When we first arrived in LA, we naturally gravitated to Hollywood. The area was loud, fun, exciting, and equidistant between the jobs we'd taken. At the time, it was inconceivable that one of us might end up driving two hours each way, so little did we know about that particular LA custom.
We immediately found ourselves in the middle of the Rodney King Riots of 1992, stumbling over the early glimmerings of the homeless crisis to buy groceries, and watching rents balloon everywhere. But such inconveniences weren't what drove us away. One afternoon, we just happened to be strolling along the beach walk in Long Beach, when we spotted a makeshift rental sign on a building with three attractive, old-fashioned apartments. On a lark, we called the number, and three days later, found ourselves on the way to a quarter century of placid, hidden beach life.
With a narrow, concrete walk and a wide swathe of sand between us and the water, the Long Beach Peninsula was the perfect place to raise free-ranging children. Everyone in the neighborhood watched everything, and other than a lunatic Fourth of July flash mob now and then, there was no crime, no noise, and no confrontation.
Every autumn at the start of hurricane season, the city reminded us of the one hazard of our lifestyle by piling up the sand into a berm that stretched both ways as far as we could see. The seasonal tides would rise and crest the concrete perch we called a seawall, but never quite made it into our foundations. Cocktail conversation would turn to the legendary disasters of the past, and children would find a new place to play, until the city came back and smoothed away the already softening line of sand castles.
Makes you wonder why anyone would ever move away. And friends and neighbors did question our sanity when we decamped to home ownership in the urbanized reaches of the original Spanish settlement of San Pedro. But we had our answer about the new digs on our first Fourth of July, when the largely Latino neighborhood erupted in a hundred spontaneous fireworks shows and a cacophony of mariachi bands.
Like most people, we can only tolerate so much crazy, but like most city folk, we can only tolerate so much peace.
Still, we do suffer an occasional pang of nostalgia when we sit around and recall an existence that could only be summed up—without a trace of irony—by a long sigh and the song lyric, "Just another day in paradise."
Watch the Phil Vassar video of “Just Another Day in Paradise” at YouTube.
And here’s the Bertie Higgins version from Florida.