SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER - DAY TWELVE - July 31, 2019



We braved serious rush hour traffic and arrived in Hermosa Beach at around 6:30 p.m. Hermosa is in the South Bay, "the Bay" being Santa Monica Bay. It is very large, reaching past Staircase beach (Surfin’ Safari Day 8) north and a few miles past Hermosa south, some 60 miles total. Just 20 miles south of Los Angeles, Hermosa cultivates the same hermeneutically sealed beach culture all such towns do, down to Imperial Beach and the Mexican border. I lived in Hermosa for three years after my expatriate turn in Spain, desiring a provincial existence within reach of the city so I could sell literature. Might as well have been on Mars, for I was one of few in town who had anything to do with L.A. I worked as a script reader for United Talent Agency. Then I did it for Creative Artists Agency. It was before e-mail and I had to drive up Sepulveda into Beverly Hills every afternoon, pick up the scripts, read them at home, and return day next with breakdowns. Movie agents don’t read scripts until they get traction, so they hire "lit people" to do it for them. It’s okay work, but you have to read a lot to make enough money. Later, I had to labor at Java Man coffee shop on Pier Avenue. It is vaguely veiled as “Java World” in my wordy roman รก clef novel, “The Sidewalk Smokers Club.” Hermosa is the birthplace of “Black Flag” and “Circle Jerks.”
A local surfer who died young, Pete Kelly

How those angst-driven punk bands sprung from the golden sands escapes me, for Hermosans are relentlessly happy. No fatalistic crack in their smooth, smiling surfaces. Not that living by the beach, driving a cool car, and
playing water sports all day is asking little of life, but these people know when to stop wanting more. Quentin Tarantino worked in a video store in Hermosa, where he claimed to have watched every film, before alighting to Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin kept a summer house at 32 Tenth Street that still stands (see photo). All the residences are connected by walkways down to the shore and, when I lived there, people left doors open, shared barbecues, and fed each other's cats in a fluid community. Now the walkways are blocked-off and nothing has changed the atmosphere more

than those foreboding gates. It's almost not Hermosa. I had never surfed it, but did Manhattan Beach, next town north, and came to dislike South Bay. It’s a beach break and the meaty waves seem to leap at the shore and pound to the sand. Then again, I've never been in the shape this Surfin' Safari Summer has shaped me. Today’s waves were breaking close to the shore and walling up, but I got into one that catapulted me parallel down the beach. People on The Pier
Hermosa is proud of its punky past.

applauded, or so I’d like to think. Heading back up Sepulveda, we scooped Wesley from Westchester where he was skating. Too broke even for street tacos, we cooked them at home, and they were the best yet, 'cause they are always the best yet, and 'cause I used lots of green chile, lime, and love.


Charlie Chaplin's House



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THREE SURFIN’ SAFARI SUMMERS: In the summer of 2019, three years after my wife Anna Huling-Siciliano was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it became clear that I was losing her. Time was precious, health precarious, money short, and I decided to mine the riches of Southern California and launch a defiant series of regional Surfin’ Safaris as health-driven, couple-shared adventures out of the mausoleum our home had become. As a family we’d always been beachgoers and it seemed a safe bet for my wife who was slowly losing her mind. She could sit on a blanket - as she always had - while I surfed. Things didn't work out to be so neat and clean, but that's the story. Reporting being of a second nature to me, I concocted Facebook posts after each outing through which I intended to keep friends and family apprised of Anna’s condition, and to put them at ease about her quality of life (ie; how I was treating her). Of course, others could read the posts, which were grouped under the ti
Read more

SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY TWO - June 15, 2019

Image
      We went out to the Marina late afternoon. It was cold and windy and the water was mushy and I didn't want to go in, but have decided it's not a true Surfin' Safari Summer outing unless I get beat up by the ocean a bit. Managed to work into a wave that I'm still thinking about hours later.   We took Washington Blvd. out to the coast and stopped for lunch at an Oaxacan place. We shared a "Tlayuda." It is hard to make the case that Los Angeles is a handsome sort of city, but there are pockets where the best elements of Southern California are assembled to charming effect. This spot is one of them.  
Read more

SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER ONE - DAY ELEVEN - July 27, 2019

Image
  Anna Suffocating on the hard facts of my life, done with work for the week, I grabbed the co-pilot and lit out for Topanga State Beach at 5 p.m. Safari Summer has taught me that certain surf trips are not as hair-raising and impossible as I’d assumed. It took less than an hour and decompression kicked-in with the first whiff of salty air drifting up Sunset Boulevard. Topanga Beach lies at the mouth of Topanga Creek,  where it empties after a journey through the natural jewel known as… Topanga Canyon. Back when there was plenty of California to go around, it was colonized by hippies. In the ‘80s, some developers decided to turn Topanga into gold. The hippies, by then, were prosperous merchants with a residual talent for political organization that knocked the developers clear back to downtown Los Angeles (never to return). An alternative culture took root between the shady canyon’s walls. There is a new-age, witchy-woman-in-seven-veils feel to that insulated little world. For me, the
Read more