Life at the beach (48 hours in Venice Beach, CA)

Wednesday morning. I'm up at 5 am. It's dawning outside and there is a sunrise that I MUST NOT miss!

Beaches during the day are boring, kind of. It's before sunrise that they reveal their true character.

That was the first beach walk. As soon as I see the sun's rays hitting the beach, it's time for the second walk.

Neil Young: "Sometimes I feel like a leaf floating down a stream. But I want to walk like a Giant on the land" 

``

I finally take a shower and at 10:30 leave for a 3 mile beach and road walk to East Wind Thai Restaurant, a place I fell in love with last April.   Of course, I take more pictures along the beach.

Close to the beginning of the walk, I see one of the many homeless people (they don't have writing on their forehead, but something gives them away, even if it's only their good tan) doing something along the waterline.  Somewhere (LOL) he obtained one of those freestanding Jaguar hood ornaments. He places it in the sand with the Jaguar facing the ocean and still within reach of the approaching surf. Then he commences taking pictures.  Welcome to Venice Beach, where the planet would actually stand a chance ;-)

I get to the restaurant by 11:30 am (they open at 11 am) and order the same as last year. Green Curry with Chicken and a glass of white wine.  I sit at the same table as last year and the food is just as good (the curry could be spicier but the salad with peanut dressing is amazing).

I'm just glad it's not Adult Colouring Books  ;-)

Decadence and Ignance in action: between US$ 12 & US$ 17! I buy sea salt for $1.99.

I buy all the ingredients for marinated tomato salad, a bottle of wine for $4 or 5, and a few other little things. $55. I miss Vietnam!
I slog the stuff back home and nap for almost 2 hours.   When I wake up around 5, I'm still tired, but there is a sunset to attend to

But I only go down for a short while, buy some artwork from one of the homeless (?) artists along the promenade (after seeing a police SUV with flashing lights race over the BEACH with  at least 60 km/h it seemed even more fitting)

want to follow the artist? Look for @kasim613 !

He asks to take a picture of me when I walk off with his piece and a day later I find out why. I have been published on Instagram. And my pictures got 31 Likes, whatever that means in this world ;-)

Today Grandma answers the phone on the second ring.  However, the conversation seems to consist of her trying to guilt-trip me for trying to be helpful yesterday, so it doesn't last long. I start to understand why my mother doesn't call her mother anymore.

Dinner consists of marinated tomato salad with toast, cheese, and salami.  The marode BC infrastructure apparently can't handle even a moderate storm anymore since H & D on the Sunshine Coast have to resort to texting instead of e-mailing because their power cut out.

Even though I'm asleep very early, I don't wake up until sunrise at 6 am.  I've missed the dawn!!!

But I'm out there for sunrise and the long shadow I cast at that time. I didn't bring a camera; this one is just for myself ;-)
Getting back to the room, I feel like sleeping more!!!

I walk to CVS before showing and buy a BIC shaver with 12 blades for less than half of what the cheapest Gilette or Schick shaver with 1 blade costs.  Of course I am worried what the shaving will feel like, but it's SMOOTH.  Haven't you figured out yet that Gilette & Duracell gouge their customers???

Freshly shaven I head East on Rose to try another Thai place (by way of the beach, of course)

Writing in the sky? God speaks Spanish???

  The food at Star of Siam is actually better, but the seating is too industrial for my taste, I prefer the rustic garden view of East Wind.

I check out a few unlisted hotels on the way back (I have to check out of my lovely apartment on Friday) but either they're booked solid or are depressing dumps.  Booking.com has a 2 bedroom apartment in Marina del Rey for a bearable price but the US$120 cleaning surcharge per stay makes it unbearable.  Anything close to the beach is booked over the weekend (smart LAers) but I finally find a cheap and nice deal 6 km inland from Venice Beach's Boardwalk. Hey, I'll just rent a bike over the weekend.

2 pm. The sink laundry is drying nicely hanging in the west facing windows and I'm at a temporary loss what to do next. Is it too early or late for the beach?  Should I have a nap instead (YES, YES, YES)?

Through the open window I hear no cars but only the ocean's waves and a woman playing guitar and singing.

I wake up at 3 pm.  OMG  I need a place where I can see and hear the ocean.

The beach walk ends up being much longer than I had planned.  

