Known as “The OC,” Orange County isn't Los Angeles, an important distinction for us locals, even though we live just below the larger than life city. Orange County encompasses Huntington Beach, Anaheim (also known as Disneyland), Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, San Juan Capistrano, Costa Mesa, Buena Park, Irvine and Santa Ana. Orange County, although a separate county south of Los Angeles, is considered part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Officially, the Los Angeles MSA includes Los Angeles and Orange Counties (the official designation is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim) with a population of 13.3 million people.
WHAT'S BETWEEN Los Angeles and Orange Counties? Let's put it to scholars, men of enlightenment and reason. As the two counties evolve rapidly, sometimes in parallel paths, sometimes at oblique angles, sometimes according to their own clichés and other times in violation of them, they embody two designs for living (and dreaming). Some of their differences can be quantified. Orange County is richer, whiter, with far less violent crimes than L, A.
County residents surveyed last year had recently considered moving, one in a dozen named Orange County a good place to go. Many more Orange County residents like to be where they are, and only six out of 1,000 wanted to live in Los Angeles. Angels sound more grumpy, according to polls conducted for The Times; 42% of L, A. Residents were dissatisfied with Southern California overall, compared to 30% in Orange County.
The county, at its best, presents itself as urban, lively, tolerant, expansive, with a sense of humor about itself. What other place can give tourists a huge and dreadful sign (HOLLYWOOD) as an icon? He offers the world in miniature, because the world comes to him. Have cheesecake with kiwi at the Cuban bakery for dessert, then a kosher-style burrito or mititei at the Romanian restaurant, after sitting in a Fellini marathon in a cinematic revival house equipped like a pharaoh's palace. He seems to be self-absorbed, deeply segregated by all his ethnic mix, astonishingly rich and poor from the Third World, self-indulgent but in places as miserable and dirty as any village in the Rust Belt, exhaustingly obsessed with success, civically inept, a great shaky place.
DEBBIE BOHNETT LEFT the sweet peace of Northern California a few months ago to work at the Neiman Marcus in Newport Beach. It was the first Neiman Marcus in California, and when Neiman Marcus plants its flag on foreign soil, that place will surely have as much money as the outlet end of an oil pipeline. Neighbors and colleagues let you know otherwise. “They would correct me right away, and it wouldn't be in a joking way,” he says.
During the 1960s, while pioneering Republican political consultant Stu Spencer sought contributions, wealthy businessmen in Orange County didn't take out their checkbooks until they had asked him, “'How much do those bastards have in L, A?. Given?” They weren't going to give me a dime until I got the money out of Los, A. first. Orange County, once the bedroom of L, A.
The status of the county is a product of its agricultural roots, its genesis of dormitories and white flight communities, its high-tech here and now, and its housing prices. The faces of the counties are certainly different. Orange County is 70.1% white, 17.8% Latino, 10.6% other, mostly Asian, and 1.5% black. The county is 46.4% white, 32.8% Latino, 11.3% black and 9.5% other, mostly Asian.
A white businessman who moved south of LA, LA. He has daughters who worry when they go to Los, LA. And he's worried about his concern, “which is very distressing for me,” he says. For him, Orange County is “an unreal ethnic mix.
Poor Republican Assemblyman Dennis Brown; must satisfy voters in a district that crosses both counties. Half of Orange County adults surveyed had lived in Los Angeles. Once before; clearly, once was enough. The Great Satan of the North is the reason they are in Orange County, the reason that fewer than one in six of them still travel to win an L, A.
Pay and enjoy it in Orange County. Veteran San Fernando Valley real estate agent Temmy Walker speaks for the Angelino, who believes that the second largest city in the United States is enough for itself. When he started selling houses 17 years ago, he says, “Orange County never came to our conscience. He only knows two people who moved to Orange County.
L, A. The football team that today exercises its trade at Anaheim Stadium is known as the Los Angeles Rams. Supervisor Kenneth Hahn once asked in a withering rhetorical way: “Who would go to see the Anaheim Rams? Border terms like “whisper” and “jump” might have come to mind when, in the space of two months last year, customers of the excellent Newport Harbour Art Museum learned that they were losing both the museum director and the chief curator. The director's transfer to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago didn't sting as much as the news that the curator was going to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
It should be flattering to Orange County that its museum has matured enough to send its boys to the big leagues. The fact is that, despite all its shortcomings, L, A. I can still make offers that a lot of people can't refuse. As Orange County has been rejoicing with national applause, L, A.
