Saturday, November 4, 2023

Santa Monica One

 Hello. I just finished Joan Didion's The White Album and I'm pretty sure that's why I wrote this whole thing in the style that I wrote it in. Great book. 

I am seated in Primo Passo Coffee Roasters on Montana Boulevard and Seventh Street in Santa Monica. It is sunny outside and the spot is popping. Every portion of the Santa Monica spectrum is represented in here, exactly as I had hoped and expected. There are old men in expensive sportswear, old women in gaudy Saturday morning garb, beachy looking sandal-wearers, millenial women wearing millenial women clothes, IG baddies, and athleisure couples featuring guys that are dressed like shit but probably make more than two hundred thousand dollars a year. Today's surprise appearance is a guy wearing a pair of those terrible "Revenge Storm," fake Vans low-tops. This is what Santa Monica is all about.

It's important to note that this is not necessarily the experience of the majority of people who come here to vacation. There is some invisible force which keeps the army of beach hungry tourists away from these oases, in other words "The real Santa Monica." These places form the collective source of hometown pride I've developed since I left for college. 

Take, for example, the restaurant known singularly as "Vito." My grandparents have been going to Vito for more than thirty years, which has led my grandfather to know a great deal about the personal lives of the staff as well as the ownership. This historical context, combined with both the general ambiance and the amount of old people, lends the dining experience an austere quality that you just can't find on the rooftop patio at Elephante.

What I'm trying to say is that the best of Santa Monica is not defined by what is ultra popping, so much as by what has been held dear by the community. 

Ok hold on.

Having written all this, I would bet a lot of money that this is pretty much what everyone takes pride in within their community. Huh.

In the quest to feel individual I just came to what is probably a universal truth... So it goes!

Bye!

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