Life in California is full of head-scratching questions—like, Do you really know the way to San Jose? So Alta Journal has enlisted two experts to answer your pressing queries: 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!
What do you make of California’s new law to require folic acid in tortillas? Will they taste different?
—IT’S ALWAYS TACO TUESDAY IN SAN CLEMENTE
STACEY: A tortilla question? I’m contractually obligated to refer all tortilla-related matters to my co-columnist, who is the world’s foremost Tortilla Educator and Ambassador of Masa. You can trust that his insights on this subject come straight from his stone-ground, hand-pressed heart.
From what I recall from Miss Pesterfield’s health class, folate and its synthetic sister, folic acid, are must-haves in the preventing-birth-defects game. But some pregnant people struggle to get enough, which is why California is coptering in to insist that tortillas are added to the long list of foods that already naturally contain or are fortified with folic acids. The rebellious teen in me is dead against it, but the developing fetus in me likes its spine intact.
Will tortillas taste different? Much research has been done on this, and the results have come back with a consistent “maybe.” Some people find that the folic acid imparts the bitterness of government overreach, while others are just happy to get a free sample of anything. I suggest you either make your own tortillas with a press (and if you get good at that, make me some, because I suck at it) or condition yourself to the flavor of the hippie brands, which will have you begging for any tortilla that doesn’t contain something truly awful, like spelt.
GUSTAVO: Wow, talk about a question where I’m more conflict of interest–ed than a Giants fan deciding whether the Dodgers should be banned from baseball! Not only did I found an annual tortilla tournament that determines the best tortillas in Southern California, and write a book about Mexican food in 2012, and just eat a beautiful, folic acid–free blue corn tortilla from La Princesita in East Los Angeles this morning; I also wrote about this subject in my L.A. Times columna last year. The fact that a bunch of news outlets are finally picking up on the subject—and the fact that you, dear reader, are asking about this—shows how many people follow my day job. Rather than repeat what I wrote back then, I’ll echo Stacey’s takeaways (especially her feelings on spelt tortillas, which taste as pebbly as they sound) and add that Mexican women were able to have babies just fine without mandatory, bitter-tasting folic acid in their corn tortillas for thousands of years, so why should they start now?
When I was a kid in the suburbs, the ice cream truck would announce its presence with a jingle. We’d all come running and line up for our snow cones and Bomb Pops. But here in San Francisco, ice cream truck sightings are rare. What happened? Related, why don’t food trucks drive around to sell their dishes?
—HUNGRY ON NOB HILL
STACEY: That is a beautiful story, Hungry, but read the block: No one wants to be driving around pushing any kind of ice.
I agree that nothing could snap me out of my late-afternoon anguish like the sound of the ice cream truck. We could almost pinpoint the start of civilization’s demise to the last time we regularly heard it. But times have changed, and a business model that relies on affordable fuel and kids being outside is doomed. When Junior can press a button to pause Grand Theft Auto and then press another button to make cartons of Salt & Straw appear, he has little motivation to unstick himself from his gaming chair, gather up some loose change, walk outside, and stand in line for a Push-Up Pop.
GUSTAVO: Wait, is this month Ask a Gustavo Arellano or something? I wrote about the history of food trucks in my (ahem, aforementioned) book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, and while roaming food trucks remain very much a thing in Los Angeles, the original mobile food vendors were the tamale men of San Francisco in the 1880s, who became a national sensation and helped introduce Mexican food to the world during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. I can’t say why ice cream trucks aren’t that common in San Francisco anymore because I don’t live up there and stick to scarfing down Mission burritos when I’m in the city, but I can point out that this is yet another thing that L.A. is beating S.F. in—sorry, Buster Posey!
What’s with all the people in my adopted city of Los Angeles claiming to be a fourth- or sixth-generation Angeleno? In my hometown of New York, another city of immigrants, nobody cares about stuff like that. What gives? Go Yankees!
—PROUD TO BE A TRANSPLANT IN SILVER LAKE
STACEY: As residents of a much younger city, we Angelenos tend to be impressed by anything older than Pink’s Hot Dogs. And when you grow up constantly hearing that your state’s going to fall into the sea, you cling to whatever permanence you can find. New Yorkers aren’t concerned with such things. Everyone assumes your family’s been there for generations, since there’s no way anyone can move there now.
GUSTAVO: Insecurities about belonging is the reason. Fourth-gen Angeleno? All that means is that their great-grandparents moved here from Iowa in the early 1900s, when everyone’s great-Hawkeyes were doing the same. In San Francisco, home to de Youngs, Hearsts, Haases, and Peraltas, four generations makes your clan a newcomer. Score tied: 1-1, S.F. versus L.A.!
Every few years, there’s some ballot measure to split California into several states. There are the North-South secessionists, Tim Draper’s silly idea about six Californias, and, of course, the State of Jefferson put forth by some rural wing nuts. What if we renamed ourselves Alta California? Would that shut everybody up?
—THE BORDER MOVED, WE DIDN’T IN SACRAMENTO
STACEY: You’ve got this whole thing backward: Successful rebrands are about shortening, not lengthening. Pete’s Super Submarines didn’t rename itself Pete’s Super Submarine Sandwiches. No, it went with the much sleeker Subway. Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded to KFC, not Overfed to the Extent That They Can’t Stand Up Fried Chicken. See the pattern?
You want to reduce letters and add territory, Sac, not the other way around. If anything, we should call ourselves Cal and annex Nevada so we have somewhere to live when California Classic falls into the sea.
GUSTAVO: Better yet: CA. The baseball team formerly known as the California Angels used to have that on their caps. Then they went back to their original name, the Los Angeles Angels, and have been losers ever since. Moral of this columna: Lost Angeles in the streets, Frisco in the sheets…or something.
Next question? advice@altaonline.com
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.
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.
