This Land Ain’t Your Land
My favorite thing to do when driving through the vast wasteland that connects San Francisco and Los Angeles, the wasteland of my birth which I escaped as soon as humanly possible and only return to under duress, is listen to conservative talk radio. It renders me indignant, but the indignance is a comfort; it reminds me of being driven to and from school everyday by my grandfather, who would crank the Rush (Limbaugh, natch) in his extended bed pickup truck and hold me captive to a false reality in which invariably brown “thugs” were out to violently attack my nonexistent white wife and the Government was out to over-tax me into oblivion.
I don’t know why, exactly, I now have warm feelings for the myriad mornings and afternoons I spent being forced into listening to lies I rejected en route to a place I resented, a school which was impossible to walk to and equally impossible to evade. I could have cut class and thus avoided the cabal of Mean Girls who accused me, an obvious witch, of murdering my dead sister, but my only option were I to do so would be to sit in a field and look at my watch, waiting for my grandfather to return. California — well, my California, anyhow, landlocked and weed-riddled — was a prison. As we drove through it, Anthony declared the landscape beautiful; sure, he would, as he was never made to live in it. Living in isolation was my predecessors’ choice, not mine, and I resented them accordingly.
Actually, wait — I know why I now have fond memories for something which pained me at the time. It’s as simple as it is heartbreaking: it’s because it reminds me of an era in which my grandfather had agency. He can no longer drive the rural roads of my upbringing, barren as they are, because he lacks peripheral vision and thus is inclined to hit things. It pains me to see him, a man I once looked up to as an immutable force of strength and charm who made friends and strangers alike deferent and docile, become decrepit and quiet and reliant on insulin injections. My grandmother lived, and still lives, to neg him; when I was young and he was strong, these negs were a mutual delight, a wink, a bit of communal fun that turned me into the bitch you see before you today. Today, however, the fun is gone — I derive no delight from listening to her tell me, within his earshot, how hard it is to put up with what he’s become.
Despite his propensity for listening to conservative talk radio he wasn’t, he isn’t, a bad man, necessarily, just one of a handful of recipients of the American Dream, descended from immigrants who were hashtag blessed enough to escape a holocaust and be rewarded with a, uh, car dealership in the New World, where he learned his trade and exercised it until decorum dictated it was time to retire. His father decided to open said car dealership in Hollister, California — he was also given the option to do so in Palo Alto, a patch of land which was equally fallow at the time of said option, but declined. Had he done so, I would be a completely different person, as Palo Alto is now one of the most expensive cities in the country in which to live. Realistically, had he done so, I would not exist.
Anyway, yes, conservative talk radio. On it, the other day, there was much ado about a rash of smash and grab robberies that have recently taken place in large retail stores in rich areas (Walnut Creek, San Francisco’s Union Square, etc.). While, under normal circumstances, my state’s governor is maligned by Central Californians for being one of the conspirators of the “Congress Created Dust Bowl,” accused of hoarding water (said governor is, in my eyes, little more than a sentient haircut who stumbled into becoming the leader of the fourth largest economy in the world — while this is beside the point, it is nice, I suppose, to have something political to agree with my born and bred Californian Republican family members), his jurisdiction can be tolerated, celebrated, when politically convenient.
Even HE agreed there was no place in our state for the wanton theft of Louis Vuitton handbags; a soundbite in which he declared “I have no sympathy, no empathy whatsoever for people smashing and grabbing, stealing people’s items, creating havoc and terror on our streets. None. Period” was played multiple times during Fox News-branded updates. California itself is stolen land, but land, I suppose, is less tangible than branded handbags. The average Californian, myself included, will never own a piece of the state in which they were pushed or cut out of, but can still own status symbols.
I listened to this en route to Sea Ranch, California, a planned community three hours north of San Francisco I was allowed to briefly visit, as a friend of a friend had rented a vacation home there she was unable to utilize but couldn’t get a refund on. Sea Ranch comprises ten miles of land I had, previously to last week, never known existed, but there’s plenty of municipalities in my state I am unaware of, as said state is egregiously, unnecessarily, vast. As I drove up the 1, slowly snaking through a twisting two-lane pseudo-highway, I lamented California’s size. “This is fucking ridiculous,” I muttered. “We’re basically in Oregon.” In Oregon, however, Sea Ranch, much like me in Palo Alto, would not exist. In Oregon — in anywhere else in the country, really — you can be poor and live near the ocean. In California, the poors are pushed inland.
Sea Ranch, I quickly discovered, was not intended for me or my kind, that being Californians or anyone else who cannot afford a plot of stolen Earth. While it was designed as an “intentional community” in which human beings could commune with nature while leaving the smallest footprint possible, in reality it is a place where the rich pretend as though they have transcended consumerism by building charmless, unpainted wooden homes with sloping roofs holding plastic skylights from which they can see stars they believe they appreciate more than city dwellers.
Sea Ranch land owners revel in being up their own ass about “coexisting” with the land they have spent millions to develop, which is noble in theory but impossible in practice unless you are the original “owner” of said stolen land. Their homes are drab, yes, but impossible to ignore, boxy pieces of shit that, in any other context, would (rightfully) be (derisively) described as condos. I know little to nothing about architecture, which is by design. This, much like money management, is not taught in public school. I recently had a conversation with my friend Kelley wherein she described her grad school dissertation, which centered upon political architecture, specifically the architecture of consulates, and whether they’re designed to embrace or repel the common man. According to her research, American consulate buildings post-WWII were designed to be emblematic of our might, large and foreboding, hostile to outsiders. This, to me, makes sense — while it’s unwelcoming, at least it’s honest. It’s the same reason why I begrudgingly accept an outward misogynist more so than I do a faux male feminist. To me, it’s infinitely more vile to pretend as though you are inclusive, as if you “coexist,” when you are, in reality, the opposite.
Ownership of land in Sea Ranch includes ownership of the “commons,” large swaths of undeveloped sand that connect each piece of property but are off limits to the public. Per their website, “since The Sea Ranch is a private community, all roads, most facilities and most trails are private for use only by owners and guests.”
At its genesis, the founders of Sea Ranch attempted not only to privatize the land which faced the ocean but the coast itself, which generated a protracted battle with the state that ultimately resulted in them being forced to concede that the coast could be transversed by the public, albeit in limited form. The public trail that came about resembles a self-propelled amusement park ride wherein poors can hug a small track of dirt along the rocky, impossible-to-descend-to coast and look but not enter the land to their left, which is riddled with “NO TRESPASSING” signs screwed to pieces of driftwood. While this trail is technically public, you cannot park along the numerous streets of Sea Ranch without a permit. As said land is hours away from civilization, this makes it untraversable in practice to the uninvited.
The ultimate act of manifest destiny is an attempt to own what lies beyond the westmost coast; the sea itself, unownable, a place which logic and decency would imply belongs to everyone. Somehow, the residents of Sea Ranch have done it, and under the auspices of “respecting” the land which surrounds it.
Demographically, Sea Ranch is 93.5% white, which makes the town feel as though you are inhabiting the set of a Jordan Peele movie. During the day, its residents smiled and waved at me while passing by as if we both shared a secret. At night, there was vacuous silence and endless dark (per the community’s rules, “there are no streetlights, sidewalks, mailboxes or flower gardens,” nor “brightly colored amenities to distract attention from nature”). I found their “community-based stewardship of the natural environment” perverse, sinister. I thought one must be a sociopath to enjoy it. I did not. I refuse to believe I am the problem.