The Year of Santa Ana

Episode One: “World, Meet Memo — and his Friends”

In California, where long ago the Spanish named their cities for Catholic saints, there’s a place called Santa Ana. It’s a very old town that lies in Orange County, but it’s a long way from the hillside estates and surfside resorts you may think of when you think of Orange County. You’ll find those upscale settings in the County’s southern and northern ends, in places like Laguna Niguel, Corona del Mar and Anaheim Hills, where the “reality” shows are filmed, the ones where rich blonde people have pretend arguments as they drink pinot grigio.

No, Santa Ana is apart from all that, manning the soft underbelly of the county’s center. Here is where the TV cameras rarely go, except with nightly news crews that arrive to film the aftermath of a particularly bloody hit-and-run, or maybe a gang shooting. But if the crews and their cameras ever decided to hang around Santa Ana a bit longer, they’d find some real stories to tell…

Memo is up on the balcony of his new, fourth-floor apartment. He stretches his long limbs into the plastic lounge the previous tenant had left behind. He slips on his shiny new Bose headphones — the ones he got for a steal from some strung-out guy hanging around Mr. Tan’s laundromat (he’s still slapping himself on the back for that little deal) — and then…