Spiked Belts and Girls Who Say "Hella"
By Michael Patrick Boland

First there was me – born to a humble couple from Buffalo residing on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1978.

Fortunately for my reputation, they kept me in a dresser for two weeks and then moved me to Brooklyn, where I was afforded a crib and some reputable style. We’ve bounced here and there, across the Atlantic, and even to the watered-green socialite haven just north of NYC, Westchester, but the concrete and steel of the five boroughs has defined my life and given me a place to truly call home in the end.

Then, one day, about three months after my graduation from college, I decided to move to Oakland, California, and everything went ape-shit.

Picture the media-born images you grew up with as a child of a sunny San Francisco skyline, with the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz in the distance. You can almost feel the warm California sun beating against your face as you rollerblade through the Marina with the rest of the yuppy-fools who just had their first gourmet coffee and can’t wait to get to yoga.

Unfortunately, at some point in the early 1990’s, S.F. changed from a quiet coastal city home to social deviants, retired and partied-out hippies, Asian-Americans, and the largest homosexual population in the country. Now, it was a place for every dipshit with a bachelor’s degree to spend some time blowing coke and pretending to make a difference with their cool new Internet site.

Now, call me what you will, but I showed up ten years later and was forced to carry the burden of being a dipshit with a bachelor’s degree smoking dope and slinging snowboards to the aforementioned demographic. Only now, they all had severance packages and more free time to listen to themselves talk.

I managed to at least find a decent place to hang my hat across the Bay, in a suburb of Oakland, called Alameda. Although I have many fond memories of the small piece of Americana nestled comfortably between the Bay Bridge and Oakland Coliseum, it was from this helm that I was able to witness every last detail of the Californian lifestyle as I’m sure to know it for many years.

It is such a vast and deeply shuttering catalogue of knowledge, however, so I’d rather stick to a couple images that remain vivid.

I always thought that the A-frame undershirt and black jeans thing was specific to a small number of L.A. born anarchist gangs, but found soon that California had traded in the Beach Boys, for the horrible bastard child of Blink 182 and some party-girl from Santa Barbara. Perhaps, this image is a little hard to grasp at first, but allow me to further confuse and disgust you.

These days, the Bay Area, (minus a few true thinkers and rebels who reside in certain parts of the East Bay), is populated by a movement of 18-25 year old misanthropic punks wearing spiked belts. These kids have the worst taste in music and take as little from society and their surrounding natural resources as humanly possible. It’s as if the same thriving motivation that urges people to write personal checks at Arby’s, instead of their neighborhood grocer in places like Utah, has transcended towards another form of American melancholy.

However, the young life-haters I speak of from the Sunshine State don’t waste their money on solidified beef product, but rather on horrible music and good weed. If you’ve never been to a punk show or tried to socialize with a young crowd in California, don’t, you’ll only end up with shot ear drums and an empty feeling the next day when you wake up.

Then, through all the madness and months of reverse xenophobia, I met a great kid and his two female friends that were born and raised in the area. John was a bit overweight, but his dad was a magician and liked to smoke dope, go to baseball games with his son, and you could see how that relationship had turned my friend into a fine young man. Raven and Denise were a couple of firecrackers who like hamburgers and rolling blunts. Both were really sexy in their own right, and had no problem tearing me apart when ever I’d start on my insensitive rants about their home, much like the one you’re reading now.

We shared the same taste in music, from Led Zeppelin to Hi-Tech and Kweli, and all of us appreciated the abundance of fine Mexican fare easily accessible from their apartment in the Mission district. After a while, I didn’t even start to notice when they’d say something was "Hella" cool.

So, give me public transportation that works and yellow taxicabs that are too expensive. Give me the same yuppies I hated in San Francisco, and have them frequent some bullshit bar on the Upper East with the Allman Brothers Band bouncing off their blue Brooks Brother’s shirts and no-stain chinos. Give me a breakdancing session at Union Square and a toothless fool singing a song he doesn’t know the words to on a subway train.

Even though I found a couple pieces of California that I'll be able to hold on to, you can probably get a good burrito downtown, so take my advice and don't leave the City.