Oct 19 2013
Santa Monica
And a better one it was. It was also a beautiful one:
I love palm trees. They always make me happy.
I headed to Santa Monica, via the quite alarming freeway. You know it’s a bad sign when there are traffic lights on the on ramps. Once on the freeway, you are either a four to six lane parking lot or racing along with people merrily cutting across multiple lanes without signaling on both sides of your car. It didn’t take long to notice the Angeleno driving style is do what you want, and do it fast. Also there is no need to wave thank you, use your signals, or bother with those ridiculous traffic regulations. No left turn? No problem! Do it anyway!
I was glad to leave the freeway free for all and park my new girlfriend at the beach. It’s hard to believe that this calm blue body of water is the same as the wild, rocky sea back home in Hooterville:
The famous Pier is the westernmost end of the famous Route 66, completed in 1926:
It’s a charming place, with an old-fashioned holiday feel to it. I drank some icy lemonade in the warm sunshine and watched the surfers. Santa Monica was a favorite haunt of the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson, the only Beach Boy who surfed. Beautiful, sexy, wild Dennis lived a brief life that was all those things. He packed more into his 39 years on this planet than most of us do in 80. I stopped at his favorite watering hole, Chez Jay, which Dennis would have found mostly unchanged:
and what used to be Brother Studios, which Dennis and his brother Carl set up in the 1970s and is now apparently condos near the fancy shopping district.
The drive back to the motel was in keeping with the motif set up at the car rental agency. It was a mere 13 miles to the motel, but it took me over two hours to get there. I thought that just taking Santa Monica Boulevard back would be better than the freeways, but it was just as bad. I wonder how the millions of people who live here deal with the traffic day in and day out. No matter how rich you are and how nice your car is, you’re still trapped in the gridlock with the rest of us.
One Response to “Santa Monica”
I’m glad it was you driving instead of me, I prefer country roads with very little traffic myself, I guess people living in these conditions get use to it, or not.