Across the tracks
To most people "Orange County" means my town: wealthy, white, beautiful, right-wing, vapid, with a great beach.
It's a big place, though. There's the most Mexican city outside Mexico itself, an entire Vietnamese town, hundreds of light industry and defense factories. There are also some very tough neighborhoods, gang wars, near-homeless poor in bad motels, skinheads, and lots of meth dealers.
Last night a 15-year-old girl was shotgunned in West Costa Mesa's worst neighborhood. She was three miles from my house, which is in the safest reporting district in Newport. If that had happened here you'd all be seeing it on the news right now. There, it's a squib buried in the Register.
We still have "the tracks" around here, even in Paradise. In Santa Ana it's 17th street, and here it's Newport Boulevard. Don't live on the wrong side.
It's a big place, though. There's the most Mexican city outside Mexico itself, an entire Vietnamese town, hundreds of light industry and defense factories. There are also some very tough neighborhoods, gang wars, near-homeless poor in bad motels, skinheads, and lots of meth dealers.
Last night a 15-year-old girl was shotgunned in West Costa Mesa's worst neighborhood. She was three miles from my house, which is in the safest reporting district in Newport. If that had happened here you'd all be seeing it on the news right now. There, it's a squib buried in the Register.
We still have "the tracks" around here, even in Paradise. In Santa Ana it's 17th street, and here it's Newport Boulevard. Don't live on the wrong side.