In 2019, people visiting California spent roughly $145 billion.

However, in 2020, travel spending dropped 55%, according to visit California's website.

Even with this shocking number, people can't get enough of our state.

There are hundreds of podcast travel videos and TV shows just about California.

Tonight, we meet the host of Best of California who can tell us what our state is still a premier tourist destination.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is KLCC.

PBS.

Welcome to everybody.

With Angela Williamson and Innovation Arts, Education and Public Affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you, Angela Titus.

That's the California that that's.

Hi, I'm Pat Patterson, the host of The Best of California with Pat Patterson.

So the reason the best of California is here at the television academy is the TV industry is a huge part of the economy here in California.

And this is kind of a shrine, if you will.

That's a place that people can come.

You don't have to pay to come look at the statues.

So it's a great tourist attraction, but probably not a lot of people know about.

And the people that are here, not all that many of them are Californians, people like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz have a huge history here in Southern California.

I want to tell the good news of what's going on.

And it's a lot of good things.

So I have always been a fan of Hill Howser.

And before Hill there was a guy named Ralph Story here in Los Angeles where when I was growing up and they promoted all the fun things to do in California that I think a lot of people don't get around to do it.

So we're a continuation of that tradition.

I wanted to tell the good news of what's going on, and it's a lot of good things.

You know, there's a lot of ecological advancement happening in California to protection of nature.

There's stories about people that are preserving places that we want to talk about.

So I'm going to forward to doing this, I don't know, 30, 40 more years.

It's all about the festivals.

The man just watched tonight is here with me in the studio.

Pat, thank you so much for being with me tonight.

I'm so excited to be here.

This is so much fun.

Angela.

Thanks for having me.

It is my pleasure.

We have so much to cover that you will be with me the entire episode.

Well, wonderful.

That's great.

But before we get to why you're here tonight, I learned something new in that video.

You have been a resident of California your entire life.

You normally don't hear that.

Not only am I a native of Southern California, both of my parents were natives, Pasadena and Redlands, respectively.

My old Scottish grandpa came to the city in the 1880s and he was a conductor on the red car.

So we have lived the history of California.

One of the reasons I've studied there all my life and I'm fascinated by our state.

Well, that would explain why your background started in television.

Yes, because you grew up here.

So tell me a little bit about that.

I forgot to get a skill in anything else.

I just watched a lot of TV.

So when it came time to get a job, I went I got to be in television.

I went to TV here locally and then I went to work for the Disney studios.

So and I grew up Nataraj County.

So Disney was a huge part of what I wanted to do, and I was able to have a nice career at Disney.

Well, a nice career it was.

But you actually have continued it with different parts of your life because you didn't just stick with entertainment per se.

You've done a lot of different things too.

So share that with the audience because a lot of people don't realize you can do different things in California and still be happy.

That's right.

That's right.

Well, I'm the book I've recently written is about that.

It's about reinvention, certainly.

You you you know this as well as I the entertainment industry.

You have to constantly reinvent yourself.

So so part of what I did was I worked in marketing, I worked in promotion, I worked in merchandizing.

So I did a lot of different things.

And then eventually I got into what you're doing, which is on air work, actors, commercials and hosting shows.

So so it was it was always in my mind that you just have to be kind of light on your feet in terms of what's coming next.

And particularly as you as you age, you know, a certain age.

Television industry tends to want younger and younger.

We tend to eat our young.

And so, you know, it was it was some of it is out of necessity.

Yeah.

But all of your background from the time you started in television and you moved around and you did a marketing and you did merchandizing, all of that really helped to shape who Pat is today.

Totally.

Totally.

I it's the reason I carry one of these around in my pocket.

He's bringing gifts.

Oh.

Oh, Do they still have those?

So I created these guys.

I was part of the team that created these guys.

And then we also did it for Mickey Mouse, for Disney, that years.

Thank you.

Okay.

Oh, now I'm actually 80 myself, and I'm still 22.

No, but we used to get these.

And even if we never eight there, we would go there because we just wanted this to put on our antenna.

You might not know what those are today.

Yeah.

On our cars.

Yeah, well, we did those in 1998 and they put two daughters through college.

Those antenna balls.

Wow.

Okay, Pat, you.

Now you've actually.

That's true celebrity.

You are a celebrity, and I am now putting you on the spot.

So what happened with Pat Patterson in a room with creative people and all of a sudden they come up with this giant?

