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Emmett Watson, a curmudgeonly columnist for the Seattle Times, has conducted an anti-California crusade for years. MOUNT THE RAMPARTS! FIGHT CALIFORNICATION! exhorts the headline of a recent Watson tirade. The columnist is the founder of Lesser Seattle, an antibooster organization that seeks to "keep the bastards out" by exaggerating the city's negative characteristics, such as its notorious rainfall. The organization's slogan: "Have a Nice Day -- Somewhere Else!" Watson insists that his crusade is tongue in cheek, but many newly arrived Californians take less satirical slurs to heart. "Our very first day the Welcome Wagon lady called on us and told us that people here think Californians fail to recycle, pollute the air, ruin natural resources, litter, and bring smog, congestion and overgrowth," a transplanted housewife recalls. "Some welcome."
Margot and Howard Grim, a young couple who moved with three children from Sonoma County, Calif., to Woodinville, Wash., so they could afford to buy a house, say they have not encountered overt antagonism so much as occasional turns of a subtle cold shoulder. In their case it has been directed at their North Californian "alternative life-style" preferences such as Zen meditation and organic gardening. "Oh, you guys are so granola!" one staid neighbor told them early on. As a result, they have become gun-shy about admitting their California origins and tend to socialize mostly with other Californians. "The irony is that now I've become antigrowth myself!" Margot Grim says, laughing. "Here I am, a Californian, wishing that other Californians would stay away."
How long will the California rush continue? Real estate brokers expect the trend to intensify further before it subsides. A few immigrants, however -- just a few -- are turning around. Consumer finance representative Terry Maxwell, 35, and her husband John, 33, a wine-company salesman, brought their year-old child to Seattle from Orange County just five months ago. Recalls Terry: "We came here to try to live a simple life on one income. I wanted to be June Cleaver; you know, 'Honey, I'm ho-ome!' " But they soon became disillusioned by the surprisingly high cost of living -- including what they call "sneak taxes" on housing, autos and services -- and convinced that opportunity knocks louder back in Southern California. "I'd love to take our house and lake with us, but I can't wait to get back to the whole Southern California scene," Terry Maxwell said as she left last month.
When the Maxwells put their house up for sale, they noted that ten of the 30 prospective buyers who came to see it were from California. None of them would admit it at first, for fear the Maxwells might not sell them the property.