Gazatteer Entry: Ocean Cleft

Pacifica, originally uploaded by F.X.Enderby.

Another entry into what is becoming more of a "gazatteer-on-the-fly."

I am getting to know Ocean Cleft a little at a time. I was here for a few half-weeks of substitute teaching for my Pater's parochial school (a parochial school in Ocean Cleft is doubly parochial) last spring. Now it has grown into one of my main sources of net and world (especially its little library). A mere 7 miles from the Hamlet (as opposed to the brutal 8 miles of coastal traffic separating me from San Benito).

Did I mention how isolated the Hamlet is? El Cab was incredulous when I told him there was no video store (nor mall, nor library, nor church, nor jobs, nor pagoda, nor firestation, nor pier, nor airport, nor train (gone with the '06 earthquake), but there is a farrier and there are certainly llamas).

Ocean Cleft is the last places Inimitable One* would like to settle because of its blue collar reputation. For more on that, you must read Derek Kirk Kim's Same Difference, written in this very neighborhood. I should really go ask him about drawing comics at home, something I can't possibly do on my parents' dining room table (or anywhere else at the Manse, for that matter).

Oooh, the library computer session is going to end soon. I think I am going to go check out the local strip mall after this.

*the IO is one of my jet-setting, fashionable friends. I have written about her ages ago (all good stuff, of course), but some of you newer readers may not have made her acquaintance yet.

Hamlet, Part 2

View of the Hamlet, originally uploaded by camille94019.

The fog rolled away this afternoon for the first time in two weeks and I took the KB swimming in the very pool I learned how to swim in. I think the lifeguards were the same-- tanned, slightly ditzy blondes with big sunglasses, paying more attention to the lummoxy swim jocks that to the children. Maybe they are just the Universal Lifeguards. The kids smelled just like they did when I was their age, a combination of little farts and strong detergent. They even had the same faces. It was very surreal, as if 25 years really hadn't passed. I was the only person that had changed. Even the loose gravel on the potholed parking lot was just where I left it.

My time is running out. More later.

Gazatteer Notes: San Benito

Downtown Half Moon Bay, originally uploaded by Edgardo and Laurian Vega.

I always seem to come to San Benito during times of transition. My first arrival was in 1981, I was six and the local elementary school my parents enrolled me in was the second one I had attended that year (and the third of my short academic career). I was the new kid for the next 12 years, as most of my classmates were either 1) related or 2) had gone to the same preschool. Even as I gave my valedictory speech, looking at nearly the same crowd that had greeted my arrival with a strange combination of hostility and indifference, I was deeply relieved to know that in a few short months I'd be in an entirely different universe.

The second arrival was in 2001, before the Crash, to the home of some generous family friends who put me up for the seven months it took me to find a room in Flip Flop. Some of the dotcom excitement seeped across the Fault and raised a little local wealth. Quite a few more shiny SUVs dominated the narrow roads and some of the artichoke fields were replaced with mcmansions. The town had a shiny appearance, with bistros instead of diners, and boutiques replacing the Mexican markets.

Now I am here again. The prosperity of the turn of the century has worn off like a badly-applied veneer. The streets returned to their old dusty and crumbling selves. The bistros and boutiques are still here, but the wares in the windows are gaudy, grasping a wealthy clientele that disappeared with the Newton.

One of the artichoke farms still dominates the west side of town, and the Italian family who has tilled it for the last 60 years is still there (we can thank/damn Mussolini for that).

[insert thoughtful pause as our writer contemplates that farm, that farm family, the piano lessons, the eggs-and-gossip, the droughts, the floods, the city-actions, the pumpkins lounging like overfed football players, the first artichokes eaten with mayonnaise, the legendary town proclamation forcing all the Italians to move to the west side of town just in case the Japanese attacked, the fat bunches of Swiss chard and the fact that the library computer will shut itself off and this will have to be continued later...]