OK, I changed my mind and I'll follow you

A telephoto shot, so not as bad as Hook van Holland, where people in their lawn chairs admired industrial installations

This can be U for $5 (Another time)

Lest we forget

I'm back in the hotel at 4:45. As soon as I'm done eating my tomato salad, the woman down on the boardwalk starts playing and singing again.  OK, that's enough. I walk down and buy her CD. Her name is Crosby Morgan and here she and Venice beach star in  a YouTube Clip.

I see my receptionist and get a great cash deal for my stay from Sunday to Monday (Yes, these things still exist ;-). The ocean view and sound, the music playing outside, the 1 block walk to get sand between my toes is something I have to experience again before I leave.

It feels like Apocalypse Now for a moment

RoboCops?

At least I'm not the only one wondering what the SUV, the sand wheelers, and the chopper are chasing. They all come together at some point on the beach and then disperse again

The content of my bottle of cheap wine strangely diminished during the day, so that now room evaporation is finishing the last drops.

 I head out to Whole Foods to get another one but along the way remember that I bought their last one today. 

  Ah well, I spot Davey Jones's Liquor Locker and buy a bottle there.

STOOPID car drivers along the way

 Good thing too because my booze-procurement walk has been shortened by at least half an hour and walking along the beach I see someone that looks like Peter Demian packing up band equipment and one of the amp boxes reveals the word SMART. So I ask him whether the whole writing would read Street Smart and when he says Yes, I ask Peter whether I can have another one of his Street Smart buttons.

The one I got for a 0.60 cent donation last year got lost soon after and I will never forget how I at first walked by him then, and only turned around after 10 further steps when he sang "The only free ride is DOWN".  He knew what he was doing but I was still wet behind the ears. I can't believe that was only 11 months ago.

I'm amazed at how much I sleep down here. The ocean, the lack of cars, Crosby's voice coming in beautifully through my window.

 At 9 am she's singing again.  I've done all the dishes, brought out my garbage, and swept the floors to save paying the US$ 50 cleaning fee.

This place DOES rent rooms by the month, and during the next Rainy Season in Soggytown (TM) I might just have to make use of that.

At 9:45 I try the bike shop for the first time but the woman from the store across the aisle can open the door but can't get to the regular bikes.  I don't want a beach cruiser!  1 hour until checkout and I'm looking forward to my beach hiatus is Culver City.  I won't be able to hear Crosby's voice from over there, but with a bike the 6 km distance should be easily bridged.

Arriving in Venice Beach and dress rehearsal of an accident

A formidable tailwind serves to bring me to LaLand in 2 hours instead of the regular 2 hours 40 minutes. I ignore the announcement "this is a completely smoking free flight, which includes electronic cigarettes" I vape a f The turbulence that comes along with such condition, made me brace myself against the ceiling during the plane washroom visit. Bumpy!

My ride. An Embraer 175

In the last 15 minutes of the flight I start talking to my rather voluminous seat neighbour. I find out that the LARGE woman adorned with gold bracelets and blue sheets in the seat next to me is from India.  She is looking out the window when we approach LA and says "Sun. FINALLY!", which is all it takes for me to join the conversation ;-)  It turns out she lives in LA and visited someone in Vancouver for a "WHOLE week".  She is trying hard not to offend. "I mean, it's a beautiful place up there.  To visit. BUT NOT FOR LIVING !!!" I laugh my heart  out and let her know that this particular line is going into my blog. First stop is a Starbucks.  NO, I normally would never go to this overpriced global giant, but I need change for the bus. I walk about 20 minutes to the bus depot (good thing I have a working cell with GPS). During the walk, I notice that I'm humming. It's warm and there is air in the air (TM)!  

After about 30 minutes bus ride, it is time to walk again.  Straight West, towards the beach ;-)

I get to the beach just minutes after sunset.  I can't wait for sunrise tomorrow morning ;-)

Checking into my studio compartment is reasonably uncomplicated  I have a view of the beach and the horizon.  The soul is at peace.

I eat very good but horribly expensive Unagi Don at a place close to the hotel, and right after dinner my soul no longer is at peace.  Grandma doesn't answer her daily evening phone call from her grandson.  Sometimes she has the TV too loud and doesn't hear the phone, but today she doesn't answer for more than 1 hour. Fearing the worse, I contact a good friend in Vancouver, who will drive to the house and bang on the door.  Fearing the very worse, I busy myself with contingency planning. I think about calling the ambulance or fire department to knock down the door if loud knocking doesn't result in an answer.  Organizing someone to stay the night in the house without door. Getting back to Vancouver on the earliest possible flight (6:15 am tomorrow morning). I realize how lucky I am to have friends who I can call in this hour to help.

