COMMENT: How Cool
by Rick Reiff
IT’S NOT AS IF WE AND OUR READERS DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW IT. STILL, IT’S
always encouraging when a national media outlet discovers that Orange County is no longer a right-wing backwater of Los Angeles, but is in fact, as USA Today put it in its Sept. 6 Money section cover story, “the new capital of cool.”
The paper marveled that a county built on a reputation for “flag-waving squareness and conservative family values” had made an “odd evolution” into a trendsetter for clothes, sunglasses, shoes, malls, food, cars and other stuff. Oddly, the story overlooked a recent manifestation of OC hipness,the move here of Ford’s Lincoln Mercury division and Premier Automotive Group, along with a Y & R; advertising contingent. And the shopper-focused story didn’t mention OC’s trendsetting status in such areas as bond investing, consumer finance, medical instruments, avionics, enterprise software and high-speed chips. Nor did the story point out Orange County’s ethnic, social and ideological diversity.
But a little recognition beats none at all, because Orange County will always have identity problems. The county lacks the dominant city that defines almost every other metropolitan area. The world recognizes Disneyland, the Anaheim Angels, Crystal Cathedral and the beach cities without ever placing them in Orange County. A survey once found that many of the nation’s technology writers thought Irvine was in Silicon Valley. Fortune’s recent list of “America’s 40 Richest Under 40” included three persons with OC ties, though you’d never know it: Tiger Woods was born in Cypress, Scott Blum works in California (that’s pinning it down) and Vinnie Smith works in Silicon Valley (oops, another mislocation of Irvine).
We even do it to ourselves. An image ad by the St. Regis Monarch Beach puts the resort “between Los Angeles and San Diego.” The website of a Lake Forest pill maker says its location in “Southern California.”
And the day the Los Angeles Times calls Orange County “cool” is the day I order the front page for lunch.
Name Game
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ORANGE COUNTY OR, STRICTLY SPEAKING, business, but I cannot avoid the temptation to note last week’s roster change by the Cleveland Indians baseball team, which replaced Milton Bradley with Coco Crisp.
, Rick Reiff
