NorCal SoCal

By no means are there only two cultures butting heads at UCLA, but two of the many stand out to me in particular: NorCal kids, and SoCal kids.  I myself am from Northern California, which, if you haven't heard about it, is about 310miles up a drag of the road called I-5.  This drag of a road represents the in-betweeners that often identify with either the north or the south when you first meet them.  What puts them into the in-betweener category is when you say "No way! Where?" and you get something like "Forty-eight minutes south- east of Salinas."  The ones in class that boast about their roots are often those from the true north, like the San Francisco Bay Area, or those from the true south, around Newport Beach or even UCLA.  

"Hella."  Hella  is the flashing give-away a NorCar student can accidentally blurt out.  I say "accidentally" because once it has been said at UCLA, it doesn't matter what the conversation was about before, it is now about repeating the word until the Northern Californian feels shamed into moving and starts planning for his or her new life in Southern California.

"Who Runs The Golden State?" Anna Almendrala, a reporter for the Huffington Post asks provacativly.  Obviously it isn't any of the people from central California...or is it?  Isn't that where the food is grown and harvested, the electronics companies are built out of that support the over-all Californian economy?  Even knowing this, if asked, a northern or a southern Californian would always go straight to a list of rappers or stars based out of the two cultures to enforce that their end reigns.

Coffee is another, but subtler, distinguisher between the cultures of the south and the north.  When I got down to UCLA, I hastily googled where to get my go-to Peets's Carmel Freddo on campus only to read that the campus serves a foreign brand: Coffee Bean.

I am slowly finding roots down here, but.....

"The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Official Store." The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Official Store. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. 

Almendrala, Anna. "Northern California Vs. Southern California: Who Runs The Golden State?." Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/northern-california-vs-southern-california_n_995414.html>.

http://s2.thisnext.com/media/230x230/I-Hella-Heart-SF-Customized-T_0F180620.jpg

"Coffee | Peet's Coffee." Peet's Coffee & Tea. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.peets.com/coffee.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6d03gbmAzc