But for now I'm sitting here waiting. My friend doesn't have her car yet and won't have it until about 10 pm. I eat way too many chocolate chip cookies and start feeling sick, not just because of the cookies. 

9:49 pm. Still no answer from Grandma. She hasn't answered the phone for almost 3 hours and I have not much hope.

10:10 pm. The car is on the way

10:46 pm. Chantal calls.  The TV is mindblowingly loud and Grandma is shouting from the inside.  She is probably calling for help, I say.  NOPE. She is swearing at Chantal for knocking on the door in the middle of the night.  Now she finally answers the phone, ignores my advice to turn down the volume on her TV, and gives me shit for having contacted 'the neighbours' at this hour.  Now here is the old Grandma. And I had thought and hoped that constant contact with me had mellowed her out. NOPE. I interrupt her accusative tone to tell her that I'm happy that she's OK and that we'll talk tomorrow. HANG UP.   I call all my little helpers and thank them profusely. I owe them all big time. When I get back to Vancouver, Grandma will get one of those "help I have fallen and can't get up" alert bracelets, because I'm pretty darned sure I will never mobilize my friends again to drive there to get verbally abused.

Ah well. I'm not flying home tomorrow.

My first night in Venice Beach presents me with restless sleep and uninterrupted dreams that I remember vividly after waking up, which I usually never do.  NO, I don't dream of Grandma. I dream all night of George.

Go south where the air's a little better, son, where you can learn how to breathe (YVR to LAX)

Yesterday, it was a Sunday, the weather forecast called for a sunny Monday. 

I wake up today and tear open the curtains full of joyous expectation. Puddles and rain  extinguish the joy in a record time.  When I check the weather forecast, my mood further dampens (pun intended) when I see that it's supposed to rain all week.  

SNAP. That's it.  I'm getting out of Soggy Town!

2 hours later I have booked my plane ticket.  YVR to LAX direct return for $280. A small price to pay for dry feet and a sane mind.




A two-bridges bike ride from North Van to Downtown to East Van to North Van confirms the validity of my decision.  I'm wearing rainproof pants, jacket, and gloves, but the constant water supply is enough to annoy even the calmest soul.  
The constant swish-swish noise of car tires on wet roads does the rest.


Chinese Water Torture comes to mind!

And as the poor guy in 1860 Sing Sing prison found out as well, the lack of  bright daylight only adds to the torment.

The fact that this is a torment shared with a million Vancouverites every Rainy Season doesn't really help. 

Because a large percentage of my co-sufferers have Prozac to help them through the winter and I don't.



I get back to my place mostly dry, but with soggy socks and water-chilled toes. 

When I visit Grandma, she has the TV on a North American channel and it shows how a storm ransacked LA. Cars squished under trees and LAX was shut down for a short time. Good thing those storms don't last for two days ;-)

I wake up Tuesday morning.  And there is something I should remember.  What is it again? OH RIGHT. I'm leaving today !!! Amazing how much energy that thought gives me ;-) I also play that song on YouTube in repeat. The one in the post title.  It's a song by KO, by the name of MOVING MOUNTAINS.  Play it!

My first cigarette outside tells me I was right.  It feels like Incheon in February. COLD and the wind doesn't make it any better.  Speaking of Incheon, when I arrive at Denny's for breakfast, I see that the Korean waitress is back. I haven't seen her for 2 month and after she brings me the wine, I try my gomapseumnida on her, and she actually gets what I'm trying to say.  But I have to say that in my quest of knowing how to say Thank You in the languages of the countries I travel to, this one was so far the hardest !

The trip to the airport is the usual. Even Skytrain personnel has no idea how one gets on the Sktytrain with the 2 zone NON-Compass ticket that is sold on buses once the Compass fare gates are closed. Brilliant thinking.  HATE this city.

A Stargate

A metal detector gate

I show my boarding pass at least 10 times before getting to the gate. Now they ask for it RIGHT BEFORE you go through the metal detector gate AND RIGHT AFTER.  Do they really think a person without boarding pass could use their metal detector gate as a kind of STARGATE and just beam in from a different location?  They don't even look remotely similar !!! But hey, thinking went out of fashion in this city a LONG time ago.

