ive been working so hard and long this week i couldnt stop today

as you know i am a bit of a workaholic. even when i was at the academy, working a FT job wasnt enough for me so i started driving for Uber/Lyft at nights and on the weekends.

so when this crazy sad scary virus started spreading around the world, i upped my production at Los Angeleno. one thing led to another and yesterday they published three of my pieces

one on the middle class

one on weed

and every day ive been doing a daily coronavirus update

the first two stories were long, involved, fascinating and what i turned in was 2x longer than what was published, but that’s why i value editors. we could all use one or two or three and im glad i have mine.

anyways im very proud of those stories and grateful that i get to do this right now — especially since so many people are losing their jobs this month.

but i was soooo beat Friday at 5pm that i just had to put down my phone and unplug my old mac. i nearly cried of exhaustion and stress and the same anxiety that im sure everyones feeling.

so when amber said this afternoon that we should go to the store to replenish our fridge, we did.

but i also thought, let me take some pics of LA.

in my wrap up story there was this great drone footage of parts of LA that were totally empty

it was eerie.

sometimes one street or two will close for a movie or a weird sinkhole

or some bizarre reason

and i guess this is a bizarre reason

but rarely are streets Everywhere empty in this town that loves its cars.

so i said, lets go all the way to the beach and take pics of how empty it is there.

well, was i surprised.

people were everywhere.

the weather was close to 70. everyone had the day off. almost everything had been shut down unless it was deemed “essential”

so people decided to grab their skateboards and surfboards

and children

and walk around venice and santa monica and malibu beach and

completely ignore the pleas for everyone to stay safe, stay at home.

now you might say, well what about you?

and i would say, im documenting this. im not in my swimtrunks having a picnic on a grassy knoll.

im not playing hackey sack

or doing 360 McTwists in the skate park.

even though it’s Saturday, im doing my job, which for Los Angeleno it is: telling you what the locals are doing.

and they are not staying at home.

it was weird.

it was especially weird to see parents bring their kids out.

and dont get me wrong. i dont know what the hell i would be doing if i had kids. especially if i lived near the beach. or close enough to drive. or Lord help us, if we were all stuck together in a cramped apartment.

and im no scientist, but isn’t the ONLY way that this spreads is if we go outside and touch things and get too close to people and do unnecessary things?

surfing is unnecessary.

renting an electric bike and cruising down the boardwalk is unnecessary.

do we need this sort of activity? Hell yes.

but we also need to stay in the house for a while.

with that said, props to those who stayed far away from each other.

ilu,

tony

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