What happened to the SLO life?
I moved to the Central Coast 17 years ago from Manhattan Beach, when
rents there seemed to more than double overnight.
The “new ambience” created by the people moving into the
area made me uncomfortable. So I left.
SLO County seemed to offer something better, including more affordable
rent.
At the time, however, there was slim pickin’s in the SLO job
market. So I started out driving a cab in town. That lasted a couple
of years.
Although I made peanuts, there was still enough money left over to
enjoy life after paying $400 a month for a one-bedroom cottage in Shell
Beach. I liked driving a cab, which involved meeting some of the more
pungent and original local characters who were either too old, drunk,
or stubborn to drive. The pace was slow; nobody in a hurry—except
college kids whizzing about in compacts.
It didn’t take long, though, to see what was coming.
One of my first rides was a man who’d flown into our small airport
from LAX. He wore an expensive suit with vest. He carried a briefcase
and phone and talked to me excitedly about the benefits and opportunities
in Orange County, where he lived and worked. A developer, he told me
that in his briefcase were plans to turn SLO County into a similarly
fast-paced version of Orange County. “This area—it’s
the future,” he maintained. “The next bonanza.”
I told him this would be tough sledding as we headed toward the office
that would receive his presentation downtown. “There’s people
who’ve been around here for years, and they’re stubborn;
hate people who come up here from down south with their fancy ideas
and fancy lifestyles and want to expand this place.”
“Hey, face it,” he explained with the enthusiasm of a car
salesman, “growth is growth, and growth cannot be stopped.
“Eventually, all desirable areas spread and grow. Look at L.A.,
and the Valley. Even Fresno and Bakersfield. All those one-horse towns
are suburbs and shopping malls. That’s the future. The momentum
can’t be stopped. Our corporation feels that in 20 years Los Osos
Valley Road will connect Los Osos and San Luis Obispo with wall-to-wall
tracts.”
ROAD WEARY Fresh from a road trip to L.A., Cayucos author Dell Franklin stops for a cup of coffee at one of SLO County's few remaining down-home treasures-Louisa's Place in San Luis Obispo. |
When I mentioned that this area could not possibly turn into another
Orange County without industry, and that SLO Town was averse to industry
and L.A.-like people spoiling the down-home corniness of the area, he
told me that industry was already a done deal up in Paso Robles.
Politicians and developers down south, he added, would support politicians
up here who are pro-growth instead of no-growth, like all those people
who moved here from L.A. and San Fran and suddenly wanted to close the
gates. He predicted that it might take 20, 30, 40 years, but inevitably
we’d be like the rest of California, because this is America,
and people can move wherever they want and bring their lifestyles and
values with them.
Who’s to prevent people from other parts of the country to move
to L.A.? This is the land of opportunity and paradise, right? I told
him the reason I moved up here was because L.A. was no longer paradise;
growth ruined it. Instead, it was a congested, volatile, festering,
environmental nightmare.
He laughed; defending the area as a place where one could find anything
he wanted on a large or small scale, where here one had to settle for
crumbs. He was so excited over ruining this place he over-tipped me.
***
Seventeen years later, after living here and loving it so much, I seldom
travel far because nothing compares with our Central Coast paradise.
It’s not easy to assess the changes, though, because change is
so gradual. I think one has to go away for a while and then return to
realize the shock of what has happened here; every little burg, from
Nipomo to Paso Robles, SLO to Cambria, has grown—some astronomically.
In Shell Beach, I lived on a street that led from the frontage road
along Highway 101 to the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Across 101 were
barren, burnished hills that turned Ireland-green after the fall and
winter rains. On our street was a long row of identical one-bedroom,
motel-like apartments and an array of one-story beach cottages, and
a few moderately stylish homes built in the past 20 years. A few months
after moving there, I knew everybody and their dogs and cats. Nights
were dead silent and dark; the pace very, very slow; and, to me, stunningly
so after moving up here from Manhattan Beach.
Within a year the motel-like apartments were replaced by just as many
cheaply constructed two-story condos sandwiched together like New York
City tenements. Former renters were replaced by invisible people who
pulled cars into garages that opened automatically and swallowed them,
only to disgorge them later on. Gone were block parties that involved
everybody bringing their own booze and vittles to whomever’s turn
it was to barbecue. Meanwhile, many of the old cottages on the street
were going down, replaced by two-story boxes that engulfed yard space
for extra rooms.
