Inland Empress

The adventurous herbivore

very now and then I must devote a post to the endlessly beige span of desert known as the Inland Empire, since this is nominally what my blog's about, and it helps in the occasional non-porn Google search.

I live in a part of the world known for its cancerous growth -- the fastest in North America, if the newspapers are to be believed. More articulate and smarter people (who generally don't live here, almost by definition) can tell you all about what problems that generates. I care about all of them, but not right now.

Right now, I'm concerned that this population boom means my corner of the world now has the lowest per capita rate of vegetarian restaurants in all of herbivorous California. This is shocking.

Even though I've joined the legions of leaf eaters, I'd like to have the occasional culinary adventure just like other civilized people who throw caution and lower dress sizes to the wind. Imagine my delight upon hearing there is a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in my town. With some pluck and help from a site called the Happy Cow, I found Veggie Way (formerly Panda Wok) less than 3 miles from my humble, meat-free abode.

Last night, we ventured there, keeping our expectations low, which turned out to be wise. First, we had to find the strip mall, nearly indistinguishable from all the other fading, litter-strewn wrecks with gaping vacancies and cracked blacktop. We found it wedged between the Liquorama and a nail spa. Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know?

The restaurant was your typical greasy spoon, with a few creaky tables, dim lighting and crimson Japanese lanterns. A mirrored wall kept the baby busy most of the evening, and a TV console broadcast Chinese religious programming with English subtitles: "Find the person who knows God and let him enlighten you!"

Sure. Right after I finish my egg rolls.

We seemed to be the only people over 30 there, which meant we were also the only ones whose every last inch of flesh hadn't been given over to tattoos and piercings. It never fails to amaze me how many holes the human body can sport without leaking.

We shared chicken-less chow mein noodles and curried vegetables. I didn't die. Minitaur ate his customary brown rice and steamed tofu. You read that correctly. This is what my son has eaten in every Asian-themed restaurant he's ever been in, though sometimes it's soba noodles instead of rice. Poor kid. I've pretty much ruined him, haven't I?

As we ate, others filtered in who didn't seem as threatening: two gay college kids, a middle-aged European couple, and a few others of non-Anglo ethnicity. You would never have noticed any of them if we didn't live in Vacuous Fatso Land. Most people seemed in a good mood, especially the gay couple, who were all giddy with young love.

It took a while for the two women behind the counter to warm to us. We were clearly the interlopers here, us middle-class family types wearing jeans and sweaters and without any visible bodily alterations.

It isn't exactly our piece of Santa Monica or Laguna Beach, but it's not terrible, which is about what you expect in our part of the world. Sad, I know, but until someone offers one of us a job in a less carniverous part of the country, this is what we get. 

The nightmare on Main Street

Decay reared its pockmarked face everywhere I looked.

The neon sign for a beauty parlor crumbled from rust, its lights broken. An old billboard had faded, the previous paint job poking through the washed-out letters. A shoe repair shop, a citrus packing plant, a humble eatery – markers left behind by some lost civilization, perhaps, or gaudy ghosts from a more glittery era.

Except it was all fake. Every last broken bulb, every peeling paint chip.

A movie set, right? Or Disney’s “Main Street USA” gets the reality TV treatment?

Nope, all this faux retro glory belongs to a new shopping mall in Rancho Cucamonga. Victoria Gardens covers some 147 acres and boasts 1.3 million square feet of retail space. And that’s just Phase I.

But giving an outdoor mall a distressed look is just window dressing. The real horror was sticking roads through the middle of it, just like a real downtown, where you take your life into your hands crossing from Pottery Barn to Williams-Sonoma.

But Pasadena, this ain’t.

Unsafe at every speed

Living in the L.A. metro area means making peace with the freeways that criss-cross the landscape like fine webbing, something I've had difficulty doing. In our case, it's the 210, which connects San Bernardino to Pasadena, but also links other freeways that'll get you to Las Vegas or Phoenix.

A busy stretch of road, in other words.

Ah, there's nothing like rolling out of bed in the morning and landing on an entrance ramp. It's right at the end of our subdivision. Good for my husband, who commutes. Bad for me: I race walk. So a morning stroll puts me square in the middle of frantic, light-jumping commuters and pits me against SUVs and semis with only puny 2-lb. weights to defend myself.

Dang, but my manufacturer forgot to include side-impact air bags or a steel frame. Too late to upgrade my model now; I think I've depreciated some in 41 years.

Our house is about 60 yards from the sound wall that supposedly blocks the noise, but only if you're on the ground floor or have double-paned windows. Most nights I can manage to drift off as traffic eases up close to midnight, but then it zooms into full gear just before dawn.

It's worse in Minitaur's room and I sometimes wonder if it contributes to him waking up 5, 6, 7 times a night and needing to be tucked in again (and again).

