Orange County

I back from a week in Orange County, California. The hotel I stayed at, the Ayres Country Inn and Suites featured a room that opened on to a French country-style courtyard on one side and a California suburban parking lot on the other. Every ten minutes a plane streaked 100 feet overhead on it’s approach to John Wayne Airport, which lay across the street.

Within the hotel itself, were photos of Newport beach and environs in the 1920s. One telling shot showed the Pacific Coast Highway in 1920. It was four lanes even then packed bumper to bumper with Model T Fords. The title of the shot was “Traffic Jam, Newport Beach, 1920.” That’s a long time for a community to have lived with the worst of the car. And it appears as if no one has learned anything. In the 1930s for example, GM bought up the popular interurban streetcar service called the Redcar, fearing that if public transit caught on it would ruin their market. It was probably the best business decision they ever made. With that one acquisition, car culture was entrenched in southern California and as the archetypical California suburb exported its design across North America, the car followed suit.

It’s good to be home in the rainy embrace of Howe Sound.