Dictionary definition of “Orange Curtain”

Orange Curtain

n. the characteristics, real or imagined, that differentiate Orange County from Los Angeles County and the rest of California. Subjects: California, English

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Citations: 1984 Reginald Dale, Paul Taylor @ Orange County, Calif. Financial Times (U.K.) (Sept. 4) “Reagan promises peace from behind California’s Orange Curtain” p. 4: Roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, it is a place to which people tired of city life are reputed to retreat—to surround themselves with the locally renowned “Orange Curtain,” as if with a security blanket. 1986 Barry Koltnow Orange County Register (California) (Oct. 27) “Police vs. clubs conflict closing curtain on OC music scene” p. D1: They began scheduling concerts and it looked like original music was making a serious comeback behind the Orange Curtain. 1986 Jeannine Stein Los Angeles Times (Oct. 27) “Orange County Opulence at Two Store-Opening Galas” p. 1: What of the stereotype of the unsophisticated shopper who lives “behind the Orange curtain?” 1990 Mike Davis City of Quartz : Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Nov. 1) p. 139: Tom Johnson, ironically an L.B.J. protégé, was brought in from a Texas farm team in 1980 to become Times publisher with the specific mission of penetrating the Orange curtain. 1991 Ann Rule If You Really Loved Me (May 15) p. 5: Los Angeles County is bigger, glitzier, smoggier, and its meaner streets are statistically more dangerous. The stargazers and the starletss, the baby moguls and the legends, live there, clawing for fame and fortune, at least according to those south of the “Orange Curtain.” Conversely, Orange County residents are deemed priggish, plastic, conservative—even “nerdy” by some of the more urbane Los Angelenos. 2003 Paige Penland Lonely Planet Road Trip California Highway 1 (Oct. 1) p. 51: Orange County gets no respect. But behind the Orange Curtain lie treasures worth exploring. 2005 OC Weekly (California) (Apr. 1) “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”: We real Orange Countians could pull out those dusty Don’t Tread on Me flags we have stowed in the garage.…For one thing, war never solves anything. For another, they outnumber us, 6 to 1. And it’d seem as if we here behind the fabled “Orange Curtain” (coined in LA, no doubt) suffered from a major inferiority complex.

Posted 1 Apr 05 | Permalink | Tell a Friend