6 days, 3 cultures

In the last week, I've bounced around quite a bit and noticed how disparate (GRE word, check!) the cultures can be in regions that are geographically so close.

Point 1: Fairfield, CA
Inhabited by Budweiser-drinking, fast-food chain-frequenting, V8-driving, obese (I guess that doesn't need any explaining) Caucasians. Colloquially known as Middle America.

Point 2: South Lake Tahoe, CA
Inhabited is a bit of strong term here because the population in this ski town is very transient, so we'll say it's frequented by easy-going, community college-attending, drug-abusing, "gnarly"-using, predominantly Caucasian twenty-somethings who live for winter sports. Also known as 'ski bums'.

Point 3: San Francisco, CA
Yuppies. Hippies. Yippies. You name it, SF has it. For those who don't know, yuppies are young urban professionals, so twenty-something college graduates making a career and living the fast-paced, high-stress, Starbucks-drinking, bluetooth headset-donning, (and recently) iPhone-toting life only a truly metropolis can provide. The hippies (evolved from original hipsters of SF), would be the vegetarian, Whole Foods-shopping, fixie bike-riding, yoga-teaching twenty-somethings living the green life (pun intended). Of course, most people fall in between both those characterizations, hence the term yippies.

Despite my intention to make an impartial comment on three different cultures, subjectivity crept in (and not subtly, at that), and its obvious which one I relate most to. I'm sure my opinions weren't the least bit influenced by Yippie origins in Berkeley's Free Speech Movement and the fact that San Francisco will most likely be my next city of residence.

But the broad cultural spectrum within a 4-hour driving distance still astonishes me. Is this specific to California- is it because we have multiple terrains in a small area and each terrain breeds a different culture- or is this a national phenomena?