DE was the brilliant agency that came up with those.

And then.

And then we had to figure out how to make them.

Yes.

And and it's a funny story not to digress, but the fact that you said no cars have antennas.

So the executives at Jack in the Box, all of them drive driving, BMW and Mercedes-benz's two cars don't have antennas.

And we said, Yeah, but you know what?

You're 22 year old consumer drives a pickup truck and they do have antennas and we had to test these and we and then I took him to Disney and we did Mickey Mouse so than we did Mickey Mouse with it with a circular hat and all sorts of fun stuff.

So.

Wow.

So this is a.

Part of California pop culture.

Well, I always think of California as kind of a microcosm of of the United States.

I think, you know, a lot of people come everywhere from everywhere in the world, come to the United States.

But I think California is a smaller version of that, where people come from different states to California.

So just like you were saying, there are very few natives in terms of, you know, people that were born here.

And so you get this kind of conglomeration of so many different ethnicities, so many different lifestyles that it just it's a fun place.

So you have all sorts of history here.

You know, we've been a couple of different countries, you know, and we have the Native American background here.

And there's just there's there's a lot of history to explore and a lot of history.

My mission is to preserve it because I think a lot of it's being torn down and destroyed.

So we're we're out to shine the light on the things that need to be preserved.

Which I'm glad that you're mentioning that, because a lot of people think when it comes to California, because we're always ahead, we're always ahead in the tech world, we're always ahead when it comes to entertainment.

We have the best sports franchises here.

We always think of that.

But what you're doing is you're letting us know, yes, these are great, but we need to go back in history and see and preserve that.

And so with my what my question to you is how do you decide what's best for for Pat to preserve, to bring to your audience?

Usually somebody is telling me I have I have a very robust social media community, Facebook and all that I've had.

That's the creative U-turn I've had to train myself all about all about new, new technologies.

I added some of my segments on my phone, believe it or not, shoot that ad on my phone.

So I've learned the technology.

And so a lot of ideas come from viewers.

A lot of ideas come from just conversations I'll have.

You know, people say, oh, you know, my neighborhood has a monument that, you know, is two such and such.

Are we?

I was just talking to one of your crew about there's a buried set up at the Guadalupe Dunes, you know, a movie set.

So there's things that I've studied and kind of bookmarked over the years that now I have the the resources to go out and explore.

And some of them are a lot of fun.

Well, you mentioned you one of the things you did was reinvent yourself with the knowledge that you had, but you reinvent yourself.

You taught yourself how to use social media, you're editing on your phone and and that's so important.

And so with that being said, there's somebody who is there watching both of us right now and everything.

Yeah, I have an idea, but they don't know where to start.

Yeah.

Are you giving us permission to do the creative U-turn in your book?

What is this book giving you?

So the book is a nine step program that is basically maybe it's maybe it's later in life.

It tends to be I tend to have clients that I coach around this and we talk about, you know, their kids have grown up.

They're they're kind of tired of their their corporate career.

And and the book talks about just that you have permission to go do this, but I can't afford it.

And we come up with a way in the book to create what I call a montage career, which is multiple revenue streams so that you can go out and follow your passion, you know, and and take advantage of maybe you've always wanted to write, maybe you've always wanted to act, maybe you've always wanted to perform, then have to be all of that.

Maybe you've wanted to have a yoga studio, you know, it could be anything, just in terms like, how do I go get there?

And so we walk through a nine step program to make that happen.

Yeah, it just came out of having a lot of fun with it.

Oh, and I can't wait to read this.

I mean, I didn't even know you had a book, too.

There's just.

Do you sleep?

I, I barely sleep.

I barely sleep.

I eat a lot of jack at the park, so I don't know.

I just.

I love this.

Oh, you just brought me back to my youth here.

Okay, well, Pat, will you stay with me up through the break?

Because I want to talk all things best of California, Because you really started this show with just uploading videos, and now you are going national.

So I'm so proud of you, but I want to hear the entire process.

Okay, great.

So you stay right there.

Come back and hear my conversation with Pat Patterson.

On season ten of Paddy's Mexican Table.

We're traveling one of Mexico's most storied states, the birthplace of so many treasured Mexican traditions.

Join me as I journey from Mexico's second largest city to one of its most beautiful beach destinations.

Where you'll see.

Thank you for coming back.

I am going to continue my conversation with Pat.

