Perhaps the most profound upheaval in recent California history, the bloody, cataclysmic, and ultimately inconclusive civil war between Los Angeles and San Francisco produced massive urban devastation, involved over three million Californians in combat—brother against sister, biker against surfer—and resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 combatants. As a conflict almost wholly ignored by the mass media and the entertainment industry—even though they, along with other major corporations, helped sponsor both sides of the hostilities—the Great War of the Californias was virtually forgotten only months, actually only days, after it had ended, whenever that was. Its dates are uncertain, lost in a haze of mass hysterical amnesia over this traumatic collective memory, complicated by the compulsive viewing of reality shows on network TV. Fortunately for posterity, copious documentation of the Great War exists in the form of paintings, drawings, prints, and propaganda posters, as well as other artifacts:

Artwork and above text by Sandow Birk, from his book / exhibition / film In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of the Californias. More after the jump: