Cliff May and Teresa K!

The beauty of attending a wedding in Long Beach is it gives one a chance to reflect on how many Long Beachian pals one really has. Most people, including myself, have LA pals and OC pals, but we never take time to go: "Hey Long Beach, I'm gonna give you another look." And wow, they are there!

I stayed last night with Chris and John and got to see their wedding photos so it was like attending two weddings in one day. ( I write that in the tone that it is a good thing.)

Chris, Pat and John

My dear friend Teresa came to collect me in the morning. We last saw each other in NYC and like some old married couple or two woman on the same cycle or identical twins separated when our parents split and joined different circuses, we both decided to surprise each other by wearing our Coney Island t-shirts that we painstakingly picked out in CI when were there this year.

Teresa and Pat and the matching t's

It was a stolen moment to be able to spend all of Sunday with her and see her and Jose Luis' new house. Long Beach is a place that seems to have been created post-war. (Since so many wars are still going, it is not confusing that I mean WWII.) It had a huge air and naval industry and after the war it was part of a building boom. Teresa and Jose Luis live in a tract home section built there in the early 1950's and all the homes in their area were designed by Cliff May So what was tract is now famous mid-century historic district. I have to say from their front door on, I was gobsmacked at how stunning their place is. I have never been a big mid-century guy, but I totatally "got it" by seeing this house. I am now a sucker for light (I live in a brownstone and don't get any. Light, that is.) and these places were designed to "have your garden in every room." Beee-u-t-ful. And of course, they have it decorated perfectly.

Like an inner city school kid goes to summer camp. T and JL had me on their guest bike and we rode out to the Long Beach Community Garden where they have a huge plot that is theirs for the hoeing. This is not some vacant lot between buildings that I am used to, but this expansive wonderland of produce and community that if I thought about it long enough I would get all koom-by-ya over.

Then we went for excellent Mexican food in Hawaiian Gardens - another housing area that was marketed as a post-war Shangri-La and now is a haven for gangs and drive by shootings, but has great cuisine!

Drive by, not drive thru.

Okay, I have to say it was like visiting your cool aunt and uncle's house. (And I write THIS in the best tone.) The kind that let you have two root beer floats and go to bed with salami in your teeth. As if your parents only worked and watched TV and kept you in the gated community where all your friends looked like you. And here you were riding bikes over freeway overpasses, raking manure, eating while ducking, and then Jose Luis pulls out his giant telescope (and I say THAT in the most literal way possible) and we look at Jupiter and the Moon and he explains all this astrology stuff to me. It was so amazing. This is a guy from a mountain region in Spain who surfs every morning! I asked him how he knew all this stuff and he told me he took a class. Knock me over with a feather! I mean, you can do that? He told me these very wise words I hope to take back to the East with me: "You are an adult, you can do what you want." I didn't want to disrupt our discussion of terminator shadows and faculae to tell him I have "permission issues."

A star is born.

That evening we had a Span-esque tapas meal with this great eggplant/anchovy dish that I hope Teresa will comment on the post with the name of it.

Teresa, one of my most faithful readers, told me she likes when I photograph food for the blog, so I oblige her. Comments are always appreciated.

I got to sleep in the room with the amazing painting of her as a young girl/woman and shower in the natural lit bathroom and eat two kinds of cereal mixed with coffee.

You Goya, Girl!

It was hard to say goodbye, but I feel blessed that we are the friends we are. How amazing to be together after all these years. If I were Walk Whitman I would sing a poem about it.

WAIT...Am I high? How could I forget?! They also drove me down to Seal Beach where we saw this amazing Japanese kite festival and then it came up in discussion, as it does, that I had never in my life been to Watts Towers. And so they took me there. It was amazing. One man's folly that remains so wonderful and grand surrounded by poverty and violence.

Mom and Dad would have said to watch the video and clean my room.

Watts not to like?