California Basics

An assortment of fairly basic observations and tips about California, mostly for foreigners and people unfamiliar with California's ways....

Measurements, Distances, Addresses, and Directions

Like the rest of America, California is still entirely pre-metric: all road distances are measured in miles; speeds in miles per hour (MPH); and gas (petrol) is sold and consumed by the US gallon. There are no concessions at all to metric users -- virtually no one will understand you if you try to use kilometres, litres, kilograms, degrees Celsius, etc. Twenty-four hour clock times (e.g. 23.45 instead of 11:45 pm) are also rarely understood here.

In urban areas, distances are often informally measured in "blocks"; for example, you might be told that the nearest post office is "three blocks down Main Street". This is usually fairly self-explanatory -- city and suburban blocks are normally defined in relation to the larger cross-streets. The resulting block size varies accordingly, but in city centers a block is usually somewhere around several hundred metres long; suburban blocks can be somewhat larger. In urban areas, most street addresses are prefixed with the block number; e.g. "2125 Main Street" will normally be in the 21st block of Main Street (and the nearest cross street may well be "21st Street"). The block in this example may be referred to as the "2100" ("twenty-one-hundred") block. A useful side effect of this numbering scheme is that 2125 Main Street is usually eleven blocks from 1025 Main Street (by the way, nearly every American city has a Main Street somewhere, just like every Australian city has a Church or Station Street, every British city a High Street or Broadway. Another oddly-frequent name here is "Frontage Road", which is apparently synonymous with "access road", and is usually found running alongside a highway. There seems to be one in every city, town, and village...).

Many cities have numbered street names (i.e. those peculiarly American street names like "14th Street"); some even have lettered street names, e.g. "B Street". This sometimes leads to odd-looking signs like the one on an exit ramp from the Interstate 880 freeway in the Bay Area which reads in its entirety "A Street Downtown", or the "Eye Street" sign between H and J Streets in Bakersfield. Commonly, many cities also have schemes where avenues run in one direction, streets in the perpendicular direction (but this is often unreliable).

Spoken street names are almost always given without the "Street", "Road", or "Avenue" part, e.g. 17th Avenue is "17th", Oxford Street is simply "Oxford" (e.g. "It's on Oxford about a block north of Hearst", or "I think it's 2125 Main"). City locations are often given by the nearest intersection, e.g. "It's at Market and Montgomery", meaning "it" is somewhere in the blocks defined by the intersection of Market and Montgomery Streets (not always actually on the intersection, though). "It's on University near McGee" has a similar sort of meaning. Unlike (for example) Britain, California does not have a tendency to clump together a bunch of streets, roads, avenues, mews, etc. all with the same name --there's unlikely to be a Muswell Hill Broadway near Muswell Hill Avenue right next to Muswell Hill Road and Muswell Hill Mews as there is in London -- so it's almost always safe to leave off the "Street", "Avenue", "Road" or whatever.

Some addresses will look something like "1025 S. Figueroa" (or "1025 Sth. Figueroa"); here the "S." stands for south, meaning the address is in the 1000 block of the part of Figueroa that is south of the city center or a particular intersection. It's not always obvious what the "south" (or whatever) is relative to, but it's likely to be a particular local landmark or large street. Similarly with addresses like "4400 E. 14th, Oakland" (East of Broadway in Oakland) or "1400 North Elm".

Road Signs

Road signs in the United States do not conform to any international standard (at least none that I've ever seen); nonetheless, they are fairly consistent and coherent throughout the country. The signs tend to spell things out in English (e.g. "Freeway Ends") rather than relying on the international graphics and icons. This is fine if you can read English quickly....

California Cars

An actual quote: "Chevy (tm) Tahoe (R), the one sport utility vehicle whose vast size and comfort make it perfect for self-discovery." -- Chevrolet ad, back cover, Smithsonian magazine, Jan 1998. You can't get more Californian than that...

There's an arms race going on out there: like Californians themselves, California Cars are getting fatter and heavier by the year, and drivers in smaller cars are increasingly besieged by intimidating fleets of vast SUVs (four wheel drive sports utility vehicles) like the Chevy Tahoe. This is a place where size matters, and combined with the cult of the SUV, you'll see the most bloated, overpowered, ungainly -- and ludicrously ugly -- cars and trucks in the world here (the latest horror is the Cadillac Escalade, a huge SUV made by (yes!) Cadillac, with all the stylishness, engineering quality, and attention to efficiency we've come to expect from that august company; needless to say, the Escalade is not designed for anything but city and suburban driving). Remember, this is a country where a full size Honda Accord is categorized as small, and Toyota Landcruisers and Ford Explorers are typically thought of as only mid-sized, especially compared to their larger competitors such as the Chevy Tahoe or Ford Excursion.

