Take-off

Back in the 60s they tore down one of the area's oldest farmhouses to put up a gas station. An ugly, ultra-modern, Jetsons gas station.

Now that gas station is really cool, and I hope they never tear it down. These old Orbits should be preserved forever as historical architecture, reminders of a bright and brief moment when the future was coming and boy did it shine.

I took this because I'm afraid they will tear it down someday when I'm not looking. I tore in the other morning because I had to take the Jeep to work and it was dry. It was dry because the Jeep was the college boy's car until he moved away. Now it's more or less mine again. That doesn't mean I get to drive it. At the beginning of the month (yesterday) it went off the car insurance. There's way too much wrong with it to drive it enough to justify paying for insurance. But I drove it on its last legal day because the Mustang was in the shop. The Mustang went in because the differential sprung a leak. Turned out to be the pinion seal. No big deal because we had it fixed before all the fluid leaked out. Suppose we hadn't noticed the leak and didn't go in until it sounded like we were being chased by the cops everywhere we went? That would have meant a new differential, and that would have sucked.

But it didn't suck, and neither does this classic old gas station which I hope is still there when we really do have flying cars. Maybe by then tail fins will come back too.

Paddling Redux

I like this old post and am going to link to it after the bonus pic.

We don't drive Gondolas in your Toilet so don't Pee in our Canals

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.