The most famous riviera setting nowadays, at least in the imaginations of Caucasian Americans, is the French Rivera, or as they call it, Cote d'Azur (Blue Coast). Monaco, a sovereign principality with its famous capital Monte Carlo, and Nice, lie in close proximity to each other on the Riviera, along with Cannes and Saint Tropez (which many Americans would recognize under the pronunciation san tro-pay).
Everyday I get down to the sand, everyday I ride my bicycle to the other side of town, everyday I get to bask in the sun and smell the salt water from my stoop I convince myself a little bit more:
I live in a riviera town.
We've got nearly constant sun during the days; nearly constant warm weather; palm trees everywhere; plenty of tourists; even an Indy Car Grand Prix race on our palm tree lined streets. What else do we need? Separate identity from the LA-megopolis: check. Insular little art-deco riddled neighborhoods: check...
One night as Corrie and I walked to the beach we started talking about the costs of living on a riviera, like it was a tangible thing outside our own heads. We weren't discussing financial costs, since coastal areas are pretty well established, especially in California, and especially in los Diez Sur.
We may be in very close proximity to the ocean, but rare is the day you may want to take a dip...unless it's hot, you've had some libations, and you're me. Then it's rather cool and novel that the ocean's right there.
We have a thriving port...and by "thriving" I mean $140 billion worth of merchandise comes through it annually, which means our blue-meeting-blue horizon is beset by tankers full of cargo even when it's dark out. Seriously 24/7 is the line of tankers into our port.
We also have a thriving petroleum-based industry. Maybe this is one cost that's more an American addition to a riviera concept. We also do aviation pretty well here, but that's a tad bit farther from the sand and diving pelicans.
I've been to the French Riviera. We spent a short time in Genoa, the capital of Liguria on the Italian counterpart, then sped through Monte Carlo with a head full of hash and spent a relaxing three nights on the stony beaches of Nice.
This...this is our little riviera, our Brooklyn-meets-Pismo-Beach...our little slice of SoCal paradise...paradise that has days that waver between the odor of bilge water and that of refinery...
This picture summarizes "Riviera Living" for me. It's a picture of me and my father-in-law taken on the day before Thanksgiving:
During that conversation with Corrie on that night's beach walk, I, with a laugh, asked how we came to live in such a place, and if we deserved it.
Her response summarized how we've been feeling, or how we always felt maybe: we've done some crazy things, like moving to New York without jobs or a place to live, then moving to Texas in a similar spot. We've lived in as many places as some people visit in their entire lives. We finally found a place that is kind of the ideal place for us: beautiful weather; beach close by; urban, but with good pedestrian rhythm; everything (besides work) is within walking distance; not so sanitized that reality is missing (mixed groupings of socio-economic backgrounds and drug-addiction levels).
This neighborhood isn't for everybody, but it is for us, and we spent a while looking for it, and by that I mean it took a while learning what we wanted from our living environment.
That's the kind of nerds we are: we describe it as "wanting a specific kind of living environment".
To the question of whether we deserve it or not...well, shit, we went and made something happen and we didn't trample anybody doing it. If that's not the manifestation of deserving something, then I'm not sure I understand the question, or even the importance of the sentiment.
No comments:
Post a Comment