Life in the Orange Curtain
Atrios posted a discussion about The O.C. last night. No, not the stupid Fox teen drama, but the county, which happens to be my place of residence. It turns out that the median home price in O.C. is $555,000. Atrios writes:
The O.C. - home to B1 Bob Dornan, the Nixon Library, John Wayne Airport, Kevin Drum, and Fox Teen Dramas - isn't quite what people think it is. I began my blogging career during my mercifully brief tenure there. I lived in Laguna Beach for most of that time, an odd oasis in an odd place. But, despite its history and reputation, the O.C. is not the uniformly rich white county one might think. Large chunks of it are home to immigrant and minority communities (primarily Vietnamese and Hispanic). Quite clearly large chunks of the population are not in the "$550,000 house-buying crowd."
O.C. - Not what you think!
Laguna Beach - property rich/income poor!
Housing bubble? shhhh!!
Prop. 13 - wack!
He's right. Orange County, CA, birthplace and home of conservatives like Richard Nixon, Lou Sheldon, and the John Birch Society, has a real estate market who's bubble is about to burst. Prices for single family homes have risen 100% in most areas within the past seven years. Orange County is not the fiction you see on Fox's The O.C. Yes, there are people in Newport Beach who have homes like that and own three Jaguars and three Hummers each, but the real O.C. is much more normal.
Radical anarchist Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine grew up in my city of Irvine. We've got the liberal-tarian weekly paper The OC Weekly as well as Indie 103 FM. The old right-wing base is not as strong as it used to be, but Republicans still outnumber Democrats in this county 3 to 2. The OC Weekly ranks the Christian televangelist Trinity Broadcasting Network's headquarters and the Richard Nixon Library as the scariest places in O.C.
Hey AGIT, how's it goin? I suspect that OC is similar (though uniquely SOCAL) to other places in that juxtaposition of VERY RICH and lower/mid working class. I read that the demon clear channel lost its bid to take over the indie channel there! Hooray for snarking the MACHINE! OK, now that I posted, I gotta scroll doooowwwnnn and read some more of your goood blog!
Joe
Posted by: Joe | March 30, 2005 at 09:47 AM
Say, agitprop,
The professor and I are seriously considering a move to your neck of the woods--specifically Irvine--more specifically UCI. Any comments or opinions you have of the area, the university, etc. would be greatly welcome!
Posted by: red rabbit | March 31, 2005 at 11:23 AM
Say, agitprop,
The professor and I are seriously considering a move to your neck of the woods--specifically Irvine--more specifically UCI. Any comments or opinions you have of the area, the university, etc. would be greatly welcome!
Posted by: red rabbit | March 31, 2005 at 11:24 AM
What's with Bob Marley and OC?
Posted by: luminous beauty | April 01, 2005 at 11:24 AM