Pat, I want to talk this entire segment about your show.

When did you come up with the concept to start Best of California?

While like the video showed, I grew up with Ralph Story, and Ralph Story used to do these great human interest stories about, you know, Los Angeles.

And he just he just had a wave with them.

And he was he actually lived down a corridor.

MA Down where I'm from.

And I worked with George Putnam.

I worked with a lot of local newscasters.

And they just had a reverence for Los Angeles and California overall.

And then obviously Huell Howser came on the scene and I loved your Howser.

I love the fact that what he was doing wasn't commercial.

He didn't have to, you know, kowtow to any sponsors or anything.

He could just go out and talk about, you know, the San Pedro White House or, you know, all these things that that that are important to residents that maybe they don't know about.

So I was kind of phasing out of my last career and I was doing this U-turn and I decided, you know what, I want to just go.

I did, you know, on air work, I did commercials, I did television.

I want to create my own project, you know, my own thing that I can kind of live with for a while.

You know, in the 56 years I have left.

But so anyway, I started doing just Facebook videos, YouTube videos, and they started to kind of catch on.

And so because I knew people in the television industry, they said, you know, why don't you kind of Phil Hill, how's your spot?

You?

I mean, I can't fill that.

Exactly.

That would be presumptuous.

But, you know, kind of fill that role of education, preservation, you know, bizarre stories and and I did it and it got picked up by a network called Fun Roads TV, which is in 30 million homes.

So so now the shows and 30 million homes, as well as being on some local CW affiliates.

So I'm very gratified that it worked well.

Well, it worked because there's an audience that still wants that information now, because there's so many hidden gems in California that may have been covered before but hasn't been covered recently.

And there's someone missing to tell us that story.

So that's where you walk in?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And as you mentioned, California is of interest to the world.

You know, we're the fifth largest economy.

We're really a country.

And to ourselves.

So, you know, part of the allure of the show is, you know, people see it Detroit, people see it in Philadelphia.

And some day they're going to come to Yosemite.

Disneyland's always the big one.

You know, all we have such an incredible bandwidth of resources, not only natural ones, but all the Hollywood and entertainment highlights that people want to come see.

So so it's it's of interest everywhere worldwide.

Now, you've been working on some shows lately right now.

Can you tell us about a show that probably hasn't aired yet and tell us the reason why you chose this topic?

What we can expect to see, because now people will want to tune in.

Oh, good.

Find out.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, I this is the most fascinating story to me.

It was what I was just referred to, which is up in the Guadalupe Dunes, which Guadalupe Bay is in central California.

Okay.

Just outside of Nipomo, another city that we covered.

Famous steakhouses.

They're called jackals.

So while I was covering the story of jackals, which is this incredibly famous steakhouse, I found out about the dunes, and I had read something years ago about Cecil B de Mille staging the Ten Commandments, the Silent Ten Commandments, not the 1956 one with Charlton Heston, but the silent version that he had done.

And he built the he built Egypt out on the stand in Guadalupe.

So they're they're like two or three story tall, huge, huge sets.

And he filmed the film and then he went, okay, we're done.

And he walked away from the sets and he'd left them there.

And over the years the dunes consumed the sets.

And so they were hidden underneath the sand.

And there's a guy that that made it his project to excavate the the remains of the set.

So I was fascinated by the story.

So we went up and talked to the people at the Dunes Center up there.

They have some of the artifacts there.

And then I went out on the dunes and we film some and now I'm going to go back and and also talk to the people that are, you know, actually doing it's an archeological dig about a pretend Egypt, only in California that.

That happened only in California.

But I love that you're talking about this set because there's a number of different sets around California that people can just go and find out more information about them and just visit them.

Right.

Because you've been to this is not just one set.

You've been to some others.

They tend to be the most it's funny you've hit on that, but they tend to be the most popular segments.

I did Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds up in Bodega Bay, and so we've done the Wildwood Park, which is out in Thousand Oaks, which is where Gunsmoke was filmed, The Rifleman.

So, you know, their name is out there all over California.

So we're going to do more themed shows.

So we're going to do more like these Hollywood sets.

I'm going to do ones about food.

We just did one about the Rock Haven Sanatorium up and like Reseda.

So we're doing a lot about preservation.

I want the show to be a conduit for educating the public on what needs to be preserved.

I want to just keep, though, I've made my U-turn.

I'm going in the same direction with the show until they cart me off the set.

