Some Things Never Change

South Bay on July 4, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Catalina Is. in background

We threw a weekend's worth of stuff into the Prius and headed south for the Fourth of July weekend attempting to escape the fast-encroaching firework explosions of Santa Cruz and protect our friend, the precious shepherd, Frida, who hopped into the back as soon as I lifted the hatchback. She was ready to go. And we were off.

The promise of a quieter Fourth in the high-rent community of Manhattan Beach was a lure, and Barbara wanted to see her mother, Bettelu, who at 91, runs the show muy jefe at her pad two blocks from the ocean overlooking the surf break at 26th Street. Nice view.

Fireworks are illegal in both Santa Cruz and Manhattan Beach, yet we were confident that MB would be a lot quieter than the Cruz where "the road goes on forever and the party never ends." It was a good call. There was maybe an hour of pops and booms and it was over in MB.

Bettelu claimed it was extremely quiet compared to the town's normal display of explosive patriotic fervor. She seemed disappointed. Her little dog, Cooper, barked at the noise, while Frida, a much larger animal, ran for cover in the corner and shivered. She was not having a good time. Luckily it was over soon enough.

Barbara says that MB has changed since she grew up there during the Fifties and Sixties when it was a family beach town and had more fireworks. Today the houses along The Strand appear to be hotels. These behemoth buildings occupy entire lots. One thing hasn't changed, however. The same guys who grew up surfing and playing in the water here more than 50 years ago are still doing it. They meet nearly every morning at the end of Marine Street. Their focus is the surf which ties them together. Most don't live here anymore. They've been priced out.

"Who lives here?" says one of them. And they all laugh. One named Marty says he lives in Long Beach. Barbara remembers some of them from elementary school.

This is where they meet. This is their spot. They know this break better than anyone. They've lived it. They're hanging on to it as long as they can. Tim, one of the guys, says he heard that Johnny Rice died last year. Johnny was a legendary board shaper from Santa Cruz. It was good to hear Johnny's name mentioned in Manhattan Beach.

There really was not much surf over the weekend north of Orange County. There were reports of waves at Doheny, four-feet, steep but slow. Water temp at MB was about 68 but felt like bath water compared to Santa Cruz. Brian (Barbara's brother), Jack (Brian's son) and I jumped into the ocean in our trunks and tried to body womp the small disorganized shore break. It felt great. We talked about the sharks, which Brian says are common now. So are surfers.