However, not all Californian cars are huge stereotypical "Yank Tanks", "boats", or "land yachts" -- that is, the huge Cadillacs, Buicks, and Oldsmobiles you see in movies and TV shows. For years, the best-selling car in America has been the Honda Accord -- and many cars in California are smallish Japanese or European cars (or their American equivalents). There are also a large number of mini-vans, vans, four wheel drive (4WD) cars or SUV's, and small trucks; the traditional really large cars (the Cadillacs, etc.) now seem to be reserved mostly for the old or the poor (this is less so in the rural parts).

This means that if you chose wisely, you will have little trouble with the cars themselves -- despite the horror stories of wrestling ten ton monsters on the hills of San Francisco, you're actually likely to end up with a car that's reasonably easy to drive and park. Most rental cars have automatic transmissions and air conditioning; both can come in handy when stuck in the typical California traffic jam. Automatic transmissions are also highly-recommended for keeping your sanity while driving in San Francisco, with its combination of steep hills and stop / start traffic (the phrase (and title) "The Hills Of San Francisco" is not metaphorical -- they're really steep in some places, and not much of San Francisco is flat).

Smaller Californian cars are usually referred to as being either "sub-compact" or "compact" (bearing in mind that "small" is relative here -- there's really nothing the size of a 2CV or Fiat Uno). "Sub-compact" typically corresponds to small-to-medium sized European or Japanese cars; a Honda Civic is plausibly sub-compact. "Compact" roughly corresponds to medium-to-large European or Japanese cars: a Lexus or a Saab or the typical Toyota Camry or Holden Commodore would all plausibly qualify as "compact". Once again, the term is relative, and varies in usage; in general, a "compact" seems to be anything that isn't a traditional large American car, van, or large SUV. These classifications are used extensively for car rentals, parking lot spaces, etc., so it pays to know which is which, especially if you want to avoid renting a typical bloated large ("normal"-sized) unparkable soft-suspension soft-steering gas-guzzling Buick, Cadillac, or Lincoln Town Car.

Californian cars are fitted with stringent pollution control devices; these are usually tested every two years. These devices, while being a good idea, also make the cars seem a little sluggish. Most cars now use unleaded gas; this is universally available (in fact, leaded gas is not available any more in most parts of the US).

Many American cars double up the brake lights and the turn signal lights -- i.e. the (red) brake light on the relevant side flashes when the turn signal is used. There are no separate (yellow or orange) turn signal lights on the back of the car. This can be lethally ambiguous -- it's often difficult to tell whether a car intends turning or is stopping in a stop-start manner with a defective brake light. (Of course, since most turns in California are done without using any signals at all -- see below -- this is usually a moot point). A significant number of imports have been specially made to do this as well.

Some of the newer American cars have an automatic seat belt arrangement -- the seat belt is attached to a sliding lug at the front of the doors, and moves back to the normal position when the door is closed and the ignition turned on. The usual sign of this is the shoulder strap appears to be fixed to the door somewhere near the dash rather than behind the shoulder, and there's a small slot running along the inside of the car just above the door. Don't try to move the seat belt yourself -- it's that way on purpose, and although it's both confusing and counter-intuitive, you just have to close the door and wait for it to slide into place. And remember: you must also (manually) fasten the lap belt part of the seat belt once the automatic bit is in place; leaving the lap belt unfastened is extremely dangerous and very easy to do with automatic belts. This great "feature" may disappear over the next few years; I've been told that automatic seat belts have been made illegal (or at least inadvisable) over the last year or two, but I still see them around.

Another slightly daft idiosyncrasy is that some cars sold in America don't allow you to start the ignition until you've done something like depress the clutch or the brake pedal or put the car (if an automatic) into Park (the specifics vary). This can be pretty embarrassing when it happens at the car rental place -- you sit there trying to start the car and nothing happens, no matter what you do. Don't worry too much about this -- most Americans can't get this right either. Variations on this theme abound: some cars won't let you drive with the doors unlocked (or they automatically lock your doors for you when you start moving); others don't have a separate parking brake release -- it's automatically released when you move the car's transmission into drive, for example.

One more thing to look out for is that American cars are specifically designed to allow you to leave your full headlights on when you leave the car. Some cars will try to signal that you've left them on -- a few pathetic beeps or the muted chiming of a bell -- but few of them turn them off (or down) for you as you would expect if you were used to European, British, or Australian models. It's an easy way to lose your battery....

Gas Stations

Some gas stations are mixed full service (i.e. an attendant does all the work) and self-serve; the majority nowadays are self-serve only. The full service pumps at a mixed gas station are usually well marked -- if you don't want full service, find the self serve pumps in the same station, as you pay a lot extra for using full service pumps, whether you have the attendant do the work or not. At full service places you do not normally tip the attendant; you do, however, pay a fair bit extra for the gas for this privilege (you can normally expect them to check the oil and clean the windshield as well as pump the gas).