Of course we were warned when we bought the house that the road would be coming through. The construction was pretty thrilling, I must admit, as they dug under the main road to create the overpass and ramps, and then we witnessed the 210's slow birthing pains as oversized machinery dug, leveled and paved it into existence.

Upland even celebrated with a street fair a few days before the ribbon-cutting. How many times in your life do you get to walk on a freeway? I mean, without having broken down, of course.

We strolled a mile up and back and then hiked up the exit ramp to our house, pausing to admire a display of antique cars and re-fuel our bellies at a food booth. The outing inspired me to write a short story about gasoline prices skyrocketing to the point where people have to abandon their cars and ride bikes or walk everywhere, and all of a sudden we start acting nicer too. It never sold.

The freeway debut provided one of the few fond memories I have of a California superhighway. Otherwise, my hate affair with the automobile remains furiously stoked. If there's a devil, he drives a car, a big-gas guzzling honker.

He smirks when we waste hours each day in traffic. He delights at how much money is sent to prop up Saudi feudalism. He smiles upon scofflaws who add to the coarsening of our society by ignoring traffic laws and running lights. He lets out a lusty "mwa-ha-ha" at those who grow obese in part because they have no opportunity to walk off a few pounds now that our communities are built for the convenience of drivers instead of pedestrians.

I hate driving. I hate losing my husband an extra two hours a day. I hate worrying each time I wave goodbye from the top of our driveway that the next time I see him, he'll have been pulled one piece at a time from the twisted wreckage of his aging, diminutive sports car. When he's late, I don't want the phone to ring. I'm afraid it'll be the county coroner or CHP.

And then I lie awake at night, waiting for the nearby roar of souped-up engines and lousy mufflers to subside just enough for me to fade into a troubled sleep.

So safe, it's a crime

Oh me, oh my. I live in a safe neighborhood. What to do?

My mailbox is flooded with campaign brochures promising more police on every street, all kinds of victims’ rights and to put those bad guys away forever. All I have to do is vote for the incumbent, or maybe the challenger, depending on which one’s Republican. We all know Democrats actually like crime, right?

Hooray for me, I already have two police officers living on my tiny cul-de-sac. Serious eye candy, those boys. One’s a motorcycle cop who certainly fills out his uniform. Va-room va-room, if you know what I mean. Raises my property values just looking at him.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, crime. There isn’t any around here. My bland little burg sends out a newsletter every quarter and in it’s a map of the city with crime stats. My area: zilch. Not a single break-in or car theft. Even in the worst parts of the city, for the wretched refuse stuck near railroad tracks and behind strip malls, it’s rare to see even a dozen property crimes a quarter.

No homicides, no rapes, no arsons, no muggings. Even the high school can’t be counted on for the occasional drug bust.

Our mayor, who is running for re-election and therefore feels obligated to put the size of his testicles on display, credits himself for this squeaky clean state. Never mind that stats haven’t changed since before he took office.

I figure the real reason has to do with our roads.

Anyone who’s been to Paris has seen how streets in the oldest parts of town zigzag, meander, cut this way and that, up and down and sideways. I always thought city planners were having some fun with the town drunks.

But no, they wanted to get medieval on invaders, see. If the city walls ever fell, an army had to navigate those crazy alleyways while the locals took to the rooftops and dumped boiling hot tar and fun things like that.

So, apply that to suburbia today and the weird layout of cul-de-sacs and electronic gates that work only half the time, speed bumps and humps and unsynchronized stop lights. What do you get? A landscape only MapQuest could love.

Criminals can’t find us. And even if they did, they probably can’t remember which numbingly beige house they staked out the night before. Was it the one with the oleander hedge or the roses? The ecru stucco or the eggshell? In the dark, who can tell?

When Plosh’s car was stolen out of our driveway a few years ago, the police assured us the thugs probably thought his Acura Integra was hot and followed him home late that night. What a relief! Imagine car thieves smart enough to find us on their own. We’d all be in trouble.

The car was found a few days later, partly stripped and abandoned on another cul-de-sac in the next town. Probably the thieves figured any dead end would do. Well, we got the car back, but bumped up the neighborhood Grand Theft Auto rate 100% for the quarter, which didn’t make the homeowners’ association too happy.

Life got back to normal quickly, real estate prices continued their skyward reach and another election has now rolled around. Which means I need to get scared again about crime. The mayor tells me so, in big, capital letters: PUT MORE COPS ON OUR STREETS.

Then again, who am I to argue?

Va-room, va-room, if you know what I mean.

Time for a quickie or two

Updates, that is. Shame on you.

Told you so: A while ago, I ranted at length about the link between obesity and the suburbs. Guess what? I wasn't making any of it up. The smart folks at the Rand Institute found the same thing, and they didn't even have to move here. The sexy guy over at DadTalk has the full scoop.

Clomid, shlomid: Got my period yesterday. Not pregnant. Not happy.

