I experienced some regional bigotry over the weekend (anti-California)

[Guaranteed]

from a vintner, believe it or not.

I went out wine-tasting with my girlfriend's family. There aren't many wineries here in IL, but the one we went to was actually pretty good.

We spent a lot of time touring and tasting with the owner. He'd previously been a farmer, and had just recently switched over to making wine, with success. It was kind of surprising how much time he spent with us. He started out as a pretty friendly guy. But then eventually we got around to talking about the movie "Sideways." I asked him what he thought about the way the movie humanized wine grapes, and he started in on a tirade about California. He said "Imagine if you tipped the country on its side and all the garbage flowed over to the west side." Then my girlfriend's family reacted and started letting on that I actually am from California. But that didn't stop him. He went on to talk about, of all things the extensive "nudity" in the movie, and how he was so disgusted by it. He talked about the scene where the guy was running down the road naked. I tried to explain that it was just supposed to be funny, and he said, "Well out in California that may be funny, but out here in the Midwest we just think it's stupid." He was also bashing California wineries constantly, although it was clear that his knowledge of California wine was limited to Gallo. He didn't seem to have any idea how many small wineries there are throughout the state, or at least made no recognition of them. In any case he was using Fox News talking points to attack me and Californians and it just made me sick and really angry. My girlfriend reminded me that we had seen a Bush sign out in front of his winery during the campaign.

My girlfriend's family didn't seem to have a problem with this, though. They had nothing but praise for the guy. That pissed me off even more. No recognition of the bigotry. Her mom even suggested that we take my mother and sister out there when they visit this weekend.

[Deja Q]

1. Then you won't want to read this:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5716743.html

And a follow-up comment:
http://news.zdnet.com/5208-9595-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=10600&messageID=211383&start=-1

[Guaranteed]

6. Well, I wouldn't call that bigotry.

This guy was pretty nasty. He was talking about the people.

[ultraist]

25. Technically, it is bigotry

Although, generally I associate bigotry with irrational beliefs about race, religion, gender and/or sexual orientation. I may be mistaken, but I think most people do.

Bigotry
The state of mind of a bigot; obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them.

I've become somewhat immune to the regional stereotyping, living in the South. We are all ignorant, racist, trailer trash, rednecks down here, doncha know? ;)

[Stirk]

2. Meh, we Californians share an advantage with the French.

When people bash us, we can safely assume it's jealousy.

[Guaranteed]

8. It was. It was an inferiority thing.

But it's pretty shocking to hear it. The guy was really hateful.

[Stirk]

14. Well, he showed you his belly. You should've stuck a knife in it.

You know, say something like, "have you ever thought about moving your operation to place that grows quality grapes?". Hehe.

[Guaranteed]

20. Wasn't really expecting it.

I made a few snide comments later that probably went over his head. That was about it.

[Stirk]

21. Heh- I know what you mean. It always just smacks you out of

the blue and by the time you're pissed off, it's too late.

[Piperay]

26. I agree

some people in other parts of the country are jealous of us, they are jealous of the power we have to influence society and politically we go our own way. We're too independent and they don't like it.

[Guaranteed]

29. This was coming from a guy running a WINERY.

It was pretty unbelievable.

[nini]

3. I don't know who was more wrong - her family or the wine guy

He sounds like an insecure little turd, and they should have stepped up and asked him to tone it down as you were from CA.

Sounds like fun in-laws if you go that way.

[Guaranteed]

9. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Afterward they were like, "Yeah, that guy was really great!"

[in_cog_ni_to]

4. You didn't buy any of his friggin' wine did you?

How rude he was. :nuke: SEE??? how those people are? They will say and do anything against the Dems.

I would NEVER go back there.

[Guaranteed]

11. Oh, I'm not going back.

Thinking about getting my mother and sister to bring out some nice Sonoma vino to leave on his doorstep, though. ;)

[in_cog_ni_to]

17. Yeeees! Now THAT would piss him off!

You might include a nice nude photo of????? Jeff Gannon! :bounce:

[Rowdyboy]

5. Welcome to the club....As a southerner, I've experienced idiotic

regional bigotry for years. I just shake my head in disgust with the ignorance of the bigot. There's no use trying to argue with dumb asses like that because they're always right and you're always wrong. Plus, they perpetually deal in cheap generalizations and trite stereotypes.

[Guaranteed]

12. I've engaged in a little bit of it, myself.

That was a wakeup call, there. I feel ya.

