California isn't dead. It isn't a hell-hole either.

The report of California's death was an exaggeration.

California lost a congressional seat. Texas gained three. That confirmed the theory that the "California" idea or brand has faded. It is a great place to make money in tech, but a very hard place to live, what with crazy-high real estate prices, open shoplifting, and homeless people sleeping on sidewalks.

I asked college classmate Tony Farrell to tell me if the bloom has faded on the California rose parade. Tony is a brand expert, now living in Oakland. He retired from work at The Gap, The Nature Company, and The Sharper Image. Over the decades he managed the branding of a great many successful products, but my introductions of his guest posts typically mention his most famous and least successful product, Trump Steaks.

Tony said that the Fox News narrative of California as a hell-hole of woke misrule is incorrect.

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

Notes from the Oakland Hills, Bay Area, California

A few days before November’s election, I threw the equivalent of a political pundit’s Hail Mary (forecasting that Kamala would win “with ease”). I aimed to cement my exalted place in lore but failed. Despite my knowing that such pundits suffer no penalty for being absolutely off the mark, I’m back to cultural commentary, not political, mostly.

It’s a funny time to be a Californian. Last year, I vacationed in Houston and found that people, including spouses of friends, felt sorry for me! No one asked how it was to live in Oakland; they just wondered how I could stand the crime and homelessness. These people had never been to Oakland but they acted like they knew it…but only through the Fox lens, and without curiosity. (I think Houston’s murder rate is 40 percent higher.)

Fox News story about shoplifters

Similarly (but in a different direction), last fall, a friend from North Carolina visited our home and, seeing our living-room windows wide open without screens, asked how we managed the bugs. “No bugs,” we explained. Too often, perhaps, Californians boast of living in a paradise but that’s hard to truly appreciate if you don’t live here. But every day seems noticeably refreshing and beautiful; every day but not in any boring sense because, here in the Bay Area, we enjoy all the drama of our temperate marine climate: warm sun, cool air, creamy fog; the beauty, natural and man-made; the food! And no bugs.

California’s housing crisis feels, to me, much like the New York City crisis of the mid-70s — which is to say disturbing and apparently intractable but, in fact, it will end and fade into distant memory. The state has moved very aggressively to smooth the regulatory path to more housing and, at the same time, mandated that every community build a significant number of affordable housing units. Zoning and density restrictions, in particular, have been lifted with some pushback but less than you might think. Sure, it’s expensive here but so are dozens of other places: Boston, Austin, Seattle, D.C., etc. I have confidence California will address the issue more effectively than many other areas.

Among the electorate, there’s been a marked shift away from extreme progressiveness. The soft-on-crime Alameda County district attorney was recalled, as was the incompetent new mayor of Oakland (also weak on crime), both by 80/20 margins. The San Francisco School Board progressives were voted out; the ones who said the name “Lincoln” had to be removed from schools (because he allowed the hanging of some indigenous people) and even “Feinstein” (because she had allowed a Confederate flag to be flown in a history display). Most everyone was thrilled with the Supreme Court decision on clearing homeless camps, and Bay Area cities took immediate action. The law that launched our shoplifting wave (it said thefts under a thousand dollars were not felonies but misdemeanors) was killed. The centrist San Francisco mayor of six years, London Breed, lost to the heir of the Levi’s fortune, Daniel Lurie; he’s our “Mike Bloomberg” and already has signaled a new era of managerial competence and common sense. Lurie’s wife, Becca Prowda, once served as a key staffer for SF Mayor Gavin Newsom and currently serves in Sacramento as Governor Newsom’s chief of protocol.

Newsom is in his final term; it ends in January, 2027 and (as I have written before) he is the most likely Democratic candidate for president when Trump nears his end two years later. Between now and then, I believe the Left Coast Crazy trope that hangs over Newsom and our entire state will be more muted and less credible. If Obama and Trump can each get elected president twice, who’s to say there are any disqualifying criteria? Newsom is strong enough (see my 11/30/23 post) to present himself as the logical savior after a disastrous Trump second term. (My forecast!)