Militant Blond People

Solvang in the 50s

Many years ago the theater where I was working opened a new venue in Solvang, CA, "The Danish Capital of America."

I'd been there maybe once or twice in my life. It was off of Highway 101, near Mission Santa Ynez, Flag Is Up Farms, and other Santa Barbara County agricultural and tourist attractions. You turned off at Buellton, home of Pea Soup Anderson's, than which nothing was more quintessentially old time California tourist-trappy.

Solvang, of course, being ethnic and proudly so, beat them all. But wait... This is California, a multi-ethnic paradise, no? Agricultural California, where they raise horses, broccoli, strawberries, grapes, etc. Where field workers are almost all Mexican, and where Mexican American heritage is very prominent.

Or so one would think.

Not in Solvang, no sir. Where Mexicans and Mexican Americans have been almost entirely expunged. Well, the woman who cleans your room at the King Frederik or Royal Copenhagen Inn prolly speaks Spanish only and is brown as a berry (call her "Maria"), but that's OK. You don't hear her speak or see many (any?) of her kind on the streets.

Instead you see many blondes. Many, many blondes. Most of them natural, too. Few seemed to get their glowing yellow locks from bottles, at least not back then. Not in Solvang.

I was in Solvang when the Queen (Margarethe) was slated to arrive for a royal visit. I believe it was the first time a Danish monarch had come to Solvang, and the streets were festive with bunting and flowers. Everyone was in their finest duds. Well, I was working, so my duds weren't by any  means the finest, but somehow I wound up on the royal receiving line anyway, and to my great surprise, Her Majesty and Her Consort (Prince Henrik) -- both young and attractive -- made their way to me and greeted me in perfect English ("How do you do?"). I may have nodded my head, but I did not bow. Many of those waiting to greet the Queen did. Deep bows, deep curtsies, many in native costume with fancy headdresses and knee britches.I think all I said was "Your Majesty" -- and that was that.

The royal couple toured the town, cheered by flag-waving militant blonds lining the streets. They sampled aebleskivers and pickled herring, heard school children sing for them, and met with town and county worthies.

Then they were gone, and I went back to work.

There was a show to put on. Not "Hamlet," too bad. In fact, though I have a vague memory of an actor-friend all in black declaiming over the skull of Poor Yorick, I don't think we ever produced a "Hamlet" in Solvang. Or maybe anywhere at all.

I know we did "Peer Gynt" and some musical -- "Guys and Dolls?". I dunno. Can't say. I know we were up till four in the morning tech-dressing "Peer" and it still didn't work right. The opening was not a total disaster, but it didn't work as well as anyone hoped. Shoulda done "Hamlet."

Anyway, what I remember most about Solvang, apart from evening chill and architectural folly (phony stork nests, anyone?) was all the blond people... everywhere... you couldn't escape them. Some were Viking-ish, others more along the lines of Brunhilda, and some could pass for copies of the then popular Danish, umm, adult movie stars. It just didn't seem like California at all -- and I think that was the point.

Take us out of our ordinary existence and transport us to little corner of Europe where everything was festive and gay (in its earlier meaning) and people were blond and sturdy and sang and danced in ethnic costume before tucking into a smorgasbord.

All without leaving California.

As it happened, I wasn't into blonds much. Nothing against them, but just didn't find them particularly interesting or attractive, either on the screen, on stage, or in life. So I never much cared for Solvang, and wouldn't have anyway for any number of reasons, but the militant blond people clinched the deal for me. To the extent I could, I stayed away after that initial foray, and I think I've only been back once or twice with theater friends in ensuing decades.

This is more the reality of Central Coast California for too many people, then and now

Migrant Mother, 1936, by Dorothea Lang

The photo was taken a little way up the road in Nipomo, where pea picking was under way.

Seeing all the militant blonds facing off against Antifa in Berkeley triggered some of these memories. I never felt that the blonds of Solvang were in any way threatening, but there was -- as I'm sure there still is -- a sense of separation between them and the hordes of brown people surrounding them. Something of a siege mentality, even if it was masked by tourist-welcome. That's kind of what these militant white rightist and fascist blonds up in Berkeley like to portray. "Wypipo Under Siege."

Well, they're not, not really, and that's part of why all this hoo-hah over the rise of the White Right is a bit overblown. Much is made of it, but it's not as much of a Thing as The Narrative would have us believe.

White folks are mostly just fine, and no one is trying to oppress them. Not even all those years they suffered under the Kenyan Socialist Usurper were as oppressive as they want to make it out.

The only point I try to make is that it doesn't take a lot of militants of any stripe to throw things into chaos and potentially take over. It's a risk complacent people need to be aware of. But they largely aren't.

While I'd keep my eye on the rise of the Militant White -- and very blond -- Right, I don't fear it. For all their bluster, they aren't very bright. Of course book smarts isn't the key, is it? It's emotion, determination, and action.

Solvang is an enclave of blondness. Perhaps we'll see the rise of certain other ethnic enclaves as the political situation continues to deteriorate.

Some people are just too frightened of The Other to live in a multi-ethnic community I guess...

San Francisco

Coit Tower Mural, c. 1936

The last time I was in San Francisco, only a year or so ago, to see Asleep At The Wheel at the Herbst, I thought that it would be the last time, for sure. I hadn't been there in quite a while, there being no earthly reason to go any more than I typically go to downtown Sacramento unless on duty. But I'm in San Francisco today and will be spending the night because it turns out that Ray Davies of the Kinks is playing the Fillmore, and well... there's a story.

