A shorter posting this time.  I just thought it might be a reminder about some of the cool things you run across when you are driving around in Southern California. Here it really is a car culture and so, many things are meant to be seen from the car. It could be a sign on a building, neon at night or the obvious billboards that line the highways and even the side streets we use all the time…in our cars.

That is the obvious stuff. Other times you are lucky to get a special little glimpse of something you don’t normally get to see or that very few people get to see on a regular basis. When this happens to me, now a days, I try to snap off a couple photos to share it with the folks at InknBurn and with you.

So, yesterday, I was driving in Stanton (you know….where the 22 and Beach Boulevard meet in the THICK, and I mean THICK of the real orange county. Not the TV show part) and came across this hauler full of what some call “Low Riders” and others call “Car Club Enthusiast’s Collector Cars”. It was just sitting in the middle of the street in a light industrial neighborhood and they were unloading these gems. They even had their local club badges proudly chromed in the back windows. And I thought, Wow, those are SWEET. I mean, I don’t normally get to see those cruising down the street and when I do, they still don’t have those trophy winning paint jobs and shines.

Things like this are part of the artistic community which makes Southern Cal such a potent brew of feasts for the senses. Sure, there all all kinds of things that make us question why we live where we live but, frequently it is the quick glimpses or sounds or tastes that make us remember that we are lucky.

America really is Diverse

I recently went to Kansas. I have family from back there and am going to go hunt there soon. Let me tell you right now in case you were wondering, California and Kansas are very different. VERY. Yet, I also found Kansas totally beautiful and the people were really friendly. It was just different. I mean besides the no ocean part. There actually is a lot of water there. But there are no natural lakes or rivers in Kansas. All man-made. And oddly of those there are a ton. they spot the fields and give the for-ever view a kind of idyllic perspective.

Also, the town I was in had 2,000 people and many towns we went through had much less than 1,000. We ate breakfast in a town called Gas and we discovered that when you tell people that you are from Los Angeles California they stop eating and everything is still for a second. The first question is inevitable: “What are YOU doin’ way out HERE???” People don’t understand why someone who has “all California has to offer” would spend time coming to their neck of the woods. But, let me tell ya, once we told ‘em, they TOTALLY got it and were enthusiastic because that was a BRIDGE we had. Something in common. Almost something they could BRAG about to someone from Los Angeles.

Kansas has a great deal to offer that is good. I know we see headlines making it seem scary and almost fanatical at times. But, I am sure they too see headlines that make California look that way too. In fact I am positive cause, it looks that way to me much of the time!

Kansas is a place where high school kids still work as bus boys in restaurants, where towns have a “Square” in the middle with stores around it and the county seat (Local Government Building) along one side, where the high school football stadium is JAM PACKED on a Friday night and where people refer to the shop someone is looking for as “Leonard’s” as opposed to the real name of the shop. AND sure enough, Leonard is in there when you get to the West Side Bait Shop.

America is always surprising me. Here in LA you meet a lot of folks from elsewhere all trying to be “LA TYPES” so it’s hard to really get a feel for the folks from around the country unless you go AROUND THE COUNTRY! And when you do you realize why the rest of the world used to really like America so much. Our MASSIVE country is so diverse and has such unique cultural and geographical identities and yet, there is a spirit in almost everyone that is so American. Pretty cool.