While eccentricity is ubiquitous, it is easily on rampant display at all times in southern California. One of the causes might be, among others, undoubtedly, the lack of preoccupation with the weather. People in the northeast, and indeed in any part of the country that experiences climatic volatility, are obsessed with the weather. And it's as if this fascination amoebas up a lot of time and mental energy, squelching any penchants for individuality and forcing a kind of draconian earnestness of the spirit which can crack down on whimsy and force a kind of cookie-cutter conventionality. (For instance, most people from Maine or North Dakota.)
Bottom line, since they're not shoveling snow or worrying about what kind of jacket or shoes they need to wear, people in Southern California have a lot more time on their hands in which to be bizarre. You see strange behavior and even stranger sartorial choices, such as on the part of this gentleman in a Starbucks on the west side recently:
Perhaps he was German; the capri pants are normally the European giveaway.
That purse next to him on the floor belonged to I believe his wife, who was accompanying him... which is to say, a woman was voluntarily OK to be seen in public with a man dressed like that.
I also recently encountered these people, walking through a neighborhood full of multi-million dollar houses:
Why the ski-poles? The neighborhood communicates with no high-octane hiking trails... and both of these gentleman look firm enough to walk up or down a paved incline without any extra support. And the backpack? Rations? A first aid kit? Is he afraid he will suddenly be confronted with a need scale Everest while walking through Beverly Hills?
And while often beautiful, the SoCal easy living does not make for a hale and hardy population. People move slowly, confusedly, driftily; there has always seemed to me to be an unusual amount of people with broken arms or on crutches as well; their starved thinness making all them all the more suscebtible to broken bones, the medications they're on the more likely causing them to trip and sustain said injuries... The results of this phenomenon doubtless a prodigious amount of handicapped placards hanging from the rear-view mirrors of the enormous(ly) expensive cars that clog our roads. Nothing makes it easier to be bizarre than being wealthy.
After five years here, aspects of southern California life still remain a mystery to me. But maybe all of its transplants will slowly fall into the fold, drifting through life attired strangely, the filtered, hazy sun glinting off our handicapped placards as we slowly, if happily, lose our edge. Next thing you know you're a Swiss cowherd, wearing argyle knee socks to Starbucks and going for your Sunday constitutional with ski poles, a true Angeleno caricature of eccentricity.
Sincerely,
Dear Crabby
