Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
San Francisco & North Coast
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the politics tend to be liberal and the people open-minded,
with a strong live-and-let-live ethic and devotion to the Great Outdoors. In overwhelm-
ingly white and wealthy Marin County, civic pride sometimes borders on narcissism. San
Francisco is more of a melting pot, but there aren't a lot of lower-income citizens since
rents have risen sky-high with the invasion of high-salaried techies. The East Bay, espe-
cially Oakland and Berkeley, and San Jose to the south are more ethnically diverse.
Woodsy types live further up the North Coast - think beards and buffalo-plaid flannel.
There aren't a lot of people way up there, and there's not a lot of money floating around
either (apart from marijuana growers). Conservative radio stations shout on several fre-
quencies, but at the other end of the political spectrum, some of the state's most progress-
ive liberals and borderline eco-fanatics live way up north. If you spot a beat-up old Volvo
chugging along the highway, chances are it's running on biodiesel, probably oil recycled
from fast-food restaurants.
Central Coast & Santa Barbara
With smaller pockets of population, the hard-to-classify Central Coast starts south of San
Francisco near wacky, left-of-center Santa Cruz and stretches all the way down to posh,
progressively liberal Santa Barbara. Along the way, coastal Hwy 1 winds past working-
class Monterey, made famous by John Steinbeck's novels; the bohemian Big Sur coast,
where beatnik artists, hippies and back-to-landers stake their claims; the quaint 'villages'
of Carmel-by-the-Sea and Cambria, where the 'newly wed and nearly dead' own
multimillion-dollar homes; and the laid-back, liberal college town of San Luis Obispo,
over halfway from San Francisco to LA.
Wherever you go along the Central Coast, you'll run into people who care passionately
about environmental conservation and enthusiastically support local farms, ranchers, wine-
makers and microbrewers.