I moved to Cayucos when increasing traffic led to my wily old cat being
run down before my eyes by somebody going 50 mph; I was pulled off of
the driver by my beloved neighbor, Phil, whose habit was to do repair
work for all of us, free, without being asked. By this time, anyway,
those hills across 101 were covered wall-to-wall by featureless and
identical condos that stood out like a mass of toadstools sprouted overnight.
Maybe the developer from O.C. was right; Atascadero and Paso Robles
soon had box stores and a Wal-Mart.
These days, traffic between San Luis Obispo and Paso is comparable
to what we once experienced only in July and August, but different—a
maniacal frenzy of harried, rude, whizzing locals caught up in some
sort of maelstrom, anxious to get home more quickly and to pass other
drivers at any cost. Cruise the slow lane some weekday afternoon and
observe the passing lane, where people’s profiles are wrought
with bulging jugulars, their mouths taut with stress and cell phone
babble.
The Cuesta Grade has been widened to accommodate the influx of those
living in featureless and juxtaposed housing tracts growing like crabgrass
out of former truck stops like Paso (and now Nipomo and Templeton—the
next targets slated for the expansion boom). Perhaps, as the developer
predicted, there will soon be millions of people here, accompanied by
gridlock, foul air, flaring tempers, teeth-gnashing tension, and more
road rage; and with it the pervasive rudeness and impatience carried
like the virulent plague of our age. Eventually those feeling squeezed
and claustrophobic by crowds and vanishing space, and without cash for
affordable housing anywhere (not inland, and certainly not in the string
of beach towns turned into rich men’s enclaves), will flee the
state, having run out of paradises.
***
I drove out to San Miguel the other day, a place so quiet and sleepy
it seemed the last outpost. In the Elkhorn Bar I met some people who
did not seem to fit anywhere in this new county and possibly only in
a John Steinbeck novel. They were moaning about somebody who was going
to build over 1,000 homes, which would more than double the population
of a town so slow and franchiseless it must resemble San Luis Obispo
50 or 60 years ago, when flight to this county from the big cities was
unimaginable.
I once felt that way about Manhattan Beach, which in the 1970s was
still a stomping ground for all lifestyles, financial strata, and social
levels; a place where doctors, lawyers, and movie-industry people mixed
with plumbers and house painters—a point of pride for us all.
I resided in a large studio apartment for nine years and paid $110 a
month, a stone’s throw from the ocean, where I surfed daily. When
I left in 1986, I could no longer afford my own place and shared a two-bedroom
dump blocks from the beach for $750 a month (a bargain). About six months
ago I went by my old studio and it was up for rent at $1,900 a month.
Not long ago I was walking my dog around the sports complex/park in
Morro Bay. Returning to my car, a cop pulled up and informed me that
I had been reported—no dogs in the park. Well, there were dogs
in the park, but they were with Latino nannies of blue-eyed toddlers
and young mothers who looked like they worked out in gyms 24 hours a
day and ate birdseed and chewed nails.
The cop wanted to ticket me—$161—for allowing my dog in
the park. I had once worked in a bar in Morro Bay where there were usually
six or seven dogs—well-behaved dogs who received treats and pets
from customers and passersby—sunning themselves on the sidewalk
by the door as they waited for their masters to come out. Now, no dog
can be tied up on a sidewalk or it’s $161. I explained to the
cop that I’d been gone 17 years and was unaware of the new codes,
restrictions, and laws plastered every 10 yards. I was clad in basketball
togs in preparation to play with some old pals in the park, and my 20-year-old
compact did not blend well beside enormous gleaming SUVs and sports
cars, the owners of which, massing at the kiddy play area, stared at
the scene with cringing distaste. Though I am not homeless, I felt like
an intruder on the verge of being arrested for my thoughts alone, especially
when another squad car pulled up and a cop got out—backup.
I told them I was very, very sorry I allowed my dog in the park and
would never do it again. The cops glanced at each other and then the
second one went to his car to run a scan, perhaps hoping to nail me
and my dog for outstanding warrants, or maybe a murder charge. In the
end, when they discovered I was clean, they let me off the hook after
a stern lecture and warning.