[Rowdyboy]

47. It really hurts-its like being criticized for having brown eyes....

I'd watch those potential inlaws. They're pretty dense (can't believe they thought your family might like to visit)

[LSparkle]

7. It happens even closer to home: Oregon

I'm a Californian and I love Oregon but when I was there years ago, I got the distinct feeling that the locals don't like their southern neighbors. Once people found out where I was from, there were plenty of cracks about "La La Land" and how crazy and superficial we are. At least we didn't disagree on politics (most Oregonians I met were pretty liberal), but they really didn't dig Californians. (Maybe with good reason: I know quite a few people who've moved to Portland and Seattle from SF/LA)

[Cleita]

19. Because I was a resident of Texas and then Idaho for awhile

I got the full blast of anti-California sentiment because I wasn't carrying Califoria plates on my car.

[gratuitous]

23. Oh yeah

Bashing Californians has been a feature of Oregon for, oh, about 35 or 40 years now. The late Gov. Tom McCall (a saint of a man) is famous for his dictum about Californians in the early 1970s, "Come here to visit, but please don't stay!"

Many Californians earned their animosity from Oregonians honestly, moving to the state and complaining about the weather ("it rains too much!"), or driving up property prices as equity barons, or spreading money around to develop ecologically sensitive areas, or tossing trash (at least, back in the 1970s and 1980s it was easy to spot an out-of-stater, usually a Californian, because of their littering ways -- now everyone does it), not to mention their hare-brained tax-cutting ideas like Proposition 13 which morphed north of the border into Measure 5, effectively gutting the state tax structure.

This is not to make Californians the repository for everything that's gone wrong here in the Appalachia of the West, just to explain some of the animosity toward our neighbors to the south. A condition that Californians, thankfully, have never learned.

[Cleita]

27. So it's the Californians that tossed the trash.

I guess scapegoating must be a human condition. Here in California, they blame the Mexicans.

I gotta agree with you on Proposition 13, but it wasn't Californians who voted into law in Oregon, but Oregonians so really place the blame in the right hands.

[gratuitous]

34. No, I'm just saying this is how Californians earned animosity

We Oregonians have done quite well fouling up our state all by ourselves, and sometimes by imitating the dominant culture to our south. As bad as Prop 13 was in California, Measure 5 was a complete disaster in Oregon, seeing as how we don't have a sales tax, or other massive industries to take up the slack in the tax structure like California had (movies, silicon valley, tourism, agriculture, etc.).

And to the littering thing, as I said, was an easy thing to spot 20 or 30 years ago, when the Oregon public schools devoted whole sections of the school year to ecology and care for the environment. But we don't do that anymore; not fundamental readin' writin' and 'rithmetic for the know-nothing faction (not to mention its hippy-dippy connotations; after all, why take care of the planet when Jesus is coming back soon, and besides, what has the planet ever done for us?), of which Oregon has an ample home-grown variety.

But yeah, there's still plenty of residual animosity toward Californians here in Stumptown.

[Guaranteed]

36. I'm sorry, but that sounds like scapegoating to me. nt

[gratuitous]

37. Don't be sorry

That's what it is -- in part.

I'm trying to present a balanced, nuanced picture and that's apparently beyond folks' grasp right now. Understandable, because that's what drives our popular culture of absolute winners and absolute losers. Certainly Californians aren't wholly to blame for all of the ills currently plaguing Oregon, but California and its cultural dominance isn't wholly absolved for some of the region's problems, either.

[Cleita]

40. Yeah, the people who voted for Bush will

still blame Californians for their problems.

[earth mom]

43. It's true-Many Oregonians don't like Californians...

Being an ex-Californian, I've experienced their bigotry first hand myself. Funny thing though, when I meet new people that I find to be Oregonians, I often don't say where I'm from (because of the bigotry I've experienced) and have found myself not on the same wavelength with them in the first place-though I don't hold it against them. Usually, I've found that I have better rapport with people who I discover aren't Oregonians either and are transplants from California or other states. Go figure. :shrug:

To the OP: sorry you had to experience that kind of treatment!

[sakabatou]

45. Whenever I got out of state, and tell ppl i'm from CA

they always think I'm from LA. :grr:

[cornermouse]

10. If it makes you feel better...

When you live in the midwest, whether its sports, education, or foot stools, all you hear in the way of positive comments on the tv is about the west coast (usually California), the east coast (usually New York), and Texas.

Example: Do you remember how angry the sportscasters were when the World Series involved Kansas City and St. Louis?

As far as the media is concerned the midwest doesn't exist.

[IChing]

13. I live where "sideways" was filmed

Yes, the Illinois wine vineyards are well known in Illinois.

That's why we only drink gallo here, because we can't get that good illinois wine.

Your girlfriend and your girlfriend's family,
are neither
your friend or family.

I would re-access what your moral priorities are.

