As Digby says, the article about California is freaky.
Economic catastrophe aside, I was a bit puzzled by one thing when I lived there. Southern California really wasn't the place for me, but I get that the coastal bits of it have their charms. But I didn't get why Inland Empire, a place which mostly didn't have those charms, was booming. Sure it was because it was cheaper to live there, but once prices started going up it... stopped being cheap to live there!
...adding, I didn't mean to say it's such a horrible place that I couldn't understand why anyone would live there. What I meant to say is once the housing prices started shooting up it wasn't clear why people would pick the Inland Empire over other places with similar attributes outside of California.
