I've forgotten who said it, but I remember the quote: "Riverside is just like K-Mart… only without a roof." Driving back from LA the other day, from a long and rainy excursion in what I consider one of the most unpleasant cities in the world (with the possible exceptions of Baghdad and Mogadishu), I was reminded of the fact that my own hometown has one of the worse reputations of any city in Southern California.
True, Riverside is no Detroit or Cleveland or (to use an example that my family will be more than familiar with) Newark. Its name, once mentioned, doesn't immediately conjure images of poverty or crime. Nevertheless, in the context of Southern California, with all its pretensions of being a year-round paradise with gorgeous weather and identical gated communities, Riverside is certainly not an ideal.
Having been my home for a little more than a decade, Riverside has grown on me.
Its beautiful spots and its imperfections, its suburban sprawl and rural-looking slums, its unique sleepiness (readily apparent while walking through the perpetually empty, "bustling" downtown), its terrible traffic, its hundred coffee shops and lack of interesting night spots-each has become a bond between me and this town.
The terrain of Riverside has become my terrain, from Jurupa to the track-homes in Mission Grove to the Mission Inn to the area just beyond Chicago that every UCR student seems to avoid like the plague.
Even so, I remember when I first came here from Orange County, borne away unwillingly into exile in the Inland Empire like so many children.
In my mind, I saw wasteland. I remember looking aghast at open fields without perfectly manicured grass, being disgusted by the fact that the shopping center down the street was built more than a decade before, feeling queasy when I considered the fact that the brick walls lining the freeway didn't have decorative accents on them.
Coming from the gleaming citadel of suburban civilization that is the OC, Riverside seemed like a place on the edge of the world.
Over the next several years, though, Riverside grew on me. I grew accustomed to its topography, to its features, to its beauties and blemishes. Memories imprinted their faces on different buildings and plots of land.
I began to walk around town and think to myself: "There I received my first kiss. There I first read Dostoyevsky. There I stood in line for four hours waiting for the release of the last Harry Potter book."
In future, I know Riverside will be different. The continuing influx of bourgeois refugees in flight from sky-high real estate prices in LA, Orange and San Diego Counties will continue to change its character.
Bearing Ikea furniture and Pier 1 furnishings in their back seats, these middle class elites will refurbish my home-town, will imprint their own expectations and preferences on it.
Open plots of land will provide space for a dozen more Starbucks. The last remaining orange groves will become fully-furnished, red-tile roofed mini-estates, a la the suburban communities of Orange County.
And then, one day, Riverside will cease being a K-Mart. It will have become, like so many Southern California communities, just another engorged Pottery Barn with attached food court.
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