Corona Del Mar

Right, that last pic was taken somewhere near La Conchita, on the last stretch into Santa Barbara from south-away. The setting sun was playing tricks with the evening fog and I thought I'd capture it. I was mistaken.

There's a sense of brittle preservation to a neighborhood so exclusive that no one could possibly afford to live there unless they bought in about the time of the Beach Boys, and judging by the age of the people out and about who were not walking to the beach, that pretty well covers it. The location, the weather, the architecture, and the landscaping were all perfection, tuned over many years. One gets a sense the only work left to do is figure out which undeserving children to leave it to. Or hell, Emma, let's just sell it to that Asian plastic surgeon and let the kids and their brats fight over the money. Especially now it's worth half what it was, heh heh.

  

But love is not dead there. A very sweet couple was kissing and cooing on a bench overlooking the sea. She was about seventy five, blonde long since gray, still pretty underneath all the years. He was about twenty five with a Jamaican look. It was all very romantic.

We staked out a spot in the sand and threw a frisbee in the light surf and risked broken ankles going out to the end of the breakwater. Felt like vacation.

  

One thing about the wealthy, though (probably your nouveau riche, selling smartphones to drug dealers). Who the hell spends a couple million bucks on a house by the ocean that was designed for Disneyland? There was another -- not pictured -- that was very spacious and clean and classy in a Bauhaus kind of way and I thought how satisfying it must be to spend six mil on a house that looks like a dentist's office. I did however like one of the sculptures, never mind how stupid-rich you have to be to put a three hundred pound hunk of bronze on your pool deck.

  

Next, if I get around to posting it, we shoot the pier at Huntington Beach.