Ideas of Cities

Duncan is right that Orange County isn't the uber-wealthy playground that the eponymous TV show portrays it as. What most people think of when they picture the county is Newport Beach, an enormously affluent community by the beach. They might also imagine Laguna Beach, where Dncan lived, and Laguna Hills. What they're not imagining is Buena Park or Fountain Valley, blue collar areas experiencing major immigrant influxes. Neither are they giving much thought to Westminster (almost entirely Vietnamese) or Santa Ana, where the residents speak only Spanish.

A similarly annoying phenomenon is at work in LA, where the word conjures up a specific stretch of Sunset Blvd. to most everyone. That the city possesses massive areas where immigrants pack themselves into little-regulated, little-noticed apartment buildings, has giant areas with a semi-suburban flavor seems unknown. Having dinner in the Ethiopian district and dessert in the Jewish area strikes people as the sort of thing you can only do in New York, despite the fact that the two, in LA, are mere miles from each other. It's a pity.