Every week I have a different theory about why British people and Americans are different. The theory normally lasts about three to five days (during which time I bask in the smug glow of someone who has just solved an anthropological puzzle) before which some peskily irrefutable piece of evidence looms to the contrary and I am forced back into thinking that Americas are just... odd.
This week's theory: In their day-to-day lives, domestic arrangements and theories of government Americans are more private than English people.
Evidence to the contrary: Santa Barbara beach on Christmas Day.
California, perhaps more than anywhere else in America, is an epiphany of privacy and individualism. It is the site of tax revolts and home ownership. Southern Californians drive in privatised air conditioned bubbles along white ribbons of elevated freeways which have replaced desiccated public transport systems. The west coast exports to the rest of America the exaggerated crime statistics, no-go neighborhoods, car-jackings and race riots that are rendered in nightmarish cinematic splendor in the collective Californian imagination. Yet the Santa Barbara breakwater on Christmas Day, what should be the most privatized, home centered day of the year, is nothing less than a carnival. The beach path is so congested with people on bikes, skateboards, Rollerblades, segweys and, for some reason, wiry golf carts, that cycling becomes almost impossible. On the roadside families are walking dogs which vary in size from rat-like small to Christmas-pantomime big. Meanwhile Santa Barbara's battalions of homeless, who are normally seen shuffling purposefully in ones and twos up and down State Street sit in clusters on the sand drinking beer from plastic cups. In the distance are ball-games, picnics and windsurfers. Even the sea itself is a riot of activity, thick with pods of dolphins see-sawing across the bay and bemused pelicans watching the crowds from the waves. Compare this to England where everyone is inside. On Christmas Day you could nap in the middle of an A road and not be disturbed until the first boxing day sales opened. If it wasn't for family shaped silhouettes backlit by Christmas lights in the windows of every home, the streetscapes would look little different in the first few hours of a neutron bomb attack.
Maybe its just the weather.
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