Hate California, it's cold and it's damp . . .

The Lady Is a Tramp, Rodgers and Hart

LORENZ HART was a superb lyricist, but he had his failings as a reporter. Hate California? Cold and damp? Just tell that to the citizens of the nation's most populous and most fascinating state, glowing with sunlight, blessed by beauty, rich beyond counting. In its cover story this week, TIME examines its people--who they are, what they seek, how California affects the U.S., present and future.

The idea was suggested by Jesse Birnbaum, our San Francisco bureau chief since last January after 18 years as a writer and senior editor in New York. Traveling west with an Easterner's (Passaic, N.J.) eye. Birnbaum was immediately struck by "how much of the California legend was true--the climate, the geography, the hordes of new Californians shucking off old ways and values and experimenting with the new"--sometimes compulsively, sometimes casually. "The more I got to know San Francisco, the more intrigued I became with its life style, its easy atmosphere, the narcissism of the city."

The general discussion of California and its impact was written by Birnbaum, who filed voluminously along with other correspondents and then returned to New York with pen in hand once again. The I-am-a-Camera section is the result of a personal odyssey by Los Angeles Correspondent Tim Tyler--a Californian of 22 months. It was a voyage of discovery for Tim. "For the surfing scene, I just had to try it myself," he says. "And I grew to hate those half-pint kids who kept zipping by me while I missed every wave. In Yosemite National Park, my rented pickup camper was surrounded by bears as soon as I arrived, which is why I didn't get more interviews. The next morning I picked up two hippies with a dog named Kilo.

On my way to San Francisco, Kilo rode in the camper section and ate most of my clothes. There, I walked into the middle of a small riot. Then I had my car towed away for a slightly expired parking meter, and got ticketed for failing to see a sign hidden behind a truck. Back in Los Angeles, a confirmed Californian, I made arrangements for my burial at Forest Lawn."

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This week we welcome back an old friend after a two-year sabbatical: TIME'S Show Business section. The editors missed it, and thought perhaps readers did too. The occasion seems particularly appropriate: the staging of Coco, with Katharine Hepburn in her first Broadway musical playing the role of Fashion Designer Coco Chanel. The story was written by another Kate--Katie Kelly, who came to TIME as a researcher in 1966, has been a writer since July 1968. In subsequent weeks, Katie and her co-workers will range over the entire Show Business scene from Broadway to Hollywood--wherever the lights are brightest.

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