Dear Andrew: Why Americans are fat

My younger brother often goes to Spain on business, where he’s observed “even the ugly women are hot.” He credits healthy Mediterranean fare and constant walking for their svelte frames. I mused that in the U.S., only New York and San Francisco had that combination – a cafe culture plus walkable streets. Unsurprisingly, we concluded, they had the thinnest and perennially hippest populations.

More recently, my Aussie blogging friend Andrew responded to my post below with questions about fat Americans. I’d no idea we were pegged as such until I spent a year in London in the early ’80s, when obesity was rarer and I was a rockin’ 125 lbs. Today, we are the lard-butt of jokes worldwide, and for good reason.

I’m going to address Andrew’s comments in my usual egotistic, fact-free fashion (for a more objective take, try my husband’s site). Since Andrew asked seriously, I’ll respond in kind, if I can, by taking on the major points he raised:

Google giggles

You know I have too much time on my hands when I start fiddling around with www.googlism.com, which tells you what the Googling world thinks of you. So far, it doesn't think much of Inland Empress. But plug in "Inland Empire" and I come up with

inland empire is a huge growth

Heck, I could've told you that. And it's located where?

On the backside of Southern California, of course (you knew that was coming, didn't you?).

Okay, try again.

inland empire is one of the top areas in our state with deaths from heart disease

Yikes. I keep telling you this place is killing me.

inland empire is an affiliate of the mutual ufo network

That explains a lot.

inland empire is in hybernation

I noticed.

Then there's this:

inland empire is shade intolerant

Considering how overcast it's been lately, this is rather suprising.

But here's the real kicker:

inland empire is where you want to be if you're into angling for adventure

Especially if you're into hybernating, shade-intolerant UFO networks.

In other news, I come up Number One for Google searches for "cars" and "corn oil" thanks to this post. I even rank above scientist types who actually know what they're talking about.

This is because I live in the Inland Empire, and as we all know,

inland empire is light

You heard it here first.

A serious post about taxation. My apologies.

Every now and then I get on a real tear about the dehumanizing nature of all those miles of concrete and asphalt that make up Southern California suburbs.

There's small comfort in the Los Angeles Times agreeing with me. They ran an editorial today that helps to explain how LA's metro area became the standard bearer for Ugly. Bear with me, there's some funky math here, but it boils down like this:

In most rational places in the country, the state levies a sales tax, right? And cities, counties and school districts hit you up for property taxes. California gets it backwards. Sacramento pillages local coffers to stop its budget hemorrhaging, but lets the little guys keep a penny for every dollar spent by shoppers.

The Times put it this way:

This encourages city councils and county boards of supervisors to search for — and entice — auto malls and big-box stores such as Wal-Mart to settle in their jurisdictions, rather than seeking job-generating office projects or much-needed housing. The result is terrible planning, an oversupply of retail projects and increased traffic.

Think about how nuts this is. You could live in an affluent bedroom community of expensive homes (plus our modest one), but few shops or restaurants. A few miles away is a sprawling berg jammed with jumbo retailers and an outlet mall the size of Paraguay. They're rich. Your town is perenially on the verge of closing its fire and police departments and letting the county run things. Okay, that would be my town, but never mind. The next town over has it worse. Their school district is going door to door to raise $900,000 to cover cuts in state funding. The money will go for teachers' salaries.

Teachers. We can't afford teachers.

But we can shop for whatever the hell we want.

Welcome to the great state of California.

We're famous, sort of

To the visitor, the Inland Empire seems as disorganised as it is ugly. -- The Economist.

Check this out. The Economist writes about the crowning glory of California sprawl -- us! And they're as uncharitable as I am about the place, only they have all the facts 'n' stuff.

Inland imperialists now number 3.6m, of whom 660,000 arrived during the 1990s (550,000 of them Latinos). By 2020, there are expected to be 4.8m.

Yes, but there is only one Empress. Somehow they neglected to mention me; a shocking oversight. Off with their heads!

Oh, okay, I really only took exception to this passage:

Californian suburban life has been satirised to death by Hollywood, and it has long been deplored by environmentalists. But the plain fact is that a huge number of people seem to like it.

Um, no. Nobody I've met here likes breathing the country's worst air or navigating the world's worst traffic. Nobody likes the dearth of decent, non-chain restaurants or concert halls or museums or arthouse cinemas or health-food stores or walkable neighborhoods.

True, many of my neighbors don't know they lack such things until I point it out to them. I will politely refrain from mentioning them by name. But they want other things that I want: a quiet, clean place to raise a kid, and a school where s/he might actually learn something. There's a higher chance of that happening out here on my husband's income than in L.A.

I wanted to live someplace funkier. My husband wanted to live someplace closer to his job in downtown L.A. Someday we may get there.

Meantime, the Empress holds court in Edge City.