An Insider's Guide to California

What a quick Google search tells you...

I am not qualified to be your virtual tour guide of California.

Accurate, but probably won't show up on Google. Here is what will:

Woo, I know, exciting, right?

As the map shows, the two major cities are Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Can you name the state capital of California?

If you said Benicia, you would be incorrect.

Benicia was one of the old capitals (for 13 months from 1853-1854) before they finally decided on Sacramento, which is kinda just sitting in the middle of the state (what an accurate description, I know). It's about a two hour drive inland from San Francisco. (I probably will write a chapter on Sacramento, if anybody's REALLY interested. I can't imagine somebody saying Sacramento is their dream city to live in in those MASH games unless if they're from the area, but who am I to judge?)

Interesting fact: When you try to set the "world clock" thing on Apple, Benicia, CA is an option, but not Sacramento.

Population of Sacramento: 501, 901 (2017)

Population of Benicia: 28,343 (2017)

Needless to say, I was pretty ticked off.

Hahaha, get it? No? Okay.

Somebody told me that it's only because they have a rich investor in Benicia 😂

What are your world clocks set to for your home city?

I just kept mine at the Cupertino default and also set Vancouver, because it's the same time zone, but why not, right?

I obviously have too much time. Actually, though, I'm writing this at 12:15 a.m. and dancing to Why Don't We while I still have some homework to do, so that's not a very accurate statement.

We'll just go down the list of the Google search, shall we?

For our senators: Kamala Harris is running for Democratic presidential nominee for 2020, so that's pretty cool. I'm not entirely sure I remember why Dianne Feinstein is trending. A quick Google search later: she's 5'10", I'm jealous. She's also a Stanford graduate, woo. But, yeah, uh, not gonna go into politics right now. Something that my social science teachers have pointed out quite often the past few years: both of our senators are female in a mostly-dominated male Senate. Also, both are Democrats, because California is an overwhelmingly Democratic/liberal state, apparently Republican candidates don't even bother to come here.

Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker of the house who's been getting a lot of media attention, is Californian, as well. 

Oh, hah, the thing says that Sacramento is the capital, whoops. That missed my eye when I asked the question the first time.

U.S. House Delegation: We have 52 representatives (including Nancy Pelosi), I actually didn't know that. We do have the highest number of reps because we have the highest population: 39.54 million, which is more people than the entire country of Canada (36.71 million) and more than Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands combined (almost as much as Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark). 

Just another interesting little map

Before statehood: Yup, we were called Alta California cause there's Baja California to the south and I guess the United States only acquired us in the Mexican-American war (yeah, we used to be part of Mexico but now we have a wall prototype). And then they had the Gold Rush which populated the state, and then sometime after World War II, they started doing a lot of housing developments here in "sunny California" so a bunch more people started coming over.

Apparently, the whole materialistic consumer culture began here, in the 1960s. According to some article I read a while ago (I can't remember how accurate it is, though).

There was your most basic crash course in Californian history, I'll probably go more in depth at some point.

Spoken languages: California is, statistically speaking, the most diverse state. I don't know about the languages spoken part (because let's be real, a lot of immigrant families speak English at home...don't look at me! But, yeah, I can't speak Chinese...I can understand it, but me trying to formulate sentences never ends well.), but here's the racial breakdown (statistics are taken from www.kff.org/ Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation):

California:

37% white, 5% black, 39% Hispanic, 14% Asian, <1% American Indian/Alaskan Native, <1% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 3% 2 or more races

Some other states, for the sake of comparison:

Hawaii:

21% white, 1% black, 10% Hispanic, 38% Asian,  <1% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 10% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 20% 2 or more races

Maine:

94% white, 1% black, 2% Hispanic, 1% Asian, 1% American Indian/Alaskan Native, N/A Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 2% 2 or more races

New Mexico:

37% white, 2% black, 49% Hispanic, 1% Asian, 9% American Indian/Alaskan Native, N/A Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 2% 2 or more races

Alabama:

66% white, 27% black, 4% Hispanic, 1% Asian, <1% American Indian/Alaskan Native, N/A Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 2% 2 or more races

So, uh, yeah, you get the point. Honestly, I feel like the racial breakdown of Alabama is what people generally end up seeing in media and such, but maybe that's just me...

Minimum Wage: Uh, well, didn't know our minimum wage was that high, I'd guess that it's probably one of the highest in the country. And then big cities like *cough* SAN FRANCISCO *cough* raise the minimum wage way up, so it's usually higher. I always thought that Washington was the state with the highest minimum wage, but eh, I'm not too sure. Most of the stuff that pops up on the internet is outdated, but, yeah.

I guess I may as well take a minute to talk about the sales tax. For all you international people, first of all, hello, second, we have sales taxes that get added on top of what we pay already; for example, if you want to buy a...uhh..narwhal that's $9.99 (because we always end our prices with a 9) and sales tax is 10% (I don't think it's that high anywhere yet), then the narwhal would end up being $10.98 because of the $0.99 sales tax. With small prices, it seems okay, but, like, when you're buying a phone and have to consider $50 in sales tax, it's just ughhhh.

Apparently Oregon doesn't have a sales tax, let's all move there! Just kidding, but I honestly love Oregon so much, I've only been once, but can actually see myself living there (Portland especially).

Some sources are telling me that our state tax is 6% and others are saying 7.25%, so I'm not entirely sure which one (I'm guessing 6% though). And then depending on where you are, there are usually "local taxes," like in the Bay Area and LA area, it's normally close to 9 or 10%.

Something else that you probably already know: Google is from California! (It's in the title of the chapter so I figured I might as well share, I'll probably talk about the tech companies sometime later, too)

There's your first little intro to California, I hope you're as excited for this book as I am! (Seriously, though, it's 1 a.m. in the morning and I've been enjoying working on new concepts for this book since, like, 8 p.m.)