It has gone into overdrive, it has been launched into international orbit. The second city in America is becoming the main city in the Pacific Rim, a polyglopolis that is home to more people from: do you choose a country, Guatemala? South Korea? —than anywhere else except— refill the blank, Guatemala City? Seoul? Angels are not the dream-eyed exurbanites of 30 years ago, but an evolving species of Westerners who inhabit the city. WHEEL AROUND A Bend on Echo Park Avenue. On the morning after Easter, lies a movie monster, star of the sequel “Alligator II”, stretched out on a flatbed truck.
He's tied with a rope, more than 20 feet of special effects reptile cruelty with a fake human hand sticking out of his jaws. He's waiting to slide into the darkness of Echo Park Lake, waiting for the cameras to record. And in the middle of Echo Park, Raúl Gamboa waits for his call. He's a promising graffiti artist who signed up to paint some authentic looking graffiti for this film.
Then they “discovered” it, just as it's supposed to happen. The producer and director liked the way he looked and gave him a small role as a gang member. He wears the black leather jacket in the dressing room, with “Crazy Boys” on the back. Always the realm of the possible, for those who are willing to endure the journey.
The pounding of the street and the pounding of the studio share relentless optimism for the big opportunity. And Orange counties are built on an idealized image. There is nothing new there: the very name of California was invented in a 15th century Spanish novel that describes a rich land ruled by Queen Calafia and the Amazons armed with golden spears. In 500 years, fantastic Californian style has been perfected and marketed at a good price, so much so that tourism is the second source of income in both places.
Rick Kenyon, Marketing Manager, LA. Visitors and Convention Bureau, is always fighting Orange County for tourist dollars. In 1988, Orange County attracted 35 million visitors and L, A. Clubs called LA Fitness operate in Orange County, Riverside, San Bernardino, everywhere except the city of Los Angeles.
Co-owner Louis Welch is among Orange County converts. Orange County, which was worse than Siberia at the time. But things change. The Mentality Has Gone to Newport, Costa Mesa.
Orange County residents attend more live theater, including dinner theater, than Angelenos, and more symphony, opera, and concerts. However, Spike Lee's highly-praised film “Do the Right Thing” closed in Orange County within a week, so quickly that a black lawyer complained that he had to drive to L, A. Orange County's New Sophistication Should Be Above Rivalry, But There's Still a Touch of Parish Defensive Attitude. A woman from Newport Beach society, a former Angelina, was hell even for saying — no matter how she didn't approve — that some of her friends are still going to Los Angeles to get their hair done.
Behind the passengers, on the tired fall of their shoulders at the end of the week, is downtown Los Angeles. In the smog-colored sunset, its towers are the towers of Ming the Ruthless on the planet Mongo. The train was a kind of leitmotif for hate across the county. In 1849, two unknowns that would become one of California's most important men, Collis P.
Huntington and James Irvine, reunited aboard the ship, heading to the Gold Rush. They decided, for reasons lost in history, that they could not tolerate each other. In the 1870s, Huntington was a plutocrat, co-owner of the Central and South Pacific railroads, and Irvine was the largest landowner in Orange County, where Huntington wanted to establish the track after doing so in Los Angeles. But Irvine, fueling a grudge, refused to sell the right of way.
Even after Irvine died, his heirs said there was no sale. One morning, Huntington simply sent a crew to begin tracing clues. A few ranchers from Irvine came up with guns, and that put an end to that. Soon after, the Irvines sold the right of way to Huntington's rival, Santa Fe.