Self-serve pumps are fairly self-explanatory in use and similar to gas pumps elsewhere in the western world, with most pumps needing to be explicitly turned on before they'll actually pump (this is usually a simple matter of pushing a well-labeled button or lever).

Virtually all gas stations take major credit cards (at least Visa and MasterCard); some charge more for credit card transactions than for cash; some will require some form of valid identification for credit card use (e.g. a driver's license -- a foreign one often seems to work, especially if it has your photo on it). Most self-serve gas stations allow you to pay by credit card for your gas at the pump by passing your card through a card reader on the pump, without an attendant or clerk being involved. It is usually fairly obvious whether this is possible or not (it's heavily advertised...), and it's mostly pretty easy and very convenient to use, with instructions in English and Spanish.

Most of the self-serve places are "pay first" gas stations, especially in urban and suburban areas. At these places you park next to the pump, and either use your card as described above before starting to pump the gas (by far the easiest and most convenient way to pay), or walk up to the cashier or attendant and pay first, with cash or by card. If you're paying by cash before pumping, just say something like "Twenty [dollars] on [pump] 7", give the cashier the money (the twenty dollar bill), and go back out and start filling the gas tank. If you used less than the twenty dollars, just go back and get the change; otherwise, you can drive off without further bothering the clerk. If you're using a credit card at a "pay first" place, give them your credit card first and just tell them what pump it's for (and how much you want to pump if you're not filling the tank, e.g. "twenty on five..."). You usually can't pump more than you asked for.

If you can't tell whether it's a "pay first" place (they usually say so with a sign just above the pump or on the cashier's window), it's best to assume it is and go through the motions described above (paying first is common enough even at places where it isn't necessary -- and anyway, the clerk will tell you if they don't want you to pay first). Some places are only "pay first" between (say) 6pm and 7am.

Many of the gas stations in rougher areas have a single bullet-proof bunker in the center of the gas station where you pay (before you pump, of course) through a thick bullet-proof window, talking to the cashier through a microphone or a small hole in the glass. This can be fairly intimidating at first but it's not too bad when you get used to it. You could always drive on and find a nicer place.

Californian gas stations no longer sell leaded gas, offering instead a full range of unleaded gas in various octane ratings; most places have some sort of diesel as well. The fancier gas types, usually sold as "Plus Unleaded" or "Supreme" or similar, are usually not worth it unless your car really needs them -- stick to ordinary unleaded. The major brands of gas available in California are Chevron, BP, Exxon, Valero, Shell, etc.; prices vary somewhat according to region and brand, but are still a bit lower than most other places in the western world.

Most gas stations have some form of air supply for tires; this is sometimes out the back or not in any obvious place -- it pays to ask. Some places do not have any air or water outlets (even though it's apparently required by law); others charge you a quarter to use the facilities, so have a good look first. Similar remarks apply for restrooms -- some places have them, some don't, and you may have to search a while or get a key from the cashier. In my experience, all Chevron stations have restrooms.

Special note: if you drive north into Oregon, all gas stations there are full service. You are not allowed to pump your own gas, and the attendants will often get quite unpleasant if you try (in many cases you can't do it anyway, since you need a special key). After years of self-service I initially found this irritating and paternalistic, but it's the law there (and it doesn't cost any more than self-serve gas in California). (A potential explanation for this law comes from a reader who believes it's due to someone who blew themselves (or someone else) up smoking while refueling and sued as a result. All too plausible, unfortunately. Another explanation is the strength of union jobs up there...).

Car and Driver Insurance

All drivers and cars must be insured for at least third-party injury and damage. The way this is done varies tremendously -- sometimes it's the car (and any driver fitting certain profiles) that is insured, other times it's the driver (and any car he or she is driving). Since injuries involving cars invariably result in huge law suits and years of lawyering, insurance is not just legally mandatory, it's essential for your financial health. You can get extra insurance that covers you if you are hit by an uninsured driver (there are a lot of these in California).

You are required by law to be insured -- and if pulled over by a police officer, to be able to show proof of insurance. If you are a foreigner or from out of state, you should check very carefully with your own insurance company, and with the policy of the owner of the car you are driving (if the car's well-insured, and you're a normal driver, you're probably insured by the owner's policy -- but don't just assume this!). If you are in an accident, whether you caused it or not, and you are uninsured, you will most likely be subject to crippling legal and medical fees.

