronic noise and feedback, Metal Machine Music. Each is the relentlessly ridiculed work of a controversial madman, but Lou Reed never thought to threaten to fine people $50,000 for trying to get rid of Metal Machine Music. If he could come back and do it all again, I’m sure he would.
The people buying all these Cybertrucks you’re seeing are either your celebrities—your Kardashians, your Gagas, your Biebers—or your people who want to be like your Kardashians, your Gagas, and your Biebers, but one thing they all have in common, Musings, is their inexhaustible yearning to piss you off. In fact, we can’t ever be sure if the demented geniuses behind things like Cybertrucks and noise records aren’t mostly just having a laugh. Don’t let it work on you.
I have a dear friend who also becomes vexed by every Cybertruck she sees. (You guys should meet.) Her story is so profound that I have made it into a Zen koan, because I’m Californian, so these things come easily to me. It’s called the Lady and the Cybertruck, and it goes like this: Once, there was a lady in Valley Village who grew furious every time she saw a Cybertruck on the street. Nothing made her angrier than seeing a Cybertruck. She drove great distances out of her way for fear of seeing Cybertrucks on streets where she’d seen them before. One day, as she was pulling into Gelson’s, she saw a Cybertruck, but it wasn’t just any Cybertruck. It was a Cybertruck with a huge sticker on its side that said Cybertruck. She sat in the parking lot and cried, wishing she had just seen a Cybertruck.
So you see, it’s easy to let things get under your skin and turn you bitter. It’s easy, when you hear about the faulty pedals that caused some Cybertrucks to be recalled, to say things like, “Did you hear there’s a problem with the Cybertruck pedal? Every time you step on it and drive somewhere, people laugh,” but don’t. Remind yourself that things could always be worse: You could come across an orange Cybertruck with a Cybertruck sticker on it; Metal Machine Music could’ve been a triple album—and never judge an influencer until you’ve driven a mile in his stainless steel concept vehicle. He might be on his way to a party in San Francisco.
Gustavo: Hey, you leave those angular nightmares and their asshole drivers alone. Elon Musk’s jacked-up jalopy is a speeding manifestation of the most Californian club of them all: the cult. Whether it’s Theosophy, the Raiders, or the California High-Speed Rail, we love nothing more than to empty our bank accounts in the name of self-improvement on the orders of a wacko.
But at least L. Ron Hubbard gave us John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and the voice of Bart Simpson, and Jerry Brown left us with a budget surplus. What has Musk given California besides ugly cars? He doesn’t even live here anymore, yet his worshippers continue to befoul our roads with the automotive equivalent of cardboard sporting a matte paint job. Muskians—or is it Muskovites? Musk-itos? Muskmen?—need to stick to their demigod’s shitty tequila and send their Cybertrucks to the Minecraft junkyard where they belong.•
Have a question of your own? Ask a Californian!
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.
