Hidden Valley Talk - the Power behind the Power

The three I picked on most often are listed below:

Placerita Canyon: Home of the Power Posse home owners association. I would joke that the PC Power Posse could retard progress for the entire City just by showing up (or even threatening to show up) at a Council meeting on their horses. For the residents of Placerita are in one of the few areas of the City that's got "special standards" applied to it. For Placerita residents, that means they can live back there like they've always lived, ride horses to their mailboxes, get loads of money from the nearby petroleum wells, and bemoan how Newhall was developing into something new and different. But for transit/transportation geeks like me, and for many generations of Master's College students, the Power Posse was responsible for the lack of sidewalks in front of TMC (and the comical little wooden bridges built in the winter so students wouldn't be swept away) and for retarding the extension of Lyons to Sierra Highway.

West Ranch: I would joke that this is where the faux rich, those lacking loyalty or City 'o Sclarita pride and those clueless about where the real power neighborhoods were in the SCV would end up. In a valley without much of a "native" population, you could find, at least during the boom years, all the nouveau riche SCV class living in West Ranch in brand new houses made out of ticky tacky (not coincidentally West Ranch arose symbiotically with Showtime's Weeds) with Hummer's parked out front. In the space of just a few years it seemed, the all-powerful Flemings (Flemwatch!), Buck McKeon, and Hunt of the Bralys all moved to the West Side or opened up offices there. Newhall Land followed, leaving their iconic & architecturally significant Valencia Blvd HQ for a vague and lifeless office park next to the 5. Sure West Ranch had the Tournament Player's club, which is something something to someone in the golf scene, but those folks were really stuck up: they kicked old Myers out for wearing a t-shirt in 2006 at the height of the real estate boom after all. What did they think, they were the Beverly Hills of the SCV?. Oh and to top it all off, Dave Bossert was the West Side's most prominent advocate & my blogging competition. Yes indeed I felt pretty righteous about condemning the West Ranch neighborhoods back then; great fun!

Sand Canyon: If Placerita was bombastic, backwards, and regressive, and West Ranch was full of phonies or johnny-come-lately SCVers, Sand Canyon was where the real SCV power brokers lived, I theorized. Sure the place smells of horse poop all day and night, and teenagers/motorcyclists routinely turn the beautiful road into an Formula 1 race track, but you couldn't deny the soft power that having a Sand Canyon address represented. The place was rich in SCV history and lore; City Council people called it home. Some houses looked like they were straight out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And most of all, you didn't hear them bitch too much like the other neighborhoods. Sand Canyonites were the boss of the SCV, and they knew it. They walked softly, carried a big stick. If there was a La Cosa Nostra of the SCV, the Don would have called Sand Canyon his home and thrown large wedding parties on his sprawling compound, giving rare audiences to the few influential SCVers who warranted some of his time. The place was legit.

But now that I've moved out of my lowland, high-density, 7-Eleven adjacent condominium into a for-real single story, detached, single family resident in Calgrove (yard, attic, garage, the whole 9), I've learned I was wrong about the makeup of the SCV's best and most influential neighborhoods.

You see, Sand Canyon may have Robinson Ranch, prized ponies, and a scenic roadway, but Hidden Valley is truly the most powerful and incredible neighborhood in the SCV.

Hidden Valley. If the SCV were a community of nations, Sand Canyon might be your Switzerland, Placerita your France, and West Ranch....Las Vegas?....then Hidden Valley would be a mix of the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea and perhaps some really elite pocket EU country....your Lichentsteins Andorras or Monacos. You practically have to have formal title plus proven SCV bloodlines to pass customs and enter the place.

The place is truly deserving of its name, for until I moved to Calgrove, I didn't really realize what Hidden Valley was. I had thought Hidden Valley was anything past the halfway point on south on Apple, Valley and other streets in the SoLy district. It didn't feel much like a "valley" to me.

And I've lived here for 22 years. And blogged about it.

You know why I couldn't really tell you where Hidden Valley was, why it was such a fuzzy, ill-defined neighborhood in my highly-regimented SCV mental map?

Because that's how the Hidden Valleyites wanted it.

Their success is not in being loud, boastful and arrogant like P-Canyon, nor in flaunting their illusory wealth (West Side), or even in the soft power model deployed so effectively by Sand Canyon...no their success lies in the fact that they've largely disappeared as a place in the SCV. They are a valley apart.

A Hidden Valley.

Consider how powerful this place is:

So my hat's off to the Hidden Valley Homeowner Association or whatever supra-regional organization, ultra-secret secret society (yes I've witnessed some strange handshakes & rituals back here) that has built this amazing place. Hidden Valley got it, they don't flaunt it, and they don't want anyone to know about it either.