"Claremont: That rare travel gem in SoCal, a real college town," by Sam McManis, The Sacramento Bee
Scoff if you must, but Southern California – land of strip malls and suburban sprawl, populated with hipsters and Beautiful People either in “The Business” or hoping for that big break – is also home to maybe the state’s coziest, quaintest college town, incongruously nestled under the scrim of smog obscuring the San Gabriel Mountains.
Before you invoke the names Berkeley, Davis, San Luis Obispo and Chico in rebuttal, hear me out: I lived, in my peripatetic years, in Athens, Ga., and Ithaca, N.Y., two quintessential college towns; two of my kids were born in the People’s Republic of Berkeley; and I currently pay an outrageous mortgage on the smallest money pit in Yolo County. So, yeah, I know college towns.
Trust me, then, when I rate Claremont as worthy of true college-town status. Oh, excuse me, their preferred appellation is Claremont Village. And while we’re being nitpicky, we really should use the plural and call it a colleges town.