Haha that's cool, and kind of strange to hear. I grew up in Huntington Beach and now live in Riverside County. People in Huntington Beach definitely looked down on people from Riverside. Probably due to all the meth
. Here's some bands from HB (they've all been posted before but whatever)
I was a big Guttermouth and Straight Faced fan at the time, and I also knew Huntington beach from Nitro records as well as Tank and Tito, so I definitely enjoyed going there, but was a bit disappointed that I didn't see any stores selling punk albums, not that I looked but I half-expected to just come across them. California was like the promised-land for Punk rock. Huntington beach was all surf shops from what I saw. It reminded me more of Baywatch, than anything punk-related.
It was cool seeing the amusement parks on the piers though.
Fearless Records was based out of Westminster at the time, which is right next to Huntington beach too. I loved Fearless back in the day
I went to Riverside in the morning and was only there for an hour or two, so all the sketchy folk were probably sleeping or cracked out in a basement somewhere. It was during a school day too.
White Kaps (Simi Valley Punk)
F.Y.P. (Torrance, CA)
Fury 66 (Santa Cruz, California) (closer to the bay, but still an under-rated band from Cali)
Guttermouth came to Toronto pretty often so I still got to see them play a few times, they always delivered. I got to sing the "go downtown and get some downers" part (in 1-2-3 Slam) the first time I saw them in Toronto, I was such a bad singer that Mark gave me this "WTF" look when I sang that part. I guess he felt guilty because he gave me his beer. They were also handing out palmfulls of "Gold Bond Medicated Powder" which stops you from sweating, "just rub it on your balls" they said... It worked really well.
The original drummer for Guttermouth was Lance Mountain (who was one of the best skateboarders in the world in the late 80's) Todd from FYP was a professional skateboarder too, apparently he was one of the best, but he just used skating to make money for records, he quit and stuck to running his band and label (Recess Records)
Also, "It's A Fact" is my favourite Vandals song. Good choice.