No, Not Atlantic City: Try the Left Coast

Today I did my Marina Del Rey/Venice Boardwalk walk, about five miles in all. The final destination was Small World Books, where I found a copy in Spanish of Jorge Luis Borges’s Poesias Completas.While I drank a lemonade, I shot the above photograph of a bicycle rental shop across the alley from my table. In the meantime, several guys tried to sell me CDs recorded by their garage hip hop band. Once again, I told them I bought only music from dead white guys who wore powdered wigs.

Another guy try to divert me to the medical marijuana “doctor” he was working for, saying it was all legal. Having a whole medical delivery system based on a single remedy is like having separate shops for aspirin, Vicodin, acetaminophen, and Prozac.My only answer was a shrug followed by, “Sorry, I don’t need it”—with the implication that I am even now as trippy as they come.

I like the Venice Boardwalk. It remains so incredibly seedy and picturesque. Today there were half a dozen food catering trucks with various specialties parked in a circle, as if they expected Red Indians on paint horses to attack them with bows, arrows, and war whoops. I passed on them, as I had a lunch date with Martine at Jerry’s Deli in Marina Del Rey.

You can always tell the people from out of town. They’re always snapping cellphone pictures of things I take for granted, like lifeguard stations and sidewalk vendors.

The weather was utterly delightful: Sunny and high seventies.