One of the things I feel is emblematic of being a California Girl is the love of cars. The Peterson Automotive Museum is having a Low Rider exhibit right now. Bitchen, right? Personally, I can’t wait.
My earliest memory of the low rider culture was a song by Thee Midniters, probably the first significant Chicano rock bands to come out of Los Angeles. They had several hits, like Land of 1,000 Dances, but anyone who grew up loving music and cars in the 1960s couldn’t forget “Let’s take a trip down Whittier Boulevard, yeehaa, Arriba , Arriba!” It’s part of my DNA just as much as the love of surfing. In fact, when you listen to the song, it has that early surf sound. That reverb electric guitar Dick Dale made famous. But that’s a whole other story for another time.
I live in Los Angeles where you can get pretty much anything you want, except for one thing I covet: Chesapeake Bay steamed crabs. I grew up in Baltimore and I miss the crab feasts of my youth. So, every year my thoughtful husband has a bushel Fed-x’ed out to Santa Monica in either May, June, July or August (because crabs are good only in months lacking an “r” ). And we invite nostalgic ex-pats and brave newcomers into our West Coast yard to indulge in the pagan ritual that is so cherished back in Maryland, officially The Land of Pleasant Living.
My husband’s last name is Einbinder. We’ve always assumed the German translation (one binder) meant that it was the moniker for the trade of bookbinding. It’s a rare name. In fact the only other person we’ve ever met with any connection to that name is the movie director Mike Binder. One day, years ago, at the Pumpkin Patch in our neighborhood, we struck up a conversation with him. Blank Man, a movie he directed, was absolutely the funniest movie that year. It still holds up. David Allen Grier kills in it. Of course, he always kills. It turned out that Mike’s last name was shortened from Einbinder. Since then, when we see him places, we exchange that twinkle of recognition of our ‘kinship’. 
There are only certain places I can take her. She is sort of bulky;
she never orders anything. Nowhere too crowded, I wouldn’t feel right
taking up a booth with her. But at the same time, nowhere that doesn’t
have the possibility of running into someone more interesting, in case
I wanted to ditch her, or at least set her aside for awhile. Somewhere
with just enough scenic beauty to fill a background but not enough to
completely divert my attention from her. 
Like most Americans, I like to complain. 