San Bernardino.
San Bernardino is where McDonald's got its start. Aren't you thrilled?
Though the last census shows its population is over 200,000,
San Bernardino is essentially an
overgrown small town in its attitude and culture. Those who actually live there experience the
old-fashioned charm of pettiness, small-town conservatism and some of the
ugliest architecture ever to come out of the Baby Boom of the 50s and 60s. Now crumbling in many of its formerly
beautiful older neighborhoods, it has experienced a new boom of
lowest-bidding-contractor developments which have expanded like a stucco fungus
of clone-homes and paved over its lovely orange groves and foothills.
The majority (better than half) of people who actually live
in San Bernardino are Hispanic,
many of them Chicano. Of the elected
officials, however, you will see one Hispanic councilwoman and one black
councilman, the other six council members, the treasurer and the mayor being
white. Draw your own conclusions,
people.
San Bernardino
tourist attractions are its golf courses, which are cheap, and a host of
attractions like skiing, camping and fishing at Big Bear and Lake
Arrowhead that are near, but not in
San Bernardino. San Bernardino
itself can be driven across in about 15-20 minutes, and not too much that is
beautiful or unique can be observed out of the window along the way. In the city proper, it is a landscape of
mini-malls and fast food franchises which are identical to what you’d find
anywhere else in California, and
that’s a big state.
Mentl has never gone skiing, but he has been to Arrowhead a
few times with his folks when he was a kid.
In high school he had fumbling adolescent sexual experiences in the
bushes at Perris Hill
Park, which is a nice place in the
daylight, and when there’s a ball game.
You really don’t want to wander around there after dark,
however. Mentl grew up in the lower-middle class parts of town, and the
most
interesting thing he ever saw that actually originated locally was
April Popenhager in a tight tube top. He will tell you it’s a
place to be from, and though it
styles itself as the heart of the Inland Empire, nobody
ever explained to him what the hell the Empire was supposed to be other than a
collection of little communities plastered across the desert to make a huge
pavement monster from Riverside to Los Angeles. And, for that matter, who is supposed to be
the Emperor?
You'd think that he'd at least be some menacing figure with a cool
black robe or something, not some random white guy in a
suit.
Some places, like L.A. or New York or even Las Vegas manage
to compensate for the grubby bits of them with dazzling areas of culture, splendor
or sheer neon-powered chutzpah, but San Bernardino is just … Berdoo. Nice place to fill your tank or have a meal
in one of a bunch of chain restaurants on your way to Vegas or Idyllwild or somewhere else that's pretty or interesting.