OC poor

OC is posh, OC is rich, OC means over-the-top giantic cars and elegant houses with palm trees and green (very green, an innatural British green) gardens. It means long beaches, big boulevards, the 405 connecting San Diego to L.A., it means losts corporate buildings and, I guess, successfull managers (of course driving big cars). It means lots of shopping malls disguised behind yet some more palm trees and parking lots. By definition, the OC is rich, and conservative. So, says the equation, there are no poor people. No poor people, ok? Strange, but one can buy this glossy story, this air of plastic optimism helps.
Yet, if by chance you don't have a car (a remote chance for 99% of OC-ans), you might meet them, the poor ones. Those out of the plans, out of the marketing models, out of the system (a ferocious system that says that if you are a) poor and b) ill you barely have any chance..). You can meet them if you get on a bus. The system is crap, there are just a few buses and they run once per hour, they keep air conditioning somewhere right above zero, and.. are empty. Only passengers are me, when I am too overhelmed with work that I cannot take the luxury of an hour cycling since one hour in the bus means at least reading, and... all kind of invisible junkies, homeless, disadvantaged, mental illness, poor, people the society cannot accomodate anywhere else... people speaking to themselves, borderline personalities, or just poor. OC has left them the buses. At least.

sunset surfing

sunny day, lot of work. at 7 i got enough of work, i grab my wetsuit and my bike, rented a board and went in the water: excellent huge waves, probably the biggest i have even seen, a bit too big for unstable stefi, many, perhaps 100 surfers in the water... first wave, i was standing and sliding on the water: great! that's surfing, dude! all following waves i was pearling (when the nose of the board digs into the water), i even got the board on my head and had to sit on the beach a couple of minutes and massage my head.. but then i was standing a couple of more times. it was so beatiful, the sun slowly going down, the moon becoming more and more shiny, the sky getting darker, the lights of the oil platforms offshore starting to blinking.. pity i don't have any pic!
(ps. at 8.30 i was back to my laptop.. never be away for too long from the laptop!)

this is life in huntington beach, surf city USA

my california bike.. a shiny 1986 bridgestone

it is about to be sold again.. so honour to this great companion of my daily commuting huntington-irvine and back. oh, so sad to leave you behind...

surf diva

let's dump on orange county

"A friend of mine says everything bad in the country always seems to come from California. And he doesn't mean the earthquakes, fires, floods, and riots. His list is long and impressive: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, all the major defence contractors, Disneyland, the John Birch Society, Congressman Bob Dornan, the anti-immigration movement, Prop. 13 (the anti-tax initiative), the Mighty Ducks, Charles Manson. I told him that, other than Manson, everything he mentioned actually has one connecting thread: Orange County, California, a massive sprawl of land and people between Los Angeles and San Diego. Nixon was born there, Reagan got 75 percent of the vote there, and a big statue of the Duke, who lived and died there, greets you upon landing at Orange County's John Wayne Airport. Orange County has been called the "spiritual base" for America's conservatives-and every loony, right-wind idea we've had to fight over the years seems to have got its start in Orange County" e continua.. from Michael Moore, Downsize this! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, 1996.

point bonita lighthouse, golden gate, san francisco

early warning sign of fascism... from Berkeley a questa povera Italietta

Mentre a Roma vince la destra di Alemanno, e in Campidoglio tornano i saluti romani (vedere per credere, follow this link), ho trovato in una libreria di Berkeley, vicino a San Francisco, il seguente poster:

EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM
powerful and continuing nationalism
disdain for human rights
identification of enemies as a unifying cause
supremacy of the miliary
rampant sexism
controlled mass media
obsession with national security
religion and government intertwined
corporate power protected
labor power suppressed
disdain for intellectuals & the arts
obsession with crime & punishment
rampant cronyism & corruption
fraudolent elections

as a check-list, we score pretty badly.. i counted at least 9 signs we do have in our country

(Berkeley, Revolution Book store)