as someone studying anthropologhy, sociology and history does anyone here agree

[dwtherealbb]

with me that the classic Beach Boys ( which I'll define as the period from Surfin Safari to Holland) strike you as an allegory of southern California at the time? Like SoCal in the early 60s they were a happy go-lucky car and surf band. By the early 70s they had turned to drugs (or at least Brian and Dennis had) and had a much more cynical or at least deeper stuff to their music just as the culture of early 1960s California was unrecognizable by the early 70s. Some of the stuff like "The Welfare Song" "Don't Go Near The Water" or "Here She Comes" would have been dismissed by the record companies in 1962. In their early days they were all clean cut kids but by the early 70s, almost all of them had beards.

Lastly, I think that by the early 70s, the life they had lived as kids (working class suburban family in ranch house, dad works in industrial job, mom stays home etc) was mostly gone or unsustainable and many of the people who lived in the blue collar suburbs of the South Bay, Gateway Cities and San Gabriel Valleys mostly left LA County. From 1970 to 1980, the white population of Los Angeles county declined by a million people. I'm not trying to sound racist or anything but  the original culture of early to mid 1960s SoCal was mostly displaced.

Anyone here kind of agree?

[I. Spaceman]

It is less allegory than literal microcosm.

[pixletwin]

Yes.

[I. Spaceman]

Also, the original culture of early to mid 1960's Southern California incorporated the black and Latino experience. That wasn't just a white thing, by any means. Maybe surfing and middle-class suburbia was, but there is a lot more to it than that.

[dwtherealbb]

another thing I'll add is that the beach culture itself changed dramatically. I was watching the movie Secondhand lions and the beach culture was dramatically different than what it had been ten years earlier.