There's a whole novel, if you want to get into it.

Yes, I was at the Fillmore for the Kinks/Taj Mahal, Sha-na-na concert on one of those dates November 27-30, 1969; it was quite something, and I can almost remember it. Well, you know how the old saying goes, "If you can remember the '60's, you weren't really there." I wonder if I would remember as much as I do (in bits and pieces to be sure) if it weren't for the movies and television programs that from time to time provide documentation of the era.

I came across a box the other day as I was packing stuff up for the move to New Mexico. It was full of surprising stuff: letters I'd written, a hotel brochure from San Francisco, some projects I'd done in college, etc; all from the 1960's, some of it as early as 1966 or possibly even before that. I barely recognized my own handwriting (it was much neater then!), I had no idea exactly when I'd picked up the hotel brochure and stationery but I found a San Francisco travel brochure dated 1973, and a letter written on hotel stationery dated "Saturday" -- referring to the Kinks at Winterland. I sort of remember that concert as well; it was where I was introduced to Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. Oh. Of course. Who could forget.

There's a story about them, too; not quite a novel though, say a novella.

At any rate.

So off we go to visit Baghdad by the Bay at least one more time.

Like many others, I have mixed feelings about San Francisco. From a tourist perspective, there's practically no city better, but I'd rather not live there. It's foggy and cold and damp and windy. All. The. Time. The hills are monstrous if you're on foot; they can be more than a challenge if you're driving, too. Traffic is often horrendous. I remember a time when it took me over five hours just to get on the Bay Bridge to leave town one Friday evening after I'd conducted a training at the Civic Center. There wasn't a wreck. It was just extremely heavy traffic. This was during the dot.com bubble, and Bay Area traffic in general was nearly impossible practically  everywhere nearly all the time. One reason I was leaving town rather than spending the night was that it was almost impossible to get a hotel room anywhere in the Bay Area as well. (Grouse, grouse, complain, complain. But the Money!) There are earthquakes, too, you know! Sometimes bad ones.

Ah but! The galleries, the museums, the parks -- Golden Gate Park remains my all-time favorite urban park -- the beaches (brrrr!), the views from practically anywhere; gasp inducing. The Marina, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Presidio, the Bridges; Marin. The flowers... there used to be a lot more flowers. There were flower stands everywhere, flowers seemed to be blooming everywhere too. Now there are not so many, nor are they "everywhere."

The City (we always capitalize it) used to be very dirty; trash in the streets and on the sidewalks was almost as common as flowers. It was like no one ever cleaned up, and those who tried found themselves defeated in short order. I found some pictures of San Francisco street scenes taken in the 1850's, and it was like that then, too. So I figured all the trash in the streets was a historic/cultural thing, but then there was a big campaign to clean up when Willie Brown was mayor, and by and bye, it worked. I wouldn't say San Francisco is as clean as Seattle (Seattle is really too clean for an American city), but it is much, much cleaner than, for example, when I lived there in the mid-70's.

I don't care for Muni, and I still won't ride the 38 Geary bus, but the cable cars are fun and they can get you where you need to go. A variety of old fashioned street cars now run on Market Street, and that's a good thing. I'm old enough to remember when they still had streetcars in downtown Los Angeles, and while I can only remember riding them once or maybe twice, I was very fond of streetcars when I was little. So it's nice to see the old ones on Market Street in San Francisco rattling and careening along.

We had a one bedroom apartment on Geary St. between Leavenworth and Hyde. Neighbors called it "Lower Nob Hill," we called it "The Tenderloin." It was an urban neighborhood, not that rough, but certainly not deluxe and very convenient to my work and practically everything we needed. We paid $225 a month rent, which we thought was outrageous, and we had to park the car at a garage over on O'Farrell St. for an additional $45 or $50 a month. Well. I saw a listing last year for a one bedroom apartment in the building where we lived in the mid-'70's. It actually looked just like our apartment -- it was in the back of the building with a view of a beautiful garden where we could sit on nice days somewhat protected from the wind. The kitchen and bath had been upgraded, so there was that. The rent was $2450, if I recall correctly. Parking at the garage on O'Farrell is running about $300 a month these days.

We didn't like paying as much as we did to live in San Francisco back in the day, but we could afford it.  I wasn't making a lot of money by any means, but it was enough to get by -- on one salary.

It would take two "median American" salaries to approximate our living standards in San Francisco in the 1970's -- standards we could maintain on what was then considered one relatively low single salary. This gives an idea of how far workers' compensation has fallen since then and how much costs have increased.

As the number of employed Americans went up from the 1970's onward -- thanks in part to the pressure of a lot of liberation movements -- the value of their labor, strangely -- or maybe not so strangely -- went down. Workers today, if they can stay employed at all, are earning about half on average what they should be making based on productivity and comparable living standards. Of course there are tens of millions of unemployed -- forcing down wages and benefits for those who remain employed. Millions more Americans are forced into poverty every year which further erodes the living standards of everyone else -- except the 1%.

For their part, they've been happy to help themselves to all the profits of the last few decades. How much longer they'll be able to ride on the backs of everyone else is a question, though, isn't it?

Meanwhile... there's some geezer performing at the Fillmore...