The following article was written in 2005 for the Inland Empire Weekly. It was rejected for being, in the words of my editor, "too down on the IE."
While searching the Internet in my ongoing fruitless quest for a ramen house in the Inland Empire, I came upon a link to a website titled “Moving from India to Southern California.” As my last experience with clicking on an unfamiliar link with “India” in its title resulted in having to wake my computer-geek wife at 3 a.m. to rescue my hard drive from the five New Delhi sex workers who’d hijacked it (“I swear to God, honey, I was just looking for ramen!”), I was understandably suspicious. But this new link appeared to emanate from UC Riverside’s main server, so I crossed my fingers and clicked.
Up popped a black-and-white page titled “Frequently Asked Questions about moving from India to Southern California as a student.” Written by an Indian UCR graduate student for fellow Indians considering enrollment at the school, the page was filled to the point of incoherence with typos, grammatical errors and tortured syntax – as if auto-translated from the original Sanskrit. Nonetheless, it also contained some fascinating observations about quality of life in the I.E.
Most of the questions dealt with the bureaucracy of studying abroad: “What is a 50% Teaching Fellowship?” “Who helps me with all the paperwork?” “Is there a special tax treaty with India?”
But a full third focused on the climate and culture of Riverside and the ramen-less lifestyle of the average Inland resident. While the author thoughtfully dispelled some of his more upper-caste brethrens’ illusions about life in the States (“Q: Who does my laundry, cooks my food, cleans my room, irons my clothes, etc.?” “A: Good one. YOU.”), he goes on to spin a whole slew of illusions of his own.
Q: “Where is Riverside?”
A: “One hour from everywhere, in the middle of nowhere.”
Q: “What is the weather like at (sic) in Riverside?”
A: “Southern California weather is the closest it gets to the weather like in Bombay! Summers are hot – about 110 to 120 Fahrenheit, which works out roughly to about 40-45 degrees centigrade!”
Q: “How much is the rent?”
A: “A single bedroom apartment costs any where between $425-$600. Renting a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment costs any where between $575-$750.”
Q: “Approximately how much is my weekly grocery expense?”
A: “Anywhere between $25-$50 a week. Eating out is optional.”
After reading the document, I opened a Word file and typed out a few questions of my own: Where the fuck I’d been living these past few years? How soon can I divorce Sharon and move to this cheaper, quieter, sultrier version of the I.E.? Did this guy ever once step outside of his air-conditioned dorm room during his stay here?
None of the grad student’s answers about life in Riverside were entirely correct. A city of 305,000 people has to be in the middle of somewhere. In Riverside’s case, that somewhere is the Inland Empire, otherwise known as the fastest-growing region in the country. Yeah, summer temperatures in the I.E. will occasionally reach 110 degrees, but only in the most extreme heat waves does it get anywhere near 120 – and then only in the waiting room of the San Bernardino DMV.
And if anyone knows of a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment for $750 in Riverside, I’d like to know about it. In 2003, when the L.A. Times transferred me from Glendale to a rabbit-infested field office in Ontario, $750 got me a 10-by-10 unfurnished room across the hall from an alcoholic wife-beater who screamed in his sleep, upstairs from a pill-popping landlady who couldn’t stop talking about her problem with anal leakage.
But in all honesty, I can’t blame the grad student writer for being so wildly off base. Almost no one really knows the Inland Empire any more. The region has grown so fast in recent years that even those who live in it have had a hard time keeping up. I’ve lived in Southern California all my life, but until moving here the only thing I knew about the I.E. was you passed it on the way out to Vegas. I wasn’t alone.
When the disastrous wildfires of October 2003 broke out, San Bernardino mountain residents waited around their TVs for evacuation news and kept waiting until flames finally drove them from their homes. The L.A.-based news stations wouldn’t notice the fires until they crossed the county line.
But a lot has changed in the Empire since Joan Didion famously described it in 1966 -- the last year anything famous was written about the I.E. -- as a place where it was “easy to Dial-A-Devotion but hard to buy a book.” The cow pastures and lemon groves are all but gone, paved over by Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and the 40-year mortgage. Bed, Bath & Beyond has moved into the Back O’ Beyond. You can still Dial-A-Devotion, but at least now you can sip a Frappuccino while waiting on hold.
Not that anyone west of the 57 Freeway has noticed. For most Angelinos, that vast region of 9-something area codes is a mirage: You see it, far off in the desert, but for all practical purposes it just isn’t there. The occasional lack of disaster response aside, this disconnect between the reputed and real Inland Empires wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for the fact that Angelinos are moving here as if homes were free. Homes here aren’t free, but they do average about $175,000 less than comparable properties in L.A., and that’s enough to draw 23 of every 1,000 L.A. residents to Riverside annually, according to the U.S. Census.
As someone who made the migration three years ago, I can always spot recent L.A. newcomers to the neighborhood. They’re the ones standing on their front lawns shaking their fists at the sky, as if some cruel cosmic joke has been played on them.
