2005: thanksgiving at the beach

[note: this is a repost of my very first blog post, originally posted November 24, 2005]

I moved from Silverlake to Manhattan Beach this year, and I'm still discovering how life at the beach is how I always thought living in LA should be. As much as I love Silverlake, the Beach is a different world. While it is so white and homogeneous at times that it can be disconcerting, the connection to the ocean - just being here - never ceases to connect with something inside.

So this morning I got up to take my friend Casey to the airport (which thankfully got me out of the house), and then took a slew of architectural pattern photos at LAX and other neighborhoods around there - tooling around the neighborhoods and taking the pics gave me one of those 'this is what I was meant to be doing' feelings. These are the type of photography that will be the basis of my website once it's up.

I got home and jumped on my beach cruiser and took a ride up the beach. Its sunny, clear, 75 degrees. Its Thanksgiving. This is why we live here. The RV park near Dockweiler State Beach was full of people making their Thanksgiving dinners outside their RV's. People are out riding bikes, playing volleyball, taking walks. This isnt my vacation, I LIVE here. How did I get so lucky? I rode on through the Ballona Wetlands and saw people taking their sailboats in and out of the harbor. Up through Marina Del Rey through the seafood restaurants and yacht and fishing stores.

On the way back, halfway down the beach the sunny sky suddenly became a thick fogbank. Jets taking off out of LAX materialized just over my head out of the clouds with a roar. The fog was so thick that you could see wisps of cloud between yourself and the bike in front of you. Before I even realized it, I was back in Manhattan Beach. Time to fix the Turkey...

Thanksgiving in LA. This is why we live here.