YET TO BE REVISED
I'm doing a sort of experimental bit on this thing, taking one observation (mostly objective, at the beach) and analyzing it in two different ways, on each of my blogs, in order to illustrate how the lens through which one chooses to view any individual act skews the construction/meaning of the act itself.
(Yes, that was a great sentence, full of insight and, errm, sense-making. Digs it and big ups.)
So.
Earlier today, my wonderful, delightful boyfriend and I went to Venice Beach, a veritable shithole--and, in essence, the perfect place to view humanity in its natural state (you know, you know, no, you don't, you don't know what I mean).
Halfway between the pier and the vendors that litter most of the stretch between Santa Monica and Venice, on the actual beach (surf, sand, salt 'n all), we found ourselves amidst mostly young couples, sparse and evenly spaced across the sands, few in number, largely similar: bikini tops, ironic beach t-shirts, California Rainbow (R) flip-flops, sunglasses, pullovers. Smiles.
Very young, very heterosexual. Very Southern California on a Wednesday afternoon.
The topography of the beach is similarly generic: a huge and mostly empty parking lot watched over by an attendant, a lonely lifeguard station sitting abandoned, vaguely rusted trash cans, omnipresent signs warning the reader that there shall be "NO SWIMMING/NO NADAR" (which really ought to read "NO NADANDO." Just saying). Sand. Mid-afternoon low tide, a few boats scattered in the distance in an area zoned safe for boating, not much else.
And then:
The Maverick: The Breaker.
Alex (mi novio) saw him first, walking his sand-filled Seven-Up bottle across the sand, a "break" from the monotony of the yuppies surrounding us, looking like he might "break" any who crossed his path in two, surprisingly reminiscent of Anthony Hopkins playing Breaker Ted Brautigan in Hearts in Atlantis, if Anthony Hopkins had long, grizzled white hair and a green speedo and an anklet and sunglasses and carried around a Seven-Up bottle. We watched him stalk across the beach, toward the lifeguard's stand, where he performed, to our unending amusement, a series of stretches and near-yoga poses.
The antithesis of monotony! The antithesis of yuppies!
And he was fuckin' crazy!
It's funny; It's culture.
(I'm assuming that everyone in this class will have a similar sentence somewhere in his/her post, and certainly don't want to be the only person without one. Also, I like semicolons.)
Apart from our Breaker, everyone has to wear occasion-approprate clothes; heterosexualty is overwhelming. Youth is important; employment, ergo capitalism, even moreso (Venice is never empty, except on weekdays, when humans are at work--the absence of culture here reveals more than its presence ever could). The parking attendant's booth, existing only to collect the $7.00 toll to park, has a human watching over it; the lifeguard station, which exsts, in theory, to save people, is empty (because, I suppose, you probably can't charge $7.00 prior to saving a life; it's bad for business.)
The yuppies (a nickname I just appropriated at Alex's suggestion; he's standing over my shoulder, reading this as I type it, and suggested that, as I have already shared our nickname for The Breaker, it might be appropriate to come up with a nickname for everyone who is not him--e.g., everyone else, including us, e.g., the yuppies. Te amo, Alejandro! Y besitos!) are a mark of contemporary Wednesday afternoon beach culture: mostly young, overwhelmingly heterosexual, appropriately clothed, smiling; the maverick is a mark of...well, everything else, Outsiders and Others and Other 'O' words I can't being to think of now that might describe someone living on the fringe of culture, who is marked as fuckin' crazy (sorry) because he isn't, well, young and smile-y and yuppified, as the culture of the beach tells us he should be.
I do want to say, though, that, had this not been a weekday, or had I been farther north or south, the yuppie culture predominant here would have been an anomaly; both the pier and Venice vendors look more like the Breaker than Alex or I (for now, at least, until we get all tatted up and pierced, and shave mohawks and wear leather clothes and BDSM collars and other shit that will make us unique, just like everyone else.)