It’s with that image in mind that I present my own brief set of FAQs for Angelinos considering moving to the Inland Empire:
Question: OK, really, where is Riverside?
Answer: Five minutes to five hours from anywhere, depending on the time of day. If you’ve just moved here, the first thing you should do is make www.traffic411.com your home page.
Q: What’s the weather really like in the Inland Empire?
A: A bit hotter than Burbank in the summer, a bit colder than Santa Monica in winter. Spring and autumn exist only on the Oxygen Channel. But it’s not the heat you need to worry about out here. It’s the total absence of shade. Inland residents live in denial of weather. Indoor parking is nonexistent. Chairs and tables in open-air food courts are almost uniformly made of dark, heat-absorbent metal. Bus benches, also of dark metal, provide no shelter from the elements whatsoever. Misters are rare. The only public escape from the heat is in the few indoor malls, and even there the temperature is set just high enough to keep patrons constantly on the verge of ordering a Frappuccino.
Q: Five minutes to five hours from anywhere – Does that mean that traffic is bad in the I.E.?
A: If you’re presently living near the 405/10 interchange, you’ll feel right at home. For the rest of you, a good rule of thumb is to never drive anywhere that wouldn’t put you up for the night.
Q: But with Inland homes averaging about $175,000 less than L.A. homes, isn’t life in the I.E. still a bargain?
A: Yes, but you get what you pay for. Along with midnight traffic jams and sunburns in November, a major drawback to life in the Empire is that we have different standards of neighborliness than, say, on the Westside. In West L.A., with homes stacked one on top of the other, residents are mindful of noise and animal ordinances; pets, if any, tend to be of the little yappy variety. In Riverside, new homeowners take one look at their big backyards and immediately buy two massive war hounds, which promptly mate. In my neighborhood, every home contains at least four big yard dogs -- all of who begin barking at first light and keep on barking until canine references creep into every doggone thing you do.
Also, DIY home improvement is big out here. What’s the point in buying a $450,000 home if you can’t use the money you’ve saved to make it a $600,000 home? With every home in some state of remodel and most heavy equipment rented by the day, imagine trying to watch “Lost” with three backhoes going next door.
Q: So what you’re saying is, “Think twice before moving to the Inland Empire”?
A: Yes, but maybe only twice. The truth is, after a year or so of feeling homesick for my native L.A., I’ve grown to love it out here – and if I can, so can you. Once you’ve secured the two prerequisites for I.E. living – central air and a good home entertainment system – you may find that you’ll never look back at Los Angeles. Think of it this way: How great can a city be when the nicest thing you can say about it is you wish you could still afford to live there?
While searching the Internet in my ongoing fruitless quest for a ramen house in the Inland Empire, I came upon a link to a website titled “Moving from India to Southern California.” As my last experience with clicking on an unfamiliar link with “India” in its title resulted in having to wake my computer-geek wife at 3 a.m. to rescue my hard drive from the five New Delhi sex workers who’d hijacked it (“I swear to God, honey, I was just looking for ramen!”), I was understandably suspicious. But this new link appeared to emanate from UC Riverside’s main server, so I crossed my fingers and clicked.
Up popped a black-and-white page titled “Frequently Asked Questions about moving from India to Southern California as a student.” Written by an Indian UCR graduate student for fellow Indians considering enrollment at the school, the page was filled to the point of incoherence with typos, grammatical errors and tortured syntax – as if auto-translated from the original Sanskrit. Nonetheless, it also contained some fascinating observations about quality of life in the I.E.
Most of the questions dealt with the bureaucracy of studying abroad: “What is a 50% Teaching Fellowship?” “Who helps me with all the paperwork?” “Is there a special tax treaty with India?”
But a full third focused on the climate and culture of Riverside and the ramen-less lifestyle of the average Inland resident. While the author thoughtfully dispelled some of his more upper-caste brethrens’ illusions about life in the States (“Q: Who does my laundry, cooks my food, cleans my room, irons my clothes, etc.?” “A: Good one. YOU.”), he goes on to spin a whole slew of illusions of his own.
Q: “Where is Riverside?”
A: “One hour from everywhere, in the middle of nowhere.”
Q: “What is the weather like at (sic) in Riverside?”
A: “Southern California weather is the closest it gets to the weather like in Bombay! Summers are hot – about 110 to 120 Fahrenheit, which works out roughly to about 40-45 degrees centigrade!”
Q: “How much is the rent?”
A: “A single bedroom apartment costs any where between $425-$600. Renting a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment costs any where between $575-$750.”
Q: “Approximately how much is my weekly grocery expense?”
A: “Anywhere between $25-$50 a week. Eating out is optional.”
After reading the document, I opened a Word file and typed out a few questions of my own: Where the fuck I’d been living these past few years? How soon can I divorce Sharon and move to this cheaper, quieter, sultrier version of the I.E.? Did this guy ever once step outside of his air-conditioned dorm room during his stay here?