Health Care and Insurance

If you are a foreigner traveling in America, it is a very good idea not only to have extensive health insurance, but to have proof of this insurance on you at all times (and an ability to pay at least some part of emergency treatment). The stories you hear about American hospitals refusing to treat accident victims without insurance aren't always myths -- they're sometimes true, or at least based on truth. Hospitals are required to treat you in an emergency regardless of your ability to pay, but they are not legally required to treat you beyond the point where your injuries have stabilized, nor to provide continuous non-emergency treatment. All hospitals, regardless of funding, are expected to try as hard as they can to recover their charges from you on or before release, so even publicly-funded hospitals will charge you (and pursue you legally for non-payment) unless you can prove indigence or some sort of Federal or State welfare assistance.

If you are injured in an accident and you do not have insurance, or you can't convince the ambulance or hospital staff that your insurance is going to be able to foot the bill, you will normally be taken to the default County or City hospital -- i.e. the one that is fully state or federally-funded. In urban areas, this can be a desperately overcrowded place whose staff tend to be overworked gunshot and drug overdose specialists; in rural areas, it might mean a trip to a hospital a long way from the accident scene. In many cases, you may be sent to one of these hospitals even if you're insured (it may actually be the nearest and most appropriate place, and for real emergencies they're as good a place as anywhere for the first few hours); once you've been stabilized, you will quickly be transferred to a hospital that takes your insurance (or thrown out). Hopefully your insurance will pick up the bill for the emergency treatment at the first hospital; if not, in a serious accident you'll be up for huge amounts of money (and you'll probably face bankruptcy). Remember, too, that ambulance and other emergency services are often private; you will be charged large amounts of money for using them, even though you may not have been in a position to make any decision one way or another at the time. Normally your insurance will cover this, but if it doesn't, once again, you'll be heavily out of pocket.

What does it take to convince someone that you're well insured? It depends. In America, proof of insurance is usually given by a credit-card sized card with the details of the insurance provider and your name. If this card is one of the easily-recognized ones (i.e. one of the familiar U.S. or California health care insurers or providers), and the ambulance or hospital staff can find it in your wallet or purse, you're probably O.K. Otherwise, if you're conscious you can try to tell the staff who your insurer is; if they've heard of it, or can verify the details (by phone), then you're also probably O.K. For small-scale emergencies, a platinum credit card might be enough, but remember that emergency room treatment is staggeringly expensive (literally thousands of dollars for even the most trivial of treatments), and uninsured people treated by private hospital emergency rooms for serious problems in a real emergency will normally be bankrupted by the experience (unless they're already too poor to pay, in which case they'll be ejected from the hospital as soon as is legally possible).

There are a few exceptions to these rules, but as a foreigner, be prepared for the worst: your insurance will probably not be recognized here without a lot of effort on your part, and any default Government or social medical coverage from home will probably not cover the bills here, or provide only partial coverage for bills run up in circumstances that were not clear or well-explained to you (you are likely to "consent" to all sorts of things you didn't understand the financial implications of at the time, for example).

For non-emergency treatment (including what might be termed "urgent but not life-threatening" problems), if you're unfamiliar with an area and / or your insurance company doesn't cover the area, you should try to contact the local county or city health services for a referral to a local clinic or local doctors that do this sort of work without you having to belong to an approved insurance group. This will usually still cost you a fair amount of money, but it will be much cheaper than going to a hospital emergency room or even an outpatients facility. The local telephone directory will have a listing of city and county health departments; start with one of the main numbers and keep trying until someone is able to get you the right number or a referral. Alternatively, many hospitals and local doctor's offices will also give this information if you ask the right questions.

California Cafes and Restaurants

California prides itself on being the food and wine capital of the United States. There's certainly a lot of justification for that in places like San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica, La Jolla, the Wine Country, etc., but it's also true that Out There in the sticks the food is just as likely to be standard "International Cuisine" (i.e. fried chicken and "New York Steaks") or worse (ever wondered how they could make Calimari Steaks from boneless squid? Well, take a lot of calimari and a heavy hammer; bash away until the bits have congealed into something roughly steak-shaped; deep fry until vulcanized...). But you can always cheer yourself up by remembering that even out there in the middle of nowhere, the food will still almost always be better than anything you could ever get in England -- and at half the price.

If you're like me when I first came here, Californian restaurants and cafes will actually provide you with a pleasant culture shock: not only are they usually clean, cheap, open useful hours, relatively healthy, and serve reasonable food, but even in the humblest of places you'll be given a bewildering choice of things like bread, cheese, and coffee. For example, even ordering something as simple as a cheese sandwich with a side salad and coffee, you'll need to be ready to answer the inevitable questions:

• "What kind of bread?". Your choices here are likely to be sourdough (white), wheat (brown), rye (white or brown), 7-grain, 9-grain, sourdough roll, seeded roll, batard, croissant, etc. "Wheat" is always a safe choice, if you ask me. Don't ask for "white" or "brown" bread -- there really isn't such a simple thing here; waitresses will roll their eyes and think you're from Iowa.
  