I think everybody should should have a chance.

It may be something they deferred when they were young.

You know, might be some wish they had that like had, you know, I was going to write or I was going to sing or I was going to do this thing.

And then I got kids and I had jobs and and suddenly I'm 55 and it's time to, you know, do it, do it.

You know, it's never too late or at any age that they might want to make a U-turn.

So, yeah, it's very gratifying.

And we have a few more minutes.

So I want to ask you a little bit more about this, too.

You've mentioned that you do seminars on this as well.

Yeah.

So how do you get.

So I have a it's it's kind of a it's kind of it's really like a monthly support group.

And we get together on Zoom and people can find it on my website, which is Pat Patterson dot net and it's dot net.

And I also want to thank you guys anyway.

But anyway, we do a thing and I, I also host it with a, an associate of my that's a former BBC anchor, Jacqui Harper.

And so, you know, it's because people are very intimidated by doing this.

It's like, what do I do?

Do I quit my job?

How do I do this?

So we have this monthly support group.

We do it on Zoom, and anybody to join us and is free.

And we just, you know, talk about, you know, what's your idea?

What do you want to do?

You know, And you know, the main thing for people, I think that want to make a creative you turn is to find support.

And oftentimes friends and family that have you are already pigeonholed as something they're like the worst people.

You can't do that.

You can't be an actor, you can't do these things.

So it's I call it turning towards the love, you know, turn towards the love of of the support to make this U-turn.

It's very important, very important.

And I think this group is very supportive or not supportive, but supportive but very important.

Yeah.

Right now, because people are looking for groups, They're looking for different things to do because maybe the job they had before isn't there, or maybe the job they had before is there and they're thinking, I don't want to be there.

I think you're right, Angela.

But it's hard to find the spark.

Yeah.

No, I think the pandemic maybe made a lot of people rethink their priorities in life.

So I think you're absolutely right.

And you mentioned pandemic.

Yeah.

And so my question is, how difficult was it for you to come up with this unique show during the pandemic?

Because this falls in line with your book?

Yeah, we we got a lot of booms.

So we were you know, we just miked everything with the boom and we were very careful.

And, you know, and ironically, there was a lot of time that things were empty that I could go shoot.

So you know, it's an unfortunate thing.

Like you were saying in your intro, that travel was so down.

But like recently we went up to Sequoia and did some episodes, do some segments that you can see people starting to come back, but we kind of had the place to ourselves, so that was a little silver lining from it for for us at least.

Yes, a little silver lining in what you've done is you continue to spotlight the state, which definitely needs something like that right now.

Yeah.

So my question for you is, what's next?

What's after the show?

What's next in terms of of life?

Maybe you're going somewhere?

Well, I'm still I'm still doing acting.

I'm still doing commercial work.

But I think in terms of what's next, I, I just I, I'm kind of on a mission to make sure that there's something here for my grandkids to see.

And I don't have any grandkids yet.

But I, I just the idea that there's kind of a thing that happens right now with the the the box economy, the Amazon economy, that mom and pop stores are being eliminated.

And yet, you know, we we we we give lip service to wanting to support that.

Oh, where's that little funny little diner that that's at 50 STEINER But do you ever go to it support it?

Oh, well, it's kind of expensive or, you know, and so, you know, the mission of the show is to to get people to go to these places, you know, take the time.

Clifton's is a great example, the cafeteria downtown.

I mean, I was I was taking my family did that for years and years and years and then somebody bought it.

Yes.

You know, and refurbished it.

Now, that's a great example of a success story.

You know, this Rock Haven sanatorium I mentioned that the like it's been sitting there dormant, the city of Glendale Sound.

It finally state Senator Anthony 14 Parks and Tino got $8 million to preserve it.

So now that's going to be preserved.

But that takes a lot of work, a lot of effort.

And so if I can help in some small way to facilitate those success stories, I'm a happy guy.

Wow.

Well, you've made a lot of people happy with what you are doing, not only with your book, but with your show, The Best of California.

So we'll make sure that everybody can reach out to you.

Great.

Sure.

We spell your name right for the website for everybody, because some people may want to join your group.

Wow.

Love that.

That'd be awesome.

But thank you again for everything you're doing to preserve California and and even help our economy.

Yeah.

Good to be here.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us on, everybody with Angela Williamson.

Viewers like you make this show possible, join us on social media to continue this conversation.

Good night and stay well.