July 20, 2006 – A Sunday Afternoon in Shanghai

July 20, 2006 – A Sunday Afternoon in Shanghai

It’s Sunday July 9th and I’m on Zhangyang Road in Shanghai at the intersection of Nan Quan Road. I’m looking down Zhangyang toward what appears to be a few long blocks of retail shops, restaurants, and hotels. In fact, I’m in the Pudong Lujiazui's finance and trading area, which largely didn’t exist a decade ago according to the People’s Daily Online—from an April 18, 2000 story entitled “Behind Booming Pudong.” The article said “Pudong was largely an area consisting of shanty houses, dusty factories and farmland, neglected for centuries, until the Chinese government announced its development and opening to the rest of the world on April 18, 1990.” In the decade after that proclamation, “nearly 6,000 companies from 67 countries and regions worldwide, including 98 of the world's 500 tleading multinational, have invested some 29.4 billion U.S. dollars in Pudong.” I had no way of verifying this claim but if the skyscrapers surrounding me along Zhangyang Road were any indication, I would say that the article came close to the truth.

The western brands blaring out from billboards large and small mounted on the lower floors of high rise building are a testament to the migration of western culture into the green field that was once rural Shanghai: Nike, Adidas, Starbucks, Papa John’s Pizza, Kodak (on the back of a bus more modern than those found in U.S. cities)… Marketing and brand development have not been lost on the Chinese either. One ten-story, block-long building across six-lane Zhangyang Road from where I stood contains four huge billboards, three stories tall and about a fourth that size wide. The first shows two American-looking teenagers, a boy and girl, dressed up in denim jeans and cool button-down the middle, dual breast pocket with flaps western shirts in a blue-green-white plaid (his) and red white plaid (hers) pattern. They are both leaning their butts on top of a waist high five-horizontal-white-plank fence with green rolling hills in front of a distant dense forest in the background. The Texwood Group produced the ad and their line of denim clothing for men and women are called the Apple Collection. Pretty savvy marketing if you ask me. The next billboard to the left shows a glimmering silvery skyline of skyscrapers and Chinese characters, so not easy to discern their products. The third in the line shows a lone attractive slim young Chinese woman with tight-fitting, low-rise jeans and a turquoise tube top that reveals a bare midriff. Needless to say, she’s striking a pose that’s pure hip. The fourth billboard shows the head and shoulder of an attractive Chinese woman clad in a pearl colored dressing gown, I think. She is posed in three-quarter profile with her left shoulder slightly forward in the picture. She is looking out at the viewer her face turned slightly to the left, the hint of a smile on her face. A mirror is off to her right reflecting her face in one-quarter profile—has she just completed applying her morning make-up? Hair pulled back tight behind her head reveals a flawless high forehead, warm brown eyes, full pinkish-red, lip-sticked lips. She’s pitching cosmetics—successfully I would surmise.

Further down Zhangyang Road, I see a green traffic sign, not unlike what you’d see in any U.S. city, with “Times Square” in English and Chinese as well as the words “Underground Carbarn” below next to the international sign for parking: the white letter “P” within a white-outlined box. As I reach the intersection of Pudong and Zhangyang Road, I’m confronted with one of those intersections that you now find on the Las Vegas Strip. No foot traffic allowed across the surface streets, rather pedestrian cross each road via an elevated walkway accessed by a wide stairway at right angle to the raised bridge. The structure spans the four sides of the intersection. I determine to cross to the other size of Zhangyang Road by proceeding east over Pudong Road then north over Zhangyang then west over Pudong once again. In the process, I pause along the bridge to take pictures with my Nikon Coolpix digital camera of the tall buildings surrounding the interchange as well as the stream of traffic along Pudong and Zhangyang Road. Standing still from a lofty perch above a stream of traffic gives the impression of watching life fast forwarded. On the southeast side of the intersection I’m facing northwest and there I see a white façade five stories high that curves right from Zhangyang to Pudong Road. It stands in front of a larger structure half again as high, though the structure behind is the 10-story building with the four large billboards I saw earlier. To the left of the high rise is a structure that resembles square boxes unevenly stacked atop one another—beige in color and apparently condos, if the art deco windows on each box are any indication.

The stark white façade has eleven three-story high, ten-foot wide arched openings that allow pedestrian traffic access to a covered walkway in front of a store entrance behind. On the surface of the façade is written in colorful orange and red letters “Soccer Beer Festival” which is to the left of a huge soccer ball atop three green wide wavy lines—signifying grass? Above the grass and to right of the ball is a string of Chinese characters, probably inviting viewers to the beer bash. To the right of this large display is a large dark green circle with the word NEXTAGE written so that the NEXT is inside the circle in white and the AGE trails off outside the circle in the same green color. According to Frommer’s Travel Guide, Nextage is the second-largest department store on earth, surpassed only by Macy's in New York, which has 2.15 million square feet of retail space according to the Guinness Book of World Records—Harrods in London by contrast has only 1 million square feet. Nextage does have a Guinness record of its own, though. On December 20, 1995, the store recorded 1.07 million shoppers. The ten-story tall block-long building with the four billboards I saw earlier walking along Zhangyang toward Pudong Road was the outside of the huge shopping structure.

