Sometime around this week eight years ago, I was moving into a house in Isla Vista for the first time, not knowing that I would spend five years of my life there. Over the past couple of days I've been working on a mix of a song about Isla Vista by my band Knifey Spoony so it got me thinking about it a bit.
Isla Vista conjures up so many visceral responses from pretty much anyone that ever spent time there. I think if you got a group of those people together (myself included), most people would react with a mixture of nostalgia, horror, sexual arousal, and probably a mild drug flashback. For many of us, this was the first taste of complete independence in our lives - away from our parents, our home towns, our baggage.
Las Vegas is generally called "sin city" but I think that you could argue that the title should really be given to Isla Vista. Vegas isn't really about sin... it's all a giant scam. They want you to think you can be as devious, perverted, and sinful as you want to be, but the truth is, Vegas is no less monitored, controlled, and manipulated than Disneyland. It's just the rides involve strippers and cards. If you doubt that, try to smoke weed in one of the clubs, or start cursing loudly at a card table. I've seen both and the consequences are no fun at all.
Isla Vista on the other hand, is truly sinful, like in the Christian sense of the word. Any moral or ethical violation you'd want to commit is not only available to you, everyone around you is indulging with reckless abandon on a daily basis. Stick a shy, awkward computer nerd with no social skills into Vegas, and he'll be terrified and possibly broke after two hours. Stick the same kid into IV and after a few months, he'll be pounding Jägermeister shots while his house is getting wrecked by 60 people he doesn't know, afterwards heading to Freebirds with some girl whose name is a mystery, and finally high-fiving people dressed as giant sperm walking around DP as the sun starts crawling up over the horizon. Not saying this was my exact experience, but you know.... pretty damn close.
Also I think everyone that has lived in IV can agree that after a couple of months there, going to another, more normal place (like your hometown, your parents' house) is incredibly surreal. It certainly was for me. I think the reason for that is that the prevailing attitude in IV is a kind of libertarian selfishness, basically "I'm going to do whatever the hell I want, and fully support you doing whatever the hell you want!" That's why everyone feels like they belong there, and also why the longer you live there, the more fucked up shit you see.
In pretentious retrospect I think IV is a microcosm of the real world and a great place to live while in college, despite all the aforementioned nonsense (or maybe because of it). You may say "Wait a minute, you just said it was sin city, that's not like the real world at all!" and that's sort of true, but I submit that the only difference between people in IV and the real world is that IV wears its decaying filth on its sleeve. The real world is EXACTLY the same as IV, except it's all dressed up to look otherwise. People just pound shots in bars instead of living rooms, but they're still morons and perverts. And they still have STD's and still cheat on their homework.
There's plenty of opportunities to wreck your life while you're in IV, but most people I know seemed to come out of it for the better. I don't know what kind of person I would have become if I didn't experience what it felt like to become a complete asshole - and how to deal with complete assholes on a daily basis. As backwards as it sounds, I think IV made me respect people more, because you really realize that people are all the same. Anyone can be nice, mean, loving, drunk, high, angry, vindictive, passive aggressive, irresponsible, kind, intelligent, ugly, sexy, funny, stupid, filthy, organized, rich, broke, sad, productive, and everything in between. You get to see people at their best and at their worst there, sometimes in the same day. That nice political science girl you smoked a cigarette with last night? See her walking home in the morning barefoot, with a giant yellow stain on the front of her white dress, crying her makeup off, and about to treat her pounding hangover by pilfering her roommate's Oxycontin stash. It's funny and sad at the same time, but the real kicker is that you might be in a similar boat a week later in IV, and she'll be the one staring wide-eyed at you as you wake up covered in vomit on her lawn, you never know.
Some of you reading this may think I'm misguided or worse - because you hated all the stupid things you experienced, it almost ruined your life, it was gross, etc... and you're not wrong. Most likely though, the reason you feel this way is because you already knew who you were - maybe were already an adult when you lived or partied there. IV's ridiculous, free, excessive environment held no appeal because you didn't need it or had already experienced it elsewhere. But I hope if you read all this, you can see where the rest of us are coming from.
I'll leave you guys with the lyrics to Knifey's anthem to that bizarre place, courtesy of our very own Andrew Hilty, who wrote some pretty spot on words about it.
Isla Vista, no one can compare.
May we pray it wasn’t truth, whatever we discovered there.
Were you my soul’s salvation, or my fall?
You can’t forget a thing you don’t recall
And once I was so sure,
My thoughts were clean and my heart was pure.
But now I know a little too well
That I know you better than I know myself.
Isla Vista, what more can I say?
Somehow I still can’t believe
Your rules will not let me stay.
The Real World is a place I’ve come to fear,
So maybe I will linger one more year.
Day and night I’ll rage...
Hitting on girls who are half my age.
Become a feature of the land,
Or gotta leave now, while I still can.
[chorus]
But I’ll come back to you somehow.
When the music’s up and the sun is
Far below the Crystal Ship.
And then I’ll hear your sacred sound,
Taste your nectar on my lips –
God I love this wretched town.
Isla Vista, don’t you ever change,
And may your memory make me smile
When my priorities rearrange,
But everyone I knew here now is gone
I probably won’t be welcome from now on.
Though once I ruled your streets,
Now I’m just an old nostalgic creep
Raving of the days of my misspent youth,
What you did to me, what I did to you.
Cheers,
-Tim
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