For the seasoned traveller, California offers a wealth of known delights. Los Angeles, tick. San Francisco, tick. Palm Springs, Coachella, San Diego, yada yada yada. California is the state of least resistance, a dreamland that always delivers and yet rarely surprises. Which is obviously why we all like it so much.
On my first proper trip, I loaded up the rented Mustang’s cassette player with Beach Boys rarities, happy to drive along the Pacific Coast Highway imagining I was on the cusp of the 1960s, dreaming of a time and a land that was free of irony and complicated context, when the California beaches were full of two girls to every boy. On my second trip, when CDs had replaced the cassette tape, I hurtled along Sunset Boulevard listening to Surf’s Up, Till I Die and California Saga as though the experience was a birthright. Even at the time it felt like a cliché, not that I cared. I was carefree. And that’s one of the seductive things about California, as it’s a place that encourages you to forgo reality.
