People who grew up in California, what was it like compared to how Hollywood portrays it?

20 comments

1. Probably not much different than other parts of the country. California is huge and much more than Hollywood.

2. Well I’m from Oakland so not the California most people are thinking of. I say I’m from California and people start asking about beaches and movie stars. Like, sorry brah, I’m from weed, wine and Patagonia California.

   I’ll say that films and shows set in the Bay Area generally do a good job of capturing the culture.

3. I enjoyed it. It wasn’t as glamorous as Hollywood, but we did spend a lot of time at the beach and ate a lot of Mexican food lol.

4. Growing up in my case was more like the show Rocket Power than Hollywood.

5. Not that any different. I’m in the Bay Area for instance, and here, it’s really boring, since the area is mostly for tech workers, and barely any theme parks (California’s Great America is just your ordinary amusement park, nothing like Knott’s Berry Farm) The Bay Area’s culture is totally different than SoCal.

6. I grew up in a suburb, and it was pretty normal. Probably just like growing up anywhere else in America

7. I grew up in the movie Lady Bird

8. Pretty different, and generally less exciting than Hollywood would portray. For starters, I grew up in the Bay Area, in a much more suburban environment. Hardly any palm trees where I lived, and I was 20 miles inland from the beach. The weather was nice most of the year, but sometimes got really hot in summer and colder than you might expect in winter (and thus not quite the “California warm and sunny year-round” trope so frequently used in the media).

   However, I did go countless times to San Francisco, which is often THE place of choice for Hollywood if they want something set in Northern California, and thanks to an extensive history of filming there, a lot of shows and movies do a fairly good job of portraying SF.

9. Even Hollywood itself isn’t exactly like how Hollywood portrays it. You’d be surprised by how normal Hollywood High School is. The only difference is that a few of the teen actors/singers you’re going to school with, who are a minority of the student body, *might* become famous someday. “I knew Brandy”, one girl told me once.

10. It depends on the media. Hollywood has done numerous depictions of life in California. California is a pretty big place with a lot of diversity among fairly small areas.

    The most authentic, at least to my experience, would be Malcolm in the Middle. I am just a bit older than the guys from the show and that was very spot on for what it was like to be that age in the late 90s/early 2000s in a community in the Greater Los Angeles area.

    There was a show called “The OC” which came out 20 years ago which I thought was pretty hilarious in how wrong certain things were. There was this depiction of foreignness between the characters from Orange County and the Inland Empire, these two places are literally right next to each other and its very common for people who work in Orange County to live in the Inland Empire. The “WELCOME TO OC BITCH!” line was particularly hilarious and unrealistic. I am from the Inland Empire and have been to Newport Beach hundreds of times.

    I would say that something that Hollywood usually gets wrong is proximity and lack of traffic. The traffic can be a nightmare and it sort of makes traveling what people would consider fairly short distances (less than 50 miles) into a very stressful experience. But in a lot of shows it will depict people as hopping around from Santa Monica to Palm Springs or San Diego without really pointing out that these can be 2+ hour drives each way.

    The show Weeds I would say had some fairly accurate aesthetics and while definitely a comedy that takes things to an extreme, was sort of accurate with how things looked. At least as accurate as a mid 2000s parody could be.

    A lot of the Hollywood media also focuses on lifestyles of extremely wealthy people. Selling Sunset for example showcases properties that only the globally wealthy could afford. Yes it is accurate that there are absolutely place in California like that, and if you live here you might see them if you have business in those areas, but its not something that exists everywhere. Most neighborhoods will be fairly mundane tract homes.

11. And by California you mean LA and SoCal. Because not a lot of Hollywood shows you Fresno, Bakersfield, or Barstow.

12. I mean I haven’t seen a movie show Mickey mouse on the sidewalk with the stars looking like he got fucked up and lost everything while having a heavy Mexican accent and broken english asking people if they want a photo with him. And sometimes they ask for money for the photo.

13. Not much like it, given that I’m not in LA/SoCal and/or near a beach.

14. In America it’s different roughly every 50 miles.

15. Think Back To The Future, but more diverse. No, not the time traveling stuff. The boring 1985 stuff.

    It also helps much of it was filmed in areas I live near.

16. Depends on which California they are showing. This place is like five entirely different states in one.

17. Just your average day, surfing to school on golden waves and dodging celebrity sightings. Totally normal stuff. 🌴

18. I feel like there’s so many portrayals of California , you can glean some realities from all the different perspectives covered.
    It’s a big state with tens of millions it people.

19. Growing up in LA in the 80s and 90s was pretty good. It was around the time I went to college that it started it’s downward slide. Now, it is simply an unacceptable place to live, with homeless people, insane taxes, and overall hostility and contempt from the state government onto its people.

20. I’m not from Cali, but I always thought that the outdoor lockers thing was made up until I talked to my buddy from LA in college. He said they had outdoor lockers in high school