  

• "What kind of cheese?". Well, here you're going to have to choose from a bunch of unlikely cheese types like "Swiss" (!), "Cheddar", "Jack" (Monterey Jack), provolone, etc. "Swiss", by the way, simply means the cheese has holes in it, presumably drilled in the Great New Jersey Cheese Factory before it was sent over here by cheese tanker. If I don't know the place well, I always pick "Jack", which at least has pretensions to being Californian.
  
  

• "What kind of salad?" This one's a real killer if you're English and think all salads are just bits of lettuce and cucumber with whole tomatoes. "Caesar" or "House" are probably the safest bets here.
  
  

• "What kind of [salad] dressing?". Typical choices are "oil and vinegar", "thousand island", "ranch", etc. Again. if I don't know the place, I ask for "oil and vinegar" -- it's kind of hard to destroy something so simple. But it happens.
  
  

• "What kind of coffee?". There's more than "black" or "white" here -- typical choices include "house" (plain brewed coffee), espresso, mocha, capuccino, latte, etc.; most are usually available in caffeinated or decaffeinated ("decaf") versions (a.k.a. "leaded" and "unleaded").
  
  

• When a waiter or waitress asks whether you want "cream" in your coffee, they're usually asking whether you want milk. If you're lucky the "cream" will be what's called "half and half", i.e. half milk, half cream; more commonly it'll just be plain old milk. In the better places, your choices will also include "non-fat", "low-fat", and soy milk, all fairly self-explanatory choices, and all fairly well-known (but not always available) in most places in the state.

This sort of song and dance can be intimidating and confusing, and it pays to develop a stock set of answers so that you always have some idea of what you're getting. In most cases, too, the waiter or waitress will not spell out the possible choices unless you ask -- you're expected to know the various standard choices likely to be available, and to ask for them with the order (e.g. "I'll have the House salad with oil and vinegar, a tuna melt on white rye with Swiss, and a decaf giant capuccino, please"). You might also need to know some of the more pretentious terms for coffee in places like Berkeley or Santa Monica -- not knowing the difference between a doppio capuccino and a latte grande could be a major faux pas.

Some additional notes:

• In this country salads are usually served before the main meal, on their own. Don't do what I did when I first got here and sit there with your salad uneaten waiting for your main course so that you can eat it with the salad -- the waiter or waitress will hang around waiting for you to finish the salad before he or she brings the main course.
  
  

• In California an "entree" is the main course, not the appetizer ("entry") course. What we UnAmericans would call an entree is called an "appetizer" here. Don't order an entree thinking it's just a starter -- it will almost always be a large main course dish.
  
  

• "Cookies" are what Britons and Australians call "biscuits"; in California, a biscuit is something quite different -- it's possible (but not advisable) to get something called a "sausage biscuit" here (Americans: think "sausage Oreo" to get some feeling for the horror the phrase "sausage biscuit" causes in British or Australian minds). Similarly, American muffins bear no relationship to their English forebears, nor do scones (always pronounced "scohn", with the long "o") have much to do with English scones. Crumpets exist, but are (confusingly) sometimes called "English Muffins".
  
  

• Restaurants here almost never lay enough cutlery for each place on the table; you end up having to rescue knives and forks (etc.) from departing plates so you can eat the next course. This is almost universal -- it's extremely rare to eat at a place that sets the right amount of utensils either before you eat or as they bring the next course -- and you just get used to keeping your butter knife around for use with your main course. Waiters and waitresses always act surprised or suspicious when you ask for another spoon or fork.
  
  

• Sandwiches here are invariably made using mayonnaise and mustard instead of butter or margarine (mustard on the top slice, mayo on the bottom). The mustard is usually slathered on so thickly that it's almost impossible to taste the rest of the sandwich (which is probably the whole point, come to think of it). While it's fairly easy to stop sandwich makers from using the mustard ("hold the mustard!"), asking them to use butter or margarine (or whatever) instead of mayonnaise is pointless -- most sandwich places simply do not have any butter or anything except mayo and mustard. You'll get used to it.
  
  

• Californian food regulations seem to specify that all sandwiches, regardless of contents, be served with, or preferably contain, things called "pickles". These are usually sharp-tasting pickled sliced cucumbers, and, predictably, these too dominate the taste of any sandwich they're put into. Yes, you can get sandwiches made without pickles, but it's usually a struggle, and you'll be branded UnAmerican for the rest of your life. I say it's worth it, but you may differ (or you may just like the fact that the pickle hides the underlying blandness of the rest of the sandwhich...).
  
