Re:The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult
by tomsaffell on Sunday July 15, 2012 @04:31PM
(#4247997)
This is sometimes called the Peach and Coconut model (1). As a Brit living in Cali, I subscribe to the idea. Have a nice day!
1. http://martinsbusinessenglish.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-tal...
Re:The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult
by philwelch on Sunday July 15, 2012 @05:41PM
(#4248260)
It's not just a California thing. We have the exact same thing here--we call it the "Seattle freeze".
Re:The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult
by jlgreco on Monday July 16, 2012 @02:33AM
(#4249589)
Apologies, accidentally down voted you on my phone..
Anyway, having grown up on the east coast then spending time both in Seattle and back east off and on, I can vouch for the Seattle freeze being rather real.
And to a certain extent I actually find myself liking it. Moving around too much makes forming deeper relationships risky, they end up being more baggage. I see the freeze as a sort of defensive mechanism against that.
Re:The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult
by _delirium on Sunday July 15, 2012 @04:54PM
(#4248080)
I'm not sure how general my experience is (Santa Cruz is the only place I've lived in California, and it's a bit odd). But I tend to think of it as being about compartmentalization more than veneers. There are a reasonable number of people I'd chat with semi-regularly because we were both regulars at the same coffee shop, for example, but we didn't regularly socialize outside that setting. It wasn't superficial interaction in the sense of chatting just to keep up appearances or be polite or something. There is also some of that that goes on, but the people I chatted with regularly were because I actually enjoyed our conversations, and found them personally and/or intellectually fulfilling. I might even look forward to them, or visit a particular coffee shop more often if there was someone I found particularly interesting who frequented it. But I was fine leaving them at that; coffee-shop conversation partners who occupied a certain niche in my life, which didn't necessarily need to get all mixed up in other niches (and vice versa).
It might be a San Francisco thing. I moved to California (Los Angeles) when I was young, and recently moved to the East Coast (New York). I don't have many friends back home, but we(~6) keep up with each other (especially back home) on all sorts of events/happenings. I actually had problems when I first moved that while I was sincere about being friends, people (on the east coast) did not believe I was serious.
Or maybe my circle of friends are not the norm in Cali.
Re:The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult
by gruseom on Wednesday July 18, 2012 @03:09AM
(#4259719)
Damn, I missed my chance to add that this distinction was captured perfectly by the late great John Callahan in his cartoon "The Difference Between LA and NY":
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanfeeley/5551037426/
... except that that's a censored version. In the one I remember, "Drop Dead" was "Fuck You", as it should be.
Later, when I went to France, I found that there was an initial aloofness that I mistook for vague dislike. But after a while, this went away and what I found instead was a much more substantial and very real affinity.