Word: california
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...calls an "astronomical escalation of people" has been unaccustomed congestion, a 28% inflation of real estate values in just 18 months and a perceptibly upscale -- Washingtonians would say ostentatious -- change in the appearance and style of some of Seattle's suburbs. With that has come a tendency to tar California with guilt by association -- for damage to the environment, for fast-talking wheeling and dealing, and for the drug trafficking among offshoots of Los Angeles gangs in the blue-collar districts of Tacoma. California has also become a political buzz word. "Any candidate can get a rise...
Antigrowth instincts have stiffened, especially around Seattle, where the citizenry has been increasingly inclined to put environmental conservatism first. Last May, for example, voters overwhelmingly approved new restrictions limiting the height of future downtown skyscrapers to 450 ft. "The California rush is actually useful in crystallizing the debate over our future," says Lois Schwennesen, King County's planning and development manager. "It's helping us face some hard choices, about sewage, transit, road construction and the rest, and it's helping us understand that you can't have...
...Northwesterners are so charitable. Many have refined the art of California bashing, good humored and otherwise. One auto dealer makes it a point to steer his auto-financing business to local rather than California lenders. The Puget Sound National Bank boasts in TV commercials of being the last locally owned bank in the state. TV anchors play to the crowd by deriding Californians for building show-off "French chateaus." And radio station KEZX has been airing a new local folk song, Don't Come to Seattle...
Emmett Watson, a curmudgeonly columnist for the Seattle Times, has conducted an anti-California crusade for years. MOUNT THE RAMPARTS! FIGHT CALIFORNICATION! exhorts the headline of a recent Watson tirade. The columnist is the founder of Lesser Seattle, an antibooster organization that seeks to "keep the bastards out" by exaggerating the city's negative characteristics, such as its notorious rainfall. The organization's slogan: "Have a Nice Day -- Somewhere Else!" Watson insists that his crusade is tongue in cheek, but many newly arrived Californians take less satirical slurs to heart. "Our very first day the Welcome Wagon lady called...
...subtle cold shoulder. In their case it has been directed at their North Californian "alternative life-style" preferences such as Zen meditation and organic gardening. "Oh, you guys are so granola!" one staid neighbor told them early on. As a result, they have become gun-shy about admitting their California origins and tend to socialize mostly with other Californians. "The irony is that now I've become antigrowth myself!" Margot Grim says, laughing. "Here I am, a Californian, wishing that other Californians would stay away...