i am so lucky
of course bad things happen too.
sometimes for long periods.
but all in all, it’s incredible what i have gotten to do and see.
my first years in LA were santa monica, venice, and malibu
who gets that – as a teenager?
why do I love LA? because that’s what i was introduced to.
by a blue eyed irish native with pale skin and jet black hair
whats not to love?
i now know why it was never made into a movie. it’s so sad.
this man bought a huge bunch of land over there from a widow for 400 pesos.
then a guy bought it from him for ten cents an acre.
then sold it to a guy for a $10 acre. we’re talking 20 miles long and two miles wide.
but that guy died and his wife had to try to fend off squatters and people trying to build roads
and then the government trying to build a highway through it.
what do you do when you have so much land that the government is all, excuse me please?
the first thing they did was she sold one of the sweetest swaths to celebrity interest.
they brought in their own security, local government, food stores and shops.
and then she dynamited people’s attempts at roads.
but it shows you that you can have all the money in the world (she was worth about $700 million) and yet you’re constantly worrying about people infringing on your property,
in this case, early 20th century pacific paradise.
temperate weather, rivers spilling out into the sea, and endless beach.
but theres no way you get to keep it.
maybe thats good.
maybe people shouldnt have so much of the good stuff.
maybe the sharing is the lesson we need to learn.
When I first moved to LA, I had no friends. After a while I met a punk rockish girl at Santa Monica College who turned me on to poetry, environmental issues and journalism. She was amazing. She lived in Malibu.
We started dating and I would drive all the way out to her place by County Line, just above Zuma. She still lived with her parents, who were so nice to me. They knew it was a long drive back to Inglewood where I lived and they suggested that I spend the night out there more than she did. 
 Even her brothers were great to me. It was a dream.
I tweeted to her today to tell her that I was thinking good thoughts about her sweet parents. She replied saying thank you, that they had evacuated safely. But she said the house was in the path of the fire and things didn’t look good for it.
Even though the dad was an engineer, his wife and kids were basically hippies. Beautiful, loving, throwbacks. Sometimes you think, oh it’s ok if a house burns down, they’ll get insurance to build a cool modern replacement, but if there was one family who wouldn’t want a modern anything it’s them. They would prefer that their quirky, humble, super-real home remain as is.
And that’s what I’m praying for tonight.
When I saw this Wally Skalij image from the LA Times of what appears to be some emus and a donkey at Zuma today, I thought, yep, that’s so Trancas. Funky, weird, and super chill.