An Amble in Anaheim - Orange County, California
Digg this page
| 
Save This Page
| 
Stumble It!An Amble in Anaheim
Orange County, California
 |
Anaheim's Crystal Cathedral. (Photo Credit: Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau |
In Southern California, nobody walks. Californians are infamous for being slaves to the automobile. Recently I was in Anaheim, California working a gig at the convention center. Normally, when I travel for work, I fly into a city, take a cab to the hotel and only see the light of day (or night in most cases) shuttling between the hotel and whatever venue I'm working. We had flown in relatively early the day before we were to begin work, so I happened to have a rare afternoon to myself.
Now, I hate hanging around in hotel rooms, or worse hotel bars or lobbies, particularly when there's a convention going on. All that networking makes me nauseous. Besides, no matter what the city, there's usually something interesting to be seen without traveling too far afield. Of course some cities present more of a challenge than others, and in terms of finding something interesting, Anaheim is as about as challenging as it gets.
Being early February, it was of course sunny and 70°F. It was good to have escaped the drizzle of my native Seattle. It's Orange County, and don't dare call it L.A., or else you'll face the ire of many a local Los Angelino. Life behind the Orange Curtain is something quite different. Most non-Southern Californians tend to lump the entire region from Dana Point to San Bernadino to the San Fernando Valley into one big mythical L.A. Now, I don't want to be too critical of the place, particularly since I lived there for a time some years ago, but "Orange County culture" is considered by many to be either an oxymoron or something long extinct.
But enough of my Seattle snobbishness! Scratch beneath the surface of Orange County and you'll find its agricultural roots still showing. On one block you'll have a hotel, theme park, or a strip mall; on the next a bean field. Anaheim in particular is dominated by the pop-culture scourge that is Disneyland and the cancer of the crass-mass tourism infrastructure that supports it. Or take the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, where they were even able to turn God into a marketing gimmick.
I fled the lobby of the Hilton and hit the streets to explore. What I was really looking for was a quiet café where I could sit and read and enjoy the sun (Starbucks are as ubiquitous here as in any other West Coast City). What I found was a fruit stand. Boasting a remarkable array of fresh local produce, it was wedged incongruously between a tacky Best Western "resort" and the Goofy parking lot of Disneyland. I bought a pint of fresh strawberries. Walking for 10 minutes under the California sunshine had made me thirsty, so what I was really after was something to drink.
I asked the guy tending the stand, "Do you have any bottled water?"
He answered in a lackadaisical Mexican-English drawl, "No maaaan, sorry."
"Well, do you know where I can get some?"
He paused to think about it. I had stumped him.
"Is there a market around?"
"Oh yeah, there's a Circle K down that way, I think." He waved vaguely to the south.
"Can I walk there?"
"Uh, sure�if you want," he sounded skeptical. "But it's a long way."
"How long do you think it would take?"
"I dunno, ten, fifteen minutes maybe." He made it seem like I was attempting to climb the Matterhorn. (The real Matterhorn, not the papier-mâché one in the nearby mouse-park.)
One man's 15-minute walk is another's two blocks. In short order I was at the Circle K satiating my thirst. If there had been a bench or something outside I would have sat and done some people-watching. Between the drag queen in stiletto heels and electric blue spandex having a very animated argument with someone on the other end of the phone, the Vietnamese hip-hop kids on their skateboards slamming on and off the curb, and the leather-clad, handlebar-mustached Harley rider lovingly drying off his hog after sending it through the car wash, I could have had hours of free entertainment.
As I resumed my stroll I became more aware of the uniqueness of the place. I'm used to living in cities and used to walking as a primary mode of transportation. But as I walked it began to dawn on me what a pedestrian's nirvana Orange County really is. The sidewalks are wide (wide enough for a pair of rollerbladers to skate hand-in-hand), clean (no newspapers, discarded folk singer flyers, gum, or other unspeakable detritus), level (no cracked cement asphalted over, construction debris, or tree roots to trip you), and best of all, empty!
And what the neighborhood lacked in character, it made up for in convenience and efficiency. Where else can you find a drive-thru Walgreens? Why bother trying to think of a creative name, or even a number, for a new street? Why not call it Target Drive? After all, that's where the Target is, right?
But I shouldn't dismiss the character of the place so quickly. This is a place where Mexican restaurants categorize their food by region like fine French cuisine: Baja, Sonoran, Veracruz. And there is always a gem hidden in every strip mall, if you know where to look. The junk shop, run by that World War II veteran that's just a bit whacko, the Laundromat with the UPS pickup station, and a travel agency that specializes in helicopter tours of the Kamchaka Peninsula (I'm not making this one up), or the greasy-looking steakhouse called something like "The Gold Nugget" that has the most extensive baked potato bar you'll ever see.
After about an hour of strolling, I eventually found a bench under the shade of a lemon tree in front of an enormous Ramada Inn and began to snack on my strawberries. As I relaxed and enjoyed the glorious afternoon a large group of middle-aged tourists in mouse-ears emerged from the lobby and noisily boarded a waiting tour bus. I gathered that they were some kind of church group from the Midwest, here in California to escape their winder doldrums and preparing for a wild night at Downtown Disney. They made me smile.
I never did find a nice café to relax in (or even a Starbucks!), but instead experienced something far more rare and wonderful: a small taste of Orange County culture. Endangered, perhaps, but not extinct.
