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Missing the media in Santa Maria
Read Hank Stuever's story: Even though the courthouse is right next to Santa Maria's lone shopping mall, many people in this town of 83,000, three hours north of Los Angeles, were able to ignore the fuss completely -- if they wanted to. ("Welcome Canadian Golfers," read a big sign in the Holiday Inn lobby this time last year. "Welcome Canadian Golfers," it says again now.)
But many of the courthouse regulars liked it. It started every day at 8 a.m. and ended at 2:30 p.m. Some days it felt as if the court was running a summer camp for tabloid reporters, who would file their stories manically, breathlessly; then, at night, the Fleet Street freelancers and maybe the Japanese film crew, along with their new stateside colleagues, would all go to a bar down the street, Maverick's, which has a mechanical bull, and they would goad one another into riding it. It was Jacko porn by day and "Urban Cowboy" by night -- how American and frivolous it all seemed.