I mention all this because in Morro Bay and Cayucos and in state parks
they are cracking down on dogs, and the other day, when a lady friend
asked a ranger where she could run her dog, he snarled and said: “Mexico!
Now get the hell out of here before I throw you both in jail!”
***
I go to L.A. every two weeks to visit my ailing 86-year-old mother.
The air down there is oppressive and seems to lay upon you like a hot
wet stinging carpet and enters one’s body through osmosis; attacking
lungs and nervous systems, leaving you gasping, irritable, and drained.
For hundreds of square miles there is literally no open space, just
homes, malls, packed streets and freeways, hordes of people, and an
incessant cacophony of honks, screams, sirens, and general discordance.
There is no escaping this trap. Wherever you go, at almost any hour,
there is traffic that is fast and helter-skelter and downright life-threatening,
if you are lulled into a comfort zone from driving in SLO County. I
am near deranged after 48 hours and can’t wait to get back here,
and my mood upon reaching home is both relief and celebration.
On my way home I don’t mind the increased traffic from Santa
Maria to SLO Town, nor the toadstool proliferation of expensive homes
popping up everywhere along 101. There are still wide-open spaces, especially
in the canyons. And when you drive through our towns, or go into shops,
or just walk the streets, people seem determined to go out of their
way to preserve normal, genteel courtesies and considerations, “You
go first”) that are trademarks; a collective spirit to fight the
good fight, as if sensing what could one day occur.
And it is. We’re talking about the rapidly expedient extermination
of the mom-and-pop businesses, a prime example in SLO being the old
lunch counter diners like Scrubby and Lloyd’s, a little hut so
intimate and old-timey that locals from generations braved the greasy
burgers and cramped, drab environs that lacked totally the vacuous corporate
smiles, the canned, forced-perky salutations; where customers picked
on owners and owners picked on customers, and employees picked on everybody;
where the good old boys puffed their cigars and hand-rolled cigs and
serenaded the offspring of friends and relatives with stories of the
days when SLO Town was a railroad hub for G.I.s during World War II;
or when a local ex-cabbie ended up as a personal chauffeur to William
Randolph Hearst.
When I moved here there was one coffeehouse—the Bohemian Linnaea’s,
which was possibly off limits to squares. Now, we’ve got long
lines at Starbucks, and, across the plaza at the Downtown Centre, not
20 feet away, another Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble (two bookstores
on Higuera have folded over the years) to go along with at least half
a dozen coffeehouses, where fancy rolls and pastries have replaced those
greasy burgers and rot-gut coffee at Scrubby & Lloyd’s.
As an ex-cabbie, I can state that, 14 years later, traffic in SLO Town
is brutal. Going up Chorro can logjam at the intersection of Broad and
South clear back to the railroad station area. New housing tracts go
up on the outskirts, accompanied by the requisite shopping centers and
requisite corporate franchises, where evangelistic smiles replace intimacy.
Foster Freeze hangs on, as does Louisa’s Place on Higuera. In
almost every town on the Central Coast there remains a lonely remnant
of the good old days—The Elkhorn; Ralph & Duane’s; the
Sea Shanty; Bull’s; Bello’s sporting goods; Leon’s
and The Phoenix bookstores; the Fremont theater; the Landmark in Pismo,
along with Brad’s and the bowling alley; Wilson’s Lanes
in Paso and the 2nd Street Saloon; Sylvester’s burger joint; Kitty’s
Kitchen in Morro Bay; the Redwood Café and Camozzi’s in
Cambria; Jocko’s in Nipomo …
It will be some time before the hungry hordes catch up and ruin this
place, which isn’t quite like it was when I drove a cab and transported
the “6 a.m. professional drinking club of retired varmints and
philosophers” to and from McCarthy’s pub in SLO Town, and
referred to local drivers as “retards in seat belts.” It
will be some time before we’re like L.A., or even Santa Barbara—the
rich safe in their beach enclaves; the middle class mesmerized in their
suburbs; the poor struggling in their slums. So savor SLO County while
you still can, just as you would the sunset of your own years. ³
Dell Franklin lives in a quiet neighborhood in Cayucos where paradise
is still pretty easy to find.