Who’s California’s most notorious criminal? Should children be named after the Golden State? And what, exactly, deserves to be the state’s official meal? These are just a few of the quirky and clever questions tackled in Alta Journal’s column Ask a Californian. Columnists Gustavo Arellano and Stacey Grenrock Woods join Alta Live to share their sharp insights, trade witty banter, and field new curveball queries from the audience. Come ready with your own questions and join us for what promises to be a lively, and very Californian, conversation.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Stacey Grenrock Woods is a regular contributor to Esquire and a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She writes and consults on various TV shows and had a recurring role as Tricia Thoon on Fox’s Arrested Development. Her first book is I, California.

Gustavo Arellano is the author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. He is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and has been an essayist and reporter for various publications as well as a frequent commentator on radio and television. He was formerly an editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and penned the award-winning ¡Ask a Mexican!, a nationally syndicated column in which he answered any and all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. Arellano is the recipient of awards ranging from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Columnist to the Los Angeles Press Club President’s Award to an Impacto Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition and was recognized by the California Latino Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work ethic.” Arellano is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.

Here are some notable quotes from the event:

  • On California’s national and international reputation: “Internationally, they know us for Hollywood, they know us for the coast, they know us for Disneyland—they know us for all the good, wonderful things about California. The rest of the country, let’s admit it, they’re a bunch of haters. They do not like us now because we are too blue for them. The redder parts of the country don’t like us because of Governor Gavin Newsom, who stands for the nation-state of California, which, come on, Gavin, it’s a little bit too much as well. But honestly, they don’t like us because they’re fed a constant diet of doom and gloom coming from California.” —Arellano
  • On the prospect of leaving California: “I’m going down with the ship. There’s just a connection to the land that I can’t even explain. Even if I could live exactly the same way, if I was surrounded by the same people, the same industries, everything else, in a different part of the country or part of the world, it still wouldn’t feel like this place feels to me. I like having the ocean right there. It’s a quick escape if I need it—I never even go to it, but I like knowing it’s there. Anything else would just feel topographically wrong to me.” —Woods
  • On romanticizing California: “I have never romanticized California as an easy place to live because that’s not the experience of my family. My great-grandpa, my grandpa, they came to Orange County in the 1920s and got to live in segregated neighborhoods. My mom, she was born in Mexico along with her siblings—my aunts and uncles—and they came to Orange County in the 1960s, getting beat up solely because they were Mexican.… And look, you could romanticize the days of cruising down Van Nuys Boulevard or being out on the beach doing the mashed potato to “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” but that wasn’t the reality of my people.” —Arellano

Check out these links to some of the topics brought up this week.