i feel great today

today is a day off, but i will go on a walk, eat a taco or two and listen to next weeks episode to make sure there are no mistakes

then i will come home and try to do as much on the blog for it as i can bc i really need to clean tomorrow and work and write

bc on wednesday, after 22 years, im getting a new kitchen floor, a floor that is probably 40 years old.

today is kurt cobain’s birthday and also leah in texas

this is a picture of OJ in 1984, the summer i moved to LA

he is carrying the torch up The California Incline

i was there

it was a cool moment

and then incredibly cool and touching when he passed the torch to a kid with cancer

 

everyone cried because first we see big strong OJ

then we see this little kid who needed help to walk

but he did it.

this is one of my earliest memories of LA

and one of many many reasons i love it so.

ive been trying to meet jake forever

but things never worked out.

then i saw on his Facebook Story that he was broken down in the parking lot near Shutters and no one in the parking lot would help him

so i DMed him and said i could be there in 45 minutes.

got there, we met, jumped his car (which was tricky because i didnt know where my battery was(!)

and then i podcasted him for an hour and a half.

what a great guy. it’ll be a very good podcast

we talked about all sorts of things and i pressed him for answers

but on some questions like

what do you want next

he just didnt know and hes trying to figure it out.

its funny this is supposed to be about Venice but so many of these people wanna talk about santa monica

anyways, visualize what you want in life, and be shocked and amazed when it comes true

woah i havent blogged all week?

well it was a crazy week

and as life goes, what you may think is weird in your personal or professional relationships can suddenly turn into small potatoes when shit goes afoul in the USA and then your own city.

this was the week that a young man was killed in Minnesota and it was filmed.

his murderer: a cop.

it took forever for the cop to get fired which pissed off a bunch of people, and then it took a while for his three partners to get canned. but only the one cop ended up getting arrested, and that took a bunch.

so add to the mix the fact that most of the USA is locked down, watching things over and over on the internet and TV, and added to that people don’t have to go to work in the morning. Also people are nervous and mad and scared about their jobs. 40 million americans are unemployed.

then sprinkle onto that the fact that white women are still calling the cops on black men for being black, and the POTUS has zero leadership abilities, and the rich are somehow getting richer from funds that are supposed to go to small businesses

and you have a slow burning fuse

and then a powder keg.

riots.

fires.

looting.

mahem.

people stealing stuff not just in the hood any more, that’s so 20th century, now they have gone to beverly hills, and melrose, and today was santa monica.

nordstom at the grove was hit.

gucci on rodeo drive.

big five in santa monica.

everything must go.

now theres fires across the street from the white house.

on friday trump was rushed down to an underground bunker.

shit’s so crazy and so wild that i have zero story ideas.

and whats worse is i have three stories in the can that if i had worked faster and pushed harder would already be out there but now if they go out this week they’ll probably seem stale.

cuz theyre based on COVID, which is still a thing, but the Riots are the new thing

racism, police brutality, the national guard

the deadly disease is def not the main thing any more.

which is a lesson i knew a long long time ago: publish your stuff ASAP because you never know what world changing event will happen tomorrow.

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