Just as there was an old Nixon and a new Nixon, there is also the old and the new Orange County, and in both cases, some say the differences are debatable. Where did Gorbachev rank higher in a poll than Reagan? Where is the country's first regular gay television program broadcast? Which city in which county tried to order that Greenpeace be fingerprinted before they could survey the streets of the city? Which city in 1968 pioneered a widely praised sex education program, and then quickly scrapped it when opponents called it a “communazi plan to create a “one-world child”? Haven't you been confused enough? Very good. The county is being sued for redistricting that excludes Latinos from its Board of Supervisors, Orange County's first Latino supervisor, Republican Gaddi H. Vásquez, is in his second term.
Beyond Bradley's purview is the powerful Board of Supervisors: five white men, the same five for a decade, whose 8.6 million voters are by some margin neither white nor male, many of whom depend on the services that the county can offer fewer and fewer. Hospital services are at a critical point, mental health clinics have been closed, and AIDS-related services are unable to meet needs. On the home front, no one uses the L word, but some demographically definable segments of Orange County are drifting towards neoconservatism, a more libertarian tolerance of abortion and homosexuality. Looking ahead to last year's United States.
Supreme Court decision to uphold more abortion restrictions, Orange County section of the National Women's Organization saw its membership soar by 60%. The party is less of a factor these days than problems. SINCE ORANGE COUNTY broke away from the bottom of L, A. Among Orange Counties there are thousands of ex-Angelenos who packed their dreams of fences and went south.
Orange County's vast and visionary housing developments were built with the goal of avoiding L, A. Nobody ever said that there might not be enough Eden everywhere. In fact, panicking because the past, however thin, is slipping away in the rush for dollars, L, A. Fight to preserve notable buildings that are barely 50 years old.
In Orange County, as groves and fields fade under the tyranny of plumb line and plane, an environmental sculpture by Isamu Noguchi lies at the foot of an enclave of benches, a kind of atonement for the agrarian past, a work melancholically titled “Spirit of the Lima Bean”. Central L, A. It was built little by little over decades. There's the entertaining mess and there's the world-class architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright, who once said that if the continent tilts, all the loose parts go to California, saw fit to come here and design. Frank Gehry is still on a roll. It's not that all Angelenos like it. Writer and Futurist Ray Bradbury Admits He Likes the Orange County Look.
The planned community is probably Orange County's main cultural contribution, despite regulations governing decisions such as what color you can paint your home with. Ray Watson is vice president and first chief planner of Irvine Co. It sounds better at a time when the suburbs were being hit and the city was becoming unviable. Woodbridge offered schools, swimming pools and parks within walking distance of every home.
You have the opportunity to do something here that you don't have anywhere else in Southern California right now. Planned Community Still Perfecting As Southern Orange County Fills With Whole New Cities. First resident moved to one of them, Rancho Santa Margarita, in 1986; 50,000 expected to arrive in 10 years. The Day in 1967 May Co.
He opened his store in South Coast Plaza, then a simple mall, Larry Ober stood at the door with a co-worker, looked at the farmland and said, “Oh my God, look at those bean fields. No one will ever come here. Today, Ober has several stores in a South Coast Plaza, which is the largest and most prosperous of all the many shopping temples in Orange County. The acres have been filled with houses or turned into more expensive crops, asparagus and strawberries, or profitable ornamentals to adorn all the houses built in the bean fields.
Being robbed near downtown eight months ago while exploring a filming location has put Brian Haynes out of L, LA. A quasi-native who remembers the town “before they sowed condo seeds on Wilshire Boulevard, allows it has “certainly become more difficult to live here. When you're a teenager, nothing is difficult. As you get older, you start to see more flaws: pollution, traffic.
There are impeccable and easy days when “I still see it as before. It's days like that, to be cheesy, I still love L, A. Realities that have settled in L, A. They're drifting to Orange County, where myths haven't been completely uprooted, myths of open spaces, suburbs, of “being able to get in your car and drive alone to work at 60 miles per hour, being able to buy a single-family home with a big backyard,” says Baldassare of the UCI.
In that gap between myth and truth is “one of the great reasons for frustration and unhappiness”. It is conflict that fuels divisions within each county. In L, A. Money, novelty, influence have gone west or south; older neighborhoods, racial mixing are largely east or north.
