Two months ago, some friends and I converged into a rented house in Dana Point, California. Two of my housemates moved up from San Diego, one came from Pittsburgh, and two of us came from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Dana Point is a city in the southern part of Orange County, California. It is north of San Clemente, west of San Juan Capistrano, and south of Laguna Beach. The most prominent feature of Dana Point is the Dana Point Harbor.

A pamphlet I read when I first arrived here stated that the population of Dana Point is roughly 35,000. The brochure went on to say that of those 35,000 people, there are approximately 75% Caucasian, 20% Hispanic, 6% Asian, and .06% African American.

In the time I have been in Orange County, I have seen the beauty described by SEF, and the disgusting excess described by fuzzy and blue, and to be honest I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. I grew up poor in Ann Arbor, a University town that has a highly educated and wealthy populace, but then later lived in a fairly economically depressed section of West Chicago when I made a pretty hefty salary. So in a sense, I've been the poor guy in the rich town and the rich guy in the poor town.

As much as I feel guilty about living somewhere as clean and beautiful as Dana Point (though terminally bland and boring), when others who are, in my opinion, equally deserving of such pleasantess are forced to live in much less desireable places, I can't really complain.