There Is No Recession In Rancho Palos Verdes
by ahansen
Last weekend I attended my 40-year high school class reunion in Palos Verdes, CA. As someone who would prefer sticking hot needles into my eyes over making cocktail chitchat, the whole thing was doubly horrifying for me. Not only had forty years disappeared like…that!, here I was voluntarily subjecting myself to the very experience I’d spent the last forty years trying to repress.
But unlike other reunions I’ve attended over the years—and as a dedicated party crasher, I’ve attended my fair share– this was a surprisingly low-key affair. The “nip and tuck” quotient was way below what one would have expected for the locale, there was a complete dearth of blingy jewelry and designers duds. Even the makeup was muted– and the footwear sensible. (More than one set of well-groomed feet sported flipflops.)
What was going on here?! These were the grownup children of privilege, many of whom were now living in one of the most affluent zip codes in the country. Two years ago, this gathering would have had a glam factor to rival anything Hollywood could conjure up. But this gang looked like your typical Saturday afternoon-at-CostCo crowd—albeit slimmer, and with better hair.
Ever the conscientious HBBer, I decided to use the opportunity to pick the brains of my former classmates for information I could pass on to the blog. And here’s what I discovered:
There is no recession in Rancho Palos Verdes. I got this straight from the sources. Early on, “GL” realized he had no particular talent as the securities salesman he’d trained to become, but simultaneously discovered his true calling as a bond trader. Over the years he parlayed this gift into a very comfortable life for himself and his clients—many of whom are his neighbors in RPV. Now that the market is, in his word, “whacked,” he’s about to retire and “just play around with it.” He paid off his mortgages several years ago and works out of his homes. “ No recession here,” he says.
Three years ago, “JP” sold the RE brokerage she’d inherited from her father, and moved her family to a lesser-known ski resort to live. She doesn’t see any recession there either, as “All the folks in my community are pretty well set, and house their own help.”
“RL” is the head of a biological research concern. “Lots of grant money coming in from DOE,” was his observation. “We’re hiring like crazy again.”
There was some dispirited grumbling however, from those directing charitable foundations. I shared early-morning Bloodies with “FF” and “ES”—both of whom lamented the curtailment of public arts programs. “The arts are always the first to go, it seems. Such a terrible assumption—people need the arts in hard times.” And, “Fortunately, we’re charged with distribution, rather than solicitation of funding.” (Read: the family money is intact.)
Classmate after classmate –at least the ones who had been fortunate enough to remain on the hill where they grew up– told me that all was well. Mortgages were few or well under control (presumably one more advantage of having inherited the family homestead.) I felt like smacking them.
Then I remembered how frugal had been many of our upbringings. Our parents had weathered the Great Depression, remember, and a goodly number were surviving the aerospace lay-offs of the late ‘60’s. Despite the outward appearance of affluence, a lot of hamburger was consumed on “The Hill” in those days, and a lot of clothing was recycled down through the siblings. Yes, we were ridiculously privileged, and no, no one starved there, but most of my friends had family gardens, and those who didn’t keep chickens, had the local peacocks to wake them up at 5 AM. I also know for a fact that my mother wasn’t the only one in PV who had a “store room” where in addition to her sewing supplies and gift wrapping materials, she kept years worth of empty glass jars, giveaway cups, and plastic cutlery–just in case. Economic survival was bred in our blood.
As I looked around the marina ballroom (which had been converted into a 1960’s beach party, complete with band, sand, beach chairs and 12’ flaming tiki heads, I first thought of Ben, (and quaffed a rum drink in his honor,) and then was hit with an epiphany. Those of us who had made it to the reunion were the ones, who unlike our peers in other wealthy communities of the day, (Beverly Hills comes to mind,) had no real preoccupation with social status or standing. (There was no stratification to speak of, so it wasn’t necessary.) Kids in our class generally didn’t vie to have the hottest cars or the coolest accessories…if anything, we proto-hippies disdained them. We were the children of a meritocracy, not an aristocracy, and perhaps that attitude, even more than our actual money, was what helped us survive these last few years of economic disaster with our finances (reasonably,) intact.
Fresh from these musings, this weekend I attended our local team penning event here in East Nowhere, CA. A once-a-year fundraiser for our little mountain school, it’s an excuse for us crusty reclusive types to get out, pick off the fleas, say hi to each other, and eat about a ton of dust kicked up by long-suffering arena cows and the horses who torment them. Also to eat BBQ and drink Bloody Marys at 10:30 in the morning while watching said cattle being tormented. (Disclaimer: I seldom drink either Bloody Marys or in the morning–or torment cattle, for that matter. Perhaps these last two weekends were not coincident.)
As I asked after my various neighbors, most of whom are just as impoverished and unconcerned-about-it as I, I realized that here too, in one of the poorest zip codes in the country, there ain’t no recession neither. It’s just our Normal.
Folks up here have lived in privation for so long –digging our own water, generating our own power, cutting our own roads, no cell reception, no grocery store or gas station for 40 miles—that the current mess hasn’t affected our lifestyles one iota. We’re used to doing without. With no investments to speak of, we haven’t had to suffer through the shock of losing them. Our trucks and cars turn to POS the instant they hit the local roads. And if you barter pretty much everything you need, not having a shopping center nearby isn’t all that much of an inconvenience.
We have our own supply networks (my wife’s cousin’s brother-in-law can get that for you,) and Twin Oaks Mall (the local dump, where unwanted-but-still-useful goods are set out next to the dumpsters, awaiting a new home.) Old furniture and ranch implements, for example, are frequently recycled multiple times before defying that one last patch job. On at least one occasion, I’ve come across one of my previous years’ discards again sitting among the items-for-the-taking on the tarmac.
Legitimate business up here is scarce as hens’ teeth, and the few enterprises that do occasionally pop up are hounded out of existence by County regulators, so our underground economy is both extensive and thriving. Checks? Credit cards? You’ve got to be kidding. Half the town doesn’t even have a bank account. And hoarding? It’s what we do in our “spare” time.
Any government money that dribbles down into this community is so dilute as to be negligible. (Which is not to say that a good percentage of us living hereabouts don’t get a government check in some form every month.) But stimulus money? Car subsidies? Loan rewrites? Even in the heyday of the housing bubble boom, no bank was reckless enough to loan any of us any money. After all, you can’t attach SSI disability payments, and who wants title on a weather-beaten 40-year-old doublewide with a non-compliant plyboard “addition?”
So it seems to me that the best way to ride out the “recession” or whatever name it’s going by these days, may be to either live like a poor country slob, or actually be a poor country slob, because as far as I can tell, they’re the only ones not being hit hard in the teeth (or the retirement account,) by the all the changes we’re going through in These Troubled Times.