[Guaranteed]

32. I did too.

Graduated from UCSB and lived near Vandenburg for about a year, too.

BTW my girlfriend recognized what was going on later. She said it was the inferiority complex thing.

[Guaranteed]

33. It was also funny that about 20 minutes after my question to him

and the Sideways tirade he was talking about how wine changes over time in the bottle and that it's an "animal." I had a big smirk on my face at that point.

[IChing]

38. I 'm glad your girlfriend "came around" after time

but this "time" thing sounds like a problem of judging character and moral bigoted attacks unrealized needs a little more in the development, conversation and growth in your relationship to her and to her family.

You have the intellectual ability to do so,
so good luck.

[Guaranteed]

39. She just wasn't about to say anything in front of everybody and

the guy.

I, actually, had dropped it and was talking to her about it later.

[noahmijo]

15. As a New Yorker I'll say this

I'll live in the shittiest section of any section (except in Orange County) of California before I'll ever live in the "cleanest" section of any yokeville rube state in which 90%+ of the populus are uneducated hicks.

PS If it wasn't for the state of California I'd like to know just who these people think would pay their share of the national debt when they can't even pay for their own fuckin roads.

[cornermouse]

22. Yeah. Midwesterners hear stuff like this all the time.

After a few decades of hearing stuff like that, you find yourself turning sort of sour on California and New York.

[carolinayellowdog]

28. As a yokeville rube state dweller I'll say this

populace is spelled P-O-P-U-L-A-C-E

[Cleita]

16. Jeeze, I used to run into the same bigotry out of state.

So it's spread to Illinois now. I used to tell people that most of the assholes that you regard as Californians came from another state because no one wanted them there. Then I would tell them that California was a very large state with a varied population and geography so painting with a broad brush was inappropriate. Then if they were still listening I would add that as the fifth (then) largest economy in the world that most of the tax money that keeps their state going probably came from a Californian.

[peacetalksforall]

18. Funny...you were all talking about the movie Sideways and he is also

talking about tipping the state of California (sideways). When I was getting similarly bashed, the words 'nuts and fruitcakes' were used instead of garbage.

Forget about him. The word garbage is much less interesting than nuts and fruitcakes. He is a dullard (as they used to say in England which is good enough word until you know what a dullard is called in IL).

Just another foxrush echo chamberhead.

[Cleita]

24. That's the granola joke.

Q. Why is California like Granola?

A. Because once you separate the fruits and the nuts, you still have the flakes.

HAHA :eyes:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

30. When I first moved to Texas from California I heard some of that

...type of foolishness.

It was fun to bash the new girl in town who just happened to be from California. It was always from the same type of person,too. The insecure type that usually talk too loud and are always interrupting you. The sort that have to be tearing someone else down to make themselves look better.

Now I deal with wise cracks because I live in Texas. What I've learned is some people never mature beyond being petty.

[cprise]

31. CA doesn't educate its children

...and it has zero-tolerance laws to make sure they end up in prison for relatively minor infractions. The state has little to recommend it as an example of left-wing policy.

As for the vintner-bigot, he sounds sexually frustrated to me: Sideways was a GREAT movie.

Anyway its too bad you didn't take the opportunity to quip about OC or Sacramento when he was talking about 'garbage'. :)

[gardenista]

44. Well, was his wine any good? If he's so uneducated about CA vintners

I have doubts about his ability to produce a decent bottle of wine.

As for his problems with Sideways, he sounds like a prude who can't handle anyone else having fun. That's also why he doesn't like CA.

Wear your CA colors proud!

[xchrom]

35. a friend was in texas not long ago

and whenever he told someone he was from cali all he got ''cali land of fruits and nuts'', where all the perverts come from, homos and so forth.

well, i have hope that your winery guy will stay the hell out of cali.
he's not welcome -- in case he lurks here.

[leesa]

41. Funny. That guy is so jealous of Californians he can't see straight!

[taught_me_patience]

42. great hypocracy

bash California but take our tax money!

yeah... California is so horrible with our diverse population, liberal social values, and tremendous ingenuity and economy

[kwassa]

46. Name a famous Illinois winery (the climate and soil are wrong)

There are extensive winery tours around the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. They are extremely popular with tourists. We did a long tour two years ago with knowledgeable locals.

Guess what? After all these years, New York wines are still mostly terrible. A few rose to merely mediocre.

California makes some of the very best wines in the world. That's the fact, Jack. And, there is good wine to be had at fairly low prices.

[Cha]

48. Ye Gods!

I thought Sideways was FUNNY! I think about it now and then..long after I've seen the movie.

But I've lived all over the USA..although I must say..California is one of my favorite places on Earth.