The founder of this website lives in California.
California is a sh!th*le.
The founder of this website lives in California.
My Dad’s family were “Forty-Niners” and “Pioneers.” Most Californians now wouldn’t know what that meant or would just call them “white racists and oppressors.” His first California ancestors were Swiss settled in Sacramento. Then married with Irish, then Swiss-Italians. They were fruit farmers, dairy farmers and winegrowers. They had one of the first wineries in Napa Valley back in the 1800s, although they were wiped out by Prohibition. I spent much of my childhood there, and then going to college and graduate school there, and then went back pretty much on a yearly basis to visit family.
So I know (Northern) California pretty well. I have watched it change from the Sixties until now. I have watched cow pastures become urban sprawl and one of my family’s farms near Sacramento turn into a shopping center. I know exactly where the famous old Windows “Bliss” picture was taken (a cow pasture near the old Stornetta’s Dairy next to Route 121, on the boundary between Napa and Sonoma counties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_(image)), driven past there many times on the way to the City, and know it’s been plowed up and now it’s vineyards. My son still lives in that area. We still have family property there and once upon a time we were planning to retire there.
No more.
I stand by my statement. The founder of the website probably would agree. I’ve watched the Mexican gangs come into the North Bay, as well as all the Dot-commers and Tech Billionaires and multi-national corporations take over Napa and Sonoma. I have watched Nancy Pelosi’s helicopter fly over my aunt’s property to get to her nearby estate. What were quiet and wonderful farming communities now have become exclusive enclaves of the rich and famous. The local people can’t afford to live there any more. You can’t even buy a shack in Napa Valley for less than a million dollars, and yet in the Bay Area there are gangs and crazies everywhere.
It’s a real tragedy. Maybe it’ll change. But I doubt it.