  

• Take-away or eat-out food is generally called "take-out" here. If you're at a place that does take-out food, you'll usually be asked whether your order is "for here or to go". If ordering, use something like "I'll have a tuna melt on light rye with jack to go, please", or similar with "for here" instead.
  
  

• The legal (alcohol) drinking age here is twenty-one. This is quite crazy and leads to all sorts of problems in restaurants, bars, and liquor stores. If you look younger than about 30, you will be asked to provide proof of age if you try to buy or order alcohol; in my experience non-USA drivers licenses and the like will not be accepted, and you'll be treated like a child from that point on. Don't get upset at the waiter or store clerk for trying to enforce this -- it's the law, and he or she may lose their job or business by not enforcing it.

I'm a snob about restaurants, but if you're out on the road, the restaurant chains like Pizza Hut, Chevy's, Lyons, or Denny's (etc.) won't kill you; at least you'll eat better in one of them than at one of the you-know-who fast food hamburger ("meat sandwich") places. I believe you're actually better off in a strange town eating at one of the chain places if you haven't got time to scout the area for real restaurants. The food in these places is at least standardized and properly-prepared, if not particularly imaginative (think "New York Steak" or "Chicago Pizza"...).

One of the problems you'll face in places like this is the sheer size of the portions and servings. You've probably noticed that Californians are often (how to say this politely?) larger than life; the size of the meals helps explain why. The amount of (and waste of) food here is staggering. You are not expected to eat everything on your plate unless you're really starving, or you're eating at some sort of hip California Cuisine place where the portions are naturally tiny. In fact, it is quite normal for the waiter or waitress to come around when you've stopped eating and ask whether he or she should wrap the remaining food up for you -- i.e. put it into a "doggy bag" so you can take it home with you and eat it later. This is perfectly acceptable, and it is quite O.K. to ask the waiter or waitress yourself for this.

Oh, and don't forget to tip....

Tipping

Not strictly a driving topic, but if you're not American, tipping (or not tipping) can get you into a bit of trouble, or at least make you quickly unwelcome. Remember, in California (and most of the rest of America), virtually everyone who renders you a non-professional or non-salaried service expects a tip. This includes taxi drivers (15%), hair dressers (15-20%), waiters and waitresses (15% of the check), valet parking attendants (a dollar or two per car retrieved, depending on the size of the car and the difficulty and efficiency of retrieval), bar keeps (just leave the loose change on the bar), bell hops ($1 or more per bag depending on bag size and how far they're lugged), sky caps (the baggage handlers outside airport terminals -- tip them rather more than bell hops), hotel room service people (15-20% for room service meals and drinks, maybe $2-$5 per day for room cleaners if you're feeling kind[2]), etc. You do not usually tip in fast food places, nor do you tip sales assistants, etc. in the normal line of duty.

A handy rule of thumb for tipping in Californian restaurants and cafes: just leave a tip of about double the amount of the sales tax on the check, which is usually in the 7.5-8.5% range, and always itemized separately just above the full total. Make sure they haven't already added a 15% "service charge" on their own, something that is common if you have a party of five or more people. The tip can be left on the table either with or without the rest of the check, or you can add it to your credit card bill, or you can leave it with the full amount at the front desk or cashier. Of course the amount you tip can vary according to how satisfied you were with the service, but don't expect to go back to a restaurant or cafe if you tipped poorly or not at all. Tips are usually regarded as a right, and not (as in Australia, for example), a luxury or something to be earned by extra special service -- in many cases it is a crucial part of the person's income. From personal experience, the IRS (the U.S. tax department) assumes a certain level of tipping, meaning people may actually lose money if you don't tip. This also seems to be true for most of the services mentioned above.

Sales Tax

Sales tax in California is applied to nearly everything except certain items of food, and the amount imposed varies from county to county and from city to city within each county. The important thing for most of us UnAmericans to remember is that sales tax is always applied at the point of sale, and is never included in advertised or marked prices (except gas and newspaper prices, which always include the tax). For example, if a road map has an advertised cover price of (say) $4.95, the actual price to you will be $4.95 plus sales tax -- i.e. probably something around $5.35. Don't do what I did when I first came to California and just give the sales clerk a $5 bill, smile sweetly at him, and say "keep the change" as you walk out of the store... (this is a common embarrassment to first-timers in this country).

One of the reasons for not making the sales tax a part of the published final price (as happens in, for example, Australia), is the wide variation in sales tax amounts. The state sets a base amount -- currently 7.5% of published retail price in California -- and counties and cities are free to add a certain percentage of their own, usually around 0.25 - 1.0%. So a book that might cost (say) $5.21 in Anaheim might cost $5.25 in Berkeley -- making it difficult to put state-wide, let alone US-wide, tax-inclusive price tags on the book. Sales tax amounts are always itemized separately on checks and receipts.