When the smoke went out because of the Watts riots in 1965, the San Fernando Valley barely knew where Watts was. Although “rich cultural diversity” has become a buzzword for an ethnic mix, L, A. At night, he retreats to his separate strongholds. Along with Chicago, researchers at UCLA say L, A.
It is the second most segregated metropolitan area in the nation. The Night Stalker's murderous 1985 raid on Mission Viejo sent crime skyrocketing to the top of Orange County's list of concerns, along with drugs and trafficking. In Orange County, some highway ramp meters stay on 24 hours a day, and yet routes are impossible. Orange County residents spend more time in traffic delays than Los Angeles residents, according to a regional study, and Orange Counties systematically cite traffic as their main nuisance.
Traffic announcer Bill Keene says: “If I had my drums, I'd rather drive in L, A. I think they have a lot more traffic than us. However, Bill Hodges, executive director of the Orange County division of the California League of Cities, argues that L, A. He remains arrogant when it comes to regional issues.
“A “rift” still manifests itself in regional planning and growth issues, he says, as Los Angeles officials continue to think of his county as “the center of the region.”. Overall, he adds, the rivalry “used to be much more obvious than it is today, and yet I think it's perhaps at a more refined level due to Orange County's growing sense of self. SO NEITHER PLACE IS PARADISE, WHATEVER YOUR HOPES. But maybe we're working on something else, something bigger.
The big questions are racial tolerance, the death of fantasy, the finitude of resources. It's right at the point of crisis before anywhere else. I don't want to say it's easy, but if you want a big nut that breaks, here it is. NUMBER OF REPORTED FATAL TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS NUMBER OF REPORTED FATAL TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS INVOLVING AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL SPENT PER STUDENT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS From the class of 1989, during grades 10-1 PERCENT OF HOUSEHOLDS WITH ONE OR MORE CARS Most popular models based on new car purchases in 198 Percentage of households with these investments) NEIGHBORHOODS WITH THE HIGHEST AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOME Patt Morrison is a writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where, as a member of two reporting teams, she has a share of two Pulitzer Prizes.
His public broadcast programs have earned him six Emmys, his two non-fiction books were bestsellers and Pink's, Hollywood's hot dog stand, named his vegetarian dog after his. Los Angeles is home to people of different races, ethnicities, backgrounds, nationalities, religions and cultures. You can walk down any street in Los Angeles at any time and hear at least three different languages spoken. However, Orange County is more racially and culturally homogeneous, except in cities like Irvine, where Asian residents make up more than 45% of the population (and Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants will blow your mind).
In 1889, Orange County, then known as the Santa Ana Valley and resentful of being taxed and then taken for granted, broke away from a Los Angeles county that was almost as large as Ohio. The county originally included parts of what are now Kern, San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo, Tulare, Ventura and Orange Counties. The majority of the population lives in central and northern Orange County, and cities such as Fullerton, Anaheim, Orange and Huntington Beach have traditional centers. Some argue that Orange County is still basically a cultural code, and some who adhere to this notion are local.
LA beaches are for tourists and competitive volleyball players; Orange County beaches are for professional surfers, sunbathing locals, cliff divers, and water enthusiasts. If history is high on your to-see list, head to the Bower's Museum in Santa Ana, which presents the first years of life in Orange County and showcases other cultures, such as Chinese and Mesoamerican. Because Orange County is home to many middle-class families and young children, the streets are pristine and usually filled with beautiful flowers and well-kept shrubs. In Orange County, small talks are about the state of the waves or the best place for Mexican food; in Los Angeles, everything revolves around the yoga studio you go to, the highways you use to go to work, and the script you're currently working on.
Orange County small talk mostly revolves around the weather, the most recent surf, and whether a new restaurant opens. Most people who live in Orange County choose to live there for lifestyle reasons (or because they never left home), so people tend to be more relaxed and not as career-focused. And while Orange County drivers know how to be assertive on the road when they need to, they're nothing compared to a typical aggressive, unrestricted Los Angeles driver. But to be fair, Frio adds, Orange County's reputation for white bread is “one of the things I don't like.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area, or Southland, is a term used for the group of metropolitan areas in five counties in the southern part of California. Those houses wouldn't be built, let alone sold, if Orange County businesses weren't businesses. . .
