_______________ FLUX RULES BY LAURA MILLER (03/30/98)

Laura Miller's take on the differences between New York and California betray the way Californians do not understand, maybe have never understood, New York. Miller misses something that I think is critical to understanding New York: New York is a truly multicultural city. Immigration, which Californians view as something between the apocalypse and Armageddon, is part of New York life. While racial tension clearly exists in New York, no serious politician would ever propose a Prop. 209. It would be a source of shame and embarrassment to so glibly exclude people from public life. You can talk about the surface differences all you want, but for all of California's talk of change, the door shuts closed when that change has a brown tint to it. In New York, I can get bagels made by Mexicans, Mexican food made by Chinese, Chinese food served by Arabs. Unlike California, New York has a street, not a car, culture. You may not like Indians, but you buy your paper from them every morning. New York has its ethnic enclaves, and people do not always get along comfortably. But the difference between California and New York, once you get beyond the glib examples of style, is simple. New York is always changing. Not by making new buildings or adopting a new fad, but by opening its doors to the world. Doors Californians seem all too proud to shut and lock, no matter what the consequence. If change is body piercing, then California is clearly in the lead. But if it is letting in the world's ambitious and brightest, New York is in the lead and California seems all too willing to fall behind. Which Californians should be ashamed of, if a sense of shame existed there. -- Stephen Gilliard Laura's article, like a good Republican Californian, brings forward obvious points yet naively ignores other important aspects. The land of milk and honey is a "void" simply because the people there enjoy it that way. While you will occasionally run into the East Sider who never thought of other cities and states as civilized, more often than not, a Californian will not know where other places are. Living in Berkeley and San Francisco for four years, how many times was I asked if native New Jerseyans traveled to D.C., Boston or Chicago for dinner? Countless times -- by California's crème de la crème (UC-Berkeley students)! New York is the center of the world, because we spend time learning about the world. The white-collar person in Gotham knows of the issues in the New Republic of the Congo, India and Prop. 187, while the Californian can't spell Congo, thinks curry when they hear India and hears Snoop Doggy Dogg songs as soon as you mention 187. Ms. Miller needs to mention that California will always be the capital of the outdoors: skiing, biking, hiking, surfing, swimming, etc. But where does a culture vulture find a bite to eat in S.F. at 2 a.m.? He doesn't. -- Anurag Heda I am a 23-year-old native New Yorker, now living in San Francisco. I was involved in club promotions in N.Y. After having gone to Stanford, I now do human/computer interaction design. I would like to specifically comment on the statement "the city's sluggishness, the way that smart things like e-mail and goofy things like body piercing are always just catching on here by the time they've become either de rigueur or passé in California." I have no interest in piercings whatsoever, but c'mon! This is one of the most ridiculous statements ever, and simply not true. New York is the States' bastion of progressive style. California is the States' open wound of cheesiness. No, not camp, not kitsch ... CHEESY. I knew people in New York who had their dicks pierced while the most current influential people in California were still riding a '79 Easy Glider Skateboard pro-model with their white tube socks pulled up to their knees. Gimme a break! Technology is fair game. Talk as much as you want about California's contributions to New York's archaic paper-to-paper lifestyle. BUT, technology is not style. Not even close. Style travels from East to West in the United States. New York gets its cues from Europe and the West Coast gets its cues from New York. I have to wait at least three months for anything of interest to reach me, after hearing my friends back home talk about it for months. The same applies to technology, but vice versa. Why am I out here you ask? For school at Stanford and to be in the center of the computing industry. However, being that the areas of computer science that involve "style" (like multimedia design) are developing at a much faster pace in New York, I might be back soon. This is why New Yorkers don't grok California: Californian's are too laid back to care about any style whatsoever except comfort. I think Laura Miller should wait to write a second piece on the New York/California interaction until she moves back to California and truly experiences the "void" firsthand. -- Christopher Wiedmann SALON | April 1, 1998