Phones

A few basic tips for foreigners:

• Numbers in the USA and Canada are usually given in the form "(NNN) NNN-NNNN (e.g. "(510) 555 1212") or "1-NNN NNN NNNN" (e.g. "1-510 555 1212"). The number in the parentheses or after the initial "1" ("510" above) is the area code; the rest of the number is the local prefix ("555") followed by the rest of the local number. The initial "1" is not always given but (at least in California) is required to make long-distance calls (this confuses the fact that the USA and Canada's international prefix is also "1"...). Area codes used to be in the form N0N or N1N (e.g. "512" or "202"), but nowadays almost any three digit combination (e.g. "976") can be used.
  
  

• Long distance calls are usually termed "toll calls"; this differentiates them from local calls which are usually "free", i.e. unmetered. What other people call "reverse charges" calls are here called "collect" calls.
  
  

• "1-800", "1-888", "1-877", and "1-866" numbers (e.g. "1-800-555-1212" or "888 555 1212") are toll free numbers. You are not charged for calling these numbers (but be aware of 1-800 numbers that try to entice you to call back on a special 1-900 number...). The "800" and "888" (etc.) here are pseudo area codes.
  
  

• "1-900" and "976" numbers (e.g. "1-900-555-1212" or (510) 976 1212) are definitely not toll-free numbers: these numbers are used for things like sex-talk lines or (increasingly) legitimate things like software support. You will be charged large amounts of money for calling these numbers, typically several dollars a minute. If you accidentally dial one of these numbers, hang up immediately -- the first 15 seconds or so can not now be charged.
  
  

Note: "976" numbers differ from "1-900" numbers in that the "900" is an area code; the 976 is just a local dialing prefix (i.e. part of the local number).

• The number for local directory enquiries (i.e. within the local area code) is 411; for a number out of the local area code, you dial the area code followed by 555-1212, e.g. "510-555-1212" for the 510 area code. Directory enquiries calls are not usually free.
  
  

• There are a bewildering number of local and long distance telephone companies in this country; I can't describe them all here or how to select or use them, but most local telephone books will have a section on how to access long-distance and other carriers. In my experience if you don't know what you're doing, you're better off sticking with one of the larger, better-known carriers like AT&T, MCI or Sprint for toll calls, and the default local carrier for local access.
  
  
• The majority of GSM mobile phones from Europe and Australia will (predictably) not work here -- GSM is not a widespread standard here yet. However, mobile phones are usually easy to rent by the day or week from airport car rental places (etc.) and larger (richer!) hotels, and you can often get them bundled in with car rentals. No one mobile phone company has all of California (let alone the US) well covered for mobile phone service, unfortunately, meaning that if you drive around a lot, you may lose coverage in even large cities, and out in the country or deserts there may be no coverage at all (check with the vendor). In the San Francisco Bay Area, dropouts are particularly bad due to the local geography even in highly populated areas.
  
  
• Mobile phones supposedly support the 9-1-1 emergency number, and are often used to report crashes, crimes, etc., on the roads, but the system isn't 100% reliable. In the one case where I desperately needed to report a serious crime in progress on a local freeway, the mobile phone company (which I'll leave nameless, but it starts with "S"...) proved unable to put me through to the 911 dispatch center at all during repeated tries over a 5 minute period... (and they charged me airtime for the attempts). Still, it's a good idea to have a mobile phone for emergencies.

Californian Hotels and Motels

Hotels and motels in California are pretty much the same as elsewhere in America -- assuming you stay with one of the larger and cheaper chains like Holiday Inn Express, Best Western, Day's Inn, Motel 6, etc., you'll get a pretty good deal (unless you were looking for a resort hotel). You could pay a lot more and stay in the Hiltons and Hyatts of the world, but you could also more profitably venture out into the land of Bed & Breakfast places or historical old inns. I can't give you much advice on those -- your best bet is to find a reputable guide in the travel section of a good bookshop or scour the web with google. The sort of places I'm focusing on here are the good deal places you want to stay at overnight on your way elsewhere, or for a couple of days while touring a particular area.

In any case, the Automobile Association of America (the AAA) publishes a useful Tour Book that describes and rates the various hotels and motels in California and Nevada; see the entries for the CSAA and ACSC in a later section of this guide for details on where to get it. The Tour Book is worth getting, if only to check that there's a reasonable hotel or motel where you're going when you're actually on the road, and to help you book ahead.

Some things to remember:

• You can book "smoke free" or non-smoking rooms at most hotels or motels. These supposedly guarantee that no one has smoked in these rooms in the past few months (or whatever). These are increasingly common, but if you want one, make sure you ask for one when booking just to make sure.
  