None of the grad student’s answers about life in Riverside were entirely correct. A city of 305,000 people has to be in the middle of somewhere. In Riverside’s case, that somewhere is the Inland Empire, otherwise known as the fastest-growing region in the country. Yeah, summer temperatures in the I.E. will occasionally reach 110 degrees, but only in the most extreme heat waves does it get anywhere near 120 – and then only in the waiting room of the San Bernardino DMV.
And if anyone knows of a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment for $750 in Riverside, I’d like to know about it. In 2003, when the L.A. Times transferred me from Glendale to a rabbit-infested field office in Ontario, $750 got me a 10-by-10 unfurnished room across the hall from an alcoholic wife-beater who screamed in his sleep, upstairs from a pill-popping landlady who couldn’t stop talking about her problem with anal leakage.
But in all honesty, I can’t blame the grad student writer for being so wildly off base. Almost no one really knows the Inland Empire any more. The region has grown so fast in recent years that even those who live in it have had a hard time keeping up. I’ve lived in Southern California all my life, but until moving here the only thing I knew about the I.E. was you passed it on the way out to Vegas. I wasn’t alone.
When the disastrous wildfires of October 2003 broke out, San Bernardino mountain residents waited around their TVs for evacuation news and kept waiting until flames finally drove them from their homes. The L.A.-based news stations wouldn’t notice the fires until they crossed the county line.
But a lot has changed in the Empire since Joan Didion famously described it in 1966 -- the last year anything famous was written about the I.E. -- as a place where it was “easy to Dial-A-Devotion but hard to buy a book.” The cow pastures and lemon groves are all but gone, paved over by Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and the 40-year mortgage. Bed, Bath & Beyond has moved into the Back O’ Beyond. You can still Dial-A-Devotion, but at least now you can sip a Frappuccino while waiting on hold.
Not that anyone west of the 57 Freeway has noticed. For most Angelinos, that vast region of 9-something area codes is a mirage: You see it, far off in the desert, but for all practical purposes it just isn’t there. The occasional lack of disaster response aside, this disconnect between the reputed and real Inland Empires wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for the fact that Angelinos are moving here as if homes were free. Homes here aren’t free, but they do average about $175,000 less than comparable properties in L.A., and that’s enough to draw 23 of every 1,000 L.A. residents to Riverside annually, according to the U.S. Census.
As someone who made the migration three years ago, I can always spot recent L.A. newcomers to the neighborhood. They’re the ones standing on their front lawns shaking their fists at the sky, as if some cruel cosmic joke has been played on them.
It’s with that image in mind that I present my own brief set of FAQs for Angelinos considering moving to the Inland Empire:
Question: OK, really, where is Riverside?
Answer: Five minutes to five hours from anywhere, depending on the time of day. If you’ve just moved here, the first thing you should do is make www.traffic411.com your home page.
Q: What’s the weather really like in the Inland Empire?
A: A bit hotter than Burbank in the summer, a bit colder than Santa Monica in winter. Spring and autumn exist only on the Oxygen Channel. But it’s not the heat you need to worry about out here. It’s the total absence of shade. Inland residents live in denial of weather. Indoor parking is nonexistent. Chairs and tables in open-air food courts are almost uniformly made of dark, heat-absorbent metal. Bus benches, also of dark metal, provide no shelter from the elements whatsoever. Misters are rare. The only public escape from the heat is in the few indoor malls, and even there the temperature is set just high enough to keep patrons constantly on the verge of ordering a Frappuccino.
Q: Five minutes to five hours from anywhere – Does that mean that traffic is bad in the I.E.?
A: If you’re presently living near the 405/10 interchange, you’ll feel right at home. For the rest of you, a good rule of thumb is to never drive anywhere that wouldn’t put you up for the night.
Q: But with Inland homes averaging about $175,000 less than L.A. homes, isn’t life in the I.E. still a bargain?
A: Yes, but you get what you pay for. Along with midnight traffic jams and sunburns in November, a major drawback to life in the Empire is that we have different standards of neighborliness than, say, on the Westside. In West L.A., with homes stacked one on top of the other, residents are mindful of noise and animal ordinances; pets, if any, tend to be of the little yappy variety. In Riverside, new homeowners take one look at their big backyards and immediately buy two massive war hounds, which promptly mate. In my neighborhood, every home contains at least four big yard dogs -- all of who begin barking at first light and keep on barking until canine references creep into every doggone thing you do.
Also, DIY home improvement is big out here. What’s the point in buying a $450,000 home if you can’t use the money you’ve saved to make it a $600,000 home? With every home in some state of remodel and most heavy equipment rented by the day, imagine trying to watch “Lost” with three backhoes going next door.
Q: So what you’re saying is, “Think twice before moving to the Inland Empire”?
A: Yes, but maybe only twice. The truth is, after a year or so of feeling homesick for my native L.A., I’ve grown to love it out here – and if I can, so can you. Once you’ve secured the two prerequisites for I.E. living – central air and a good home entertainment system – you may find that you’ll never look back at Los Angeles. Think of it this way: How great can a city be when the nicest thing you can say about it is you wish you could still afford to live there?
But I think this is a perfect description of most of the Inland Empire!
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