Against all wisdom I eat at Canucks Restaurant in the airport. When I ask for chop sticks, with my Asian dish the carribean-born waitress says apologetically "we don't have chopsticks, you know, Canadian .... " When I interrupt her by saying "I know, why do you think I'm flying out of here?" I get a big smile and bright laughter.  The sad thing is that it's those Canadians who would complain bitterly if they weren't provided with a fork even in the remotest depth of Cambodia.

1:08 pm. I'll  be airborne in half an hour and I'm already dreaming of tomorrow morning.

La dolce vita April 2015

At the end of the rainbow (Stop searching for what can't be found)

At least every Irish person thinks that they know what's hidden at the end of a rainbow.  Common folklore strangely never seems to specify at which end of the rainbow that pot of gold is to be found. After all, most rainbows seem to have TWO ends.

It also seems telling that it's not love and happiness that are to be found there, but only money, which in western culture these days seems to serve as the universal Ersatz for the real thing.

But hey, I'll take money if I find it. I'm not sure it can generate happiness, but it definitely can reduce some pain.

A couple of days ago I felt that it was my duty to hand out 4 5$ bills to the first four homeless people I saw.  I was riding a bicycle at the time, which made this task much more feasible than driving a car.  The homeless are pretty much invisible and untouchable from a car, maybe that is the reason so many people prefer driving in them.

I digress. I was talking about the rainbow.  It was a real thing of beauty. I was standing there on the Southern viewpoint of Lion's Gate Bridge and I was laughing out loud.  

90% of the reason for laughing was pure joy because the thing was SO BEAUTIFUL.  And that's hard to find in Vancouver's artificial concrete landscape.

So, on the bicycle I found 3 people easily on Davie Street before I took the route through the park back to North Vancouver.  
The hand of an older alcoholic man reached out into the air as soon as he spotted the bill as if he was afraid it was a beautiful  butterfly that could evade his reach any moment.  What do people give to the homeless?  Nickels and dimes? This blue bird did not fly away.

A younger guy a block away exclaimed "oh my God" or something similar at the sight of the bill. A kind of absolute amazement that other people might show at the sight of a $1000 bill.  And I'm wondering again what the crowd that pay close to $5 on a Starbucks coffee or howevermuch on bad expensive food in this city has left over for the homeless and needy.  Not much apparently.  

In all my 50 years I have never seen a rainbow like this.  It looked so defined, so bright, so SOLID.

I wasn't the least concerned with hunting down mystical treasure at its ends. I was just enjoying its tremendous beauty.  

In a city where both the climate and the people are cold, it managed to warm my heart and soul, just like seeing the faces of the poor and seeing that I made a tiny little difference to their lives today. That's a very powerful thing, that feeling that you have improved someone's life, even if it's just a tiny bit.  So if you're driving around in a car or have developed that very common eye disease that makes the poor invisible to you, I can only say "Try it, you might like it".

Oh right, the rainbow's end.  Did I ever find it?  Nope.  And that was the other end of my amusement on that bridge.  All that greed hunting for pots of gold?  That's human lifetime almost as wasted as watching TV.  The rainbow didn't have an end.  It was forming a perfect circle around Lion's Gate Bridge, coming down on the sides and below the bridge continuing to the other side to meet it's other end,

So Good Luck to all the fools that look for life's riches in the wrong spot and in the wrong category.

Cold Climate Catatonia

Someone published a 1 hour 'walking video' of Vancouver on YouTube  It's a piece of lying-piece-of-shit advertising showing a city without homeless people, without garbage on the streets, and without excessive traffic noise and entirely siren-free.  Speaking of which,  parts of this must have been filmed at 8 am on January 1st, because the very small number of cars and the VERY quiet background noise are so uncharacteristic of Vancouver.

I have NO idea why this picture is here 

Anyhoo, what I found interesting was NOT the stupid video per se, but one of the earliest comments left by a reader.

Vancouver is a cold rainy ugly dump with a miserable population.  WTF?

NO, I swear, it wasn't me ;-)

What might be the most telling aspect of this about Vancouver is the reply to that criticizing comment:  A passive aggressive attack on the original poster without even touching the issue at hand.  How typical is that of the citizens of this GREENEST city on the planet (they MUST mean the $20 bills or all the pot being smoked, it just is IMPOSSIBLE that anyone could even consider the environmental connotation for this ugly dump !

Half an hour later, I stumble upon this line in a KO song:

You gotta go south where the air's a little better, son, where you can learn how to breathe.