  

• Many hotels and motels charge outrageous surcharges to use in-room phones. These surcharges (usually billed as "access fees" or similar) may be applied every time you use the phone, even for local calls; more often, they're applied to toll (long distance) calls. Some places also force you to use an expensive long distance carrier rather than your own choice. In both cases you may end up paying quite a few dollars more than you should, so always check whether there's a surcharge or limits on your access to long distance carriers. There's usually a working pay phone close by that could actually be cheaper; the local phone directory book will also be able to help you (it will spell out your rights, how to find out what you're going to be charged, and how to access cheaper services).
  
  

• Some motel chains (e.g. Best Western) offer substantial discounts to AAA members; to get these discounts you need to ask when you do the booking (rather than at check in). These discounts are often also available to Australian, British, etc., organisations with links to the AAA (e.g. what used to be the NRMA in NSW), so ask around.
  
  

• Don't forget to tip! Once again, always tip bell-boys and room service staff; tip cleaning staff at your discretion; and don't tip the front desk staff.

Renting or Buying A Car in California

Renting a car in California is relatively cheap and straight-forward. Every airport and every reasonably-large city will have at least the usual menagerie of rental companies such as Budget, Avis, Hertz, Alamo, etc. If you're visiting here from overseas, it's often easier and cheaper to arrange for the rental with the company's representatives in your home country rather than doing it here when you arrive. Firstly, you'll at least have some reason to believe there'll actually be a car for you when you arrive (and that the office has stayed open for you); and secondly, you'll probably be able to shop for good package deals at your leisure rather than running around here in a rush to get out of the airport.

To be able to rent a car here, you'll need a major credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express at least), and a driver's license valid in the country you reside in. You don't normally need to show an international license, but it's probably best to have one with you just in case. You may have some trouble renting a car if you're under the age of 25. When you pick the car up, you'll be asked whether you want to have "collision damage waiver" (CDW) insurance. This costs something like $10 to $12 per day, and looks like it covers collision damage, etc., but beware: firstly, it doesn't actually cover anything very useful (read the fine print one day), and secondly, you may already be covered. Most gold credit cards cover CDW automatically if you use them to rent the car, and your normal car insurance may also cover it if you're American. When in doubt, I suppose it's best to agree to the CDW, but it's not a good deal, and they don't advertise it in all those lovely-looking prices in the glossies you poured over back home.

Rental cars usually can't be driven into Mexico or Canada without explicit permission from the rental company. This permission is easy to get and is mostly due to insurance rules. Similar restrictions often apply to leaving the state itself -- if you're thinking of driving to Nevada for a day or two's gambling in Las Vegas, for example, check with the rental agency when you book the car (it's usually no problem, but just be sure). Check again when you actually pick the car up; you may have to pay slightly extra for these privileges.

Alternatively, if you're here for any extended amount of time, you might want to actually think about buying a car. This isn't as weird as it sounds, since cars here are relatively cheap, and you can buy a classic old Yank Tank that will last you a few thousand miles for practically nothing. But beware -- not only will you have to deal with the state authorities when you buy the car (especially the DMV, who do the car's licensing), but you also run the risk of buying a lemon (or worse). I wouldn't recommend this unless you really know what you're doing.

Taxis

In a place like downtown San Francisco, taxis are relatively safe, convenient, and comfortable, and often the best way to get around town (but always scarce). In much of the rest of California, taxis are only haphazardly-available, and often poorly-maintained. Nonetheless, they're still relatively safe, or at least safer than taking a bus late at night -- statistics strongly suggest that it's taxi drivers rather than the passengers who suffer most from crime and accidents.

In downtown areas you can either hail a passing taxi, or find a taxi stand (usually outside a hotel or the local train or BART station), or use the phone to book one. Airports (even the smallest) will also have a taxi stand. Everywhere else you'll have to use the phone.

Remember to tip the driver 15% of the final fare, unless he or she's done something egregiously stupid or dangerous, or obviously took you the wrong way.

For Australian readers: sit in the back of the taxi, unless there's more than two of you. You're likely to provoke fear or discomfort by leaping into the front seat.

Smoking

California is remarkably cigarette smoke- and smoker-free, at least by European standards. Few people here smoke, and there are strong legal and moral sanctions against those who do, even in the great outdoors. If you're used to just being able to light up anywhere you like, you're in for a shock....

If you're a smoker, and you don't want to get into trouble with either the law or the hordes of self-appointed anti-smoking vigilantes like me, smoke only in the privacy of your own home, car, or hotel room (assuming it's not a smoke-free room or hotel). I'm not sure of the current status of the laws about smoking, but it's definitely illegal even in public areas in some cities, so don't just light up on the street and assume you're safe. It's almost never legal to smoke in a restaurant or bar nowadays, so check first that it's O.K. with the management or staff.