Gustavo Arellano

Gustavo Arellano wants to be Mr. Orange County. The bespectacled 29-year-old with the sharp tongue has long been the go-to guy for O.C.-ers curious about their Mexican neighbors. Now he’s widening his area of expertise by writing broadly about life in his home county and, as the vaguely threatening subtitle of his book says, he’s been taking notes. Here’s a few notes we took from our chat with Arellano.

Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Saudade. It’s Portuguese, but it’s a very Brazilian concept of having nostalgia, but a bittersweet nostalgia.

Q. What comforts you?
A. Going to my parent’s house and being able to reheat beans and rice and make myself a quesadilla.

Q. If you could live in any other time, past present or future, when would it be and why?
A. The 1930s. It really seemed like end times, but there was so much intellectual curiosity and so much of it was political.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. A couple months ago, I went to an estate sale and I bought 27 boxes filled with books about the history of Orange County. It’s my goal to get every book written about Orange County.

Q. What worries you most?
A. That I’m not gonna be there for the people I love.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Film librarian.

Q. Whose talent would you like to have?
A. Johann Sebastian Bach.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. All the various parties that my parents used to take me as a kid.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. A rock that I painted in kindergarten.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead that you’d love to have a beer with?
A. Woody Guthrie. Just to think we had a musician in the 1930s with a beat-up guitar with a sticker on it that says, “This machine kills fascists.” That’s a genius that I just don’t see anymore.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.


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