I look across the road from Nextage and see Times Square written at the top of a structure not quite at tall as its cross-street rival. It’s actually a shopping mall that had enough pull with the city to get a street sign on Zhangyang Road pointing to its parking structure “carbarn”. If these shops indicate the amount of disposable income of Shanghai residence, I have to believe the average citizen is doing well financially.

The heat and humidity of this mid-afternoon Sunday is finally beginning to get to me. I’ve shot two 64 Mbyte flash memory cards worth of pictures in my Nikon and I’m in dire need of a drink. I decide to retrace my steps to return to my room at the Sofitel Jin Jiang Hotel. As I walk toward the Intercontinental Hotel about a block or two away, another lady on her bicycle with a wooden box full of faux designer watches mounted behind her seat approaches me and offers a special two-for-one deal. I smile and shake my head no. She persists and I point to the perfectly good watch I have on my left wrist. She increases the offer to three for one. I hold firm to my refusal though I continue to smile as does she, both aware of the game we’re playing. She finally relents and I walk on. As I near the Intercontinental, I notice an outside display sponsored by Lenova, the Chinese computer maker that purchased the IBM consumer desktop and notebook PC business. In a public square on the west side of the Intercontinental Hotel, Lenova has fenced off a square area with waist high white plastic fence containing the word “Thinkpad” written along its length. The square resembles a scaled-down soccer field complete with green artificial turf lining running along the plastic fence but leaving the red brick paving the public square visible in the center. The side of the area opposite the street has a small goal net guarded by a wooden goalie arms and legs outstretched like one part of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man—arms outstretched horizontally and legs spread apart. His face has a photograph—presumably of a famous soccer goalie—pasted on it. I watch three contestants unsuccessfully attempt to kick the soccer ball through the goalie. The last one came close enough to garner applause from the crowd standing outside the plastic fenced field. France and Spain were about to meet in the final game of the 2006 Soccer World Cup.

I move on just as drops of rain begin to fall. At first the drops are intermittent and I decide to cross back over Zhangyang where there is some shelter to get out of a downpour. I reach the other side as a sudden spurt of rain drops sends everyone looking for shelter. As soon as it starts, it ends and everyone carries on including me as I start walking along Zhangyang the way I came. Instead of returning to Century Avenue, I turn right on Dongfang Road, which is the address for the Upscale St Regis Hotel as well as the Hotel Nikko and Holiday Inn. This stretch of road lacks an abundance of shade and I found walking in the direct heat tiring. I reach Pu Dian Road and consult the tourist map I had been carrying only to realize that I’ve gone out of my way and must backtrack further to Century Avenue. I turn left on Pu Dian and with few other pedestrians I trudge along a sidewalk that passes in front of a line of deserted office buildings, their workers off on Sunday. I make it back to Century Avenue turn right following it for a block to its intersection with Yanggao Road South where I turn right again and make my way back to the Sofitel and a cold shower and plenty of water. Sunday in Shanghai, somebody should write a song, something Bobby Darin could sing were he still around.

July 14, 2006 – Strolling Through Shanghai Pu Dong

July 14, 2006 – Strolling Through Shanghai Pu Dong

On Sunday July 9th after having breakfast in the Grand Café on the first floor of the Sofitel Jin Jiang Hotel in Shanghai’s Pu Dong district, I head out of the hotel with my Nikon Coolpix digital camera in hand, loaded with a 64-Mbyte flash card intent on capturing as much of this incredible city as possible. I walk northeast along Yanggao Road, the direction I ran this morning, but carry on after the intersection with Huamu Road, where earlier I hadc turned right toward Century Park. Ahead and off to my right is the new Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. Its roof line reminds me of architect Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK—though this one is more streamlined and less art deco in appearance. I’m tempted to visit, but feel compelled to continue on gathering in more of the sights, sounds, and smells of the city. Yanggao Road is ten asphalt andlanes across with a waist-high metal barrier in the median.

The barrier is constructed of 5-foot wide, 4-foot high sections each resembling a rectangle with one of the long sides bent into an arc—this side is up. Each section looks like a letter “D” which has fallen on its flat back and connected to a metal post fastened so that the flat back of the “D” is a foot off the ground. The inside of each “D” is filled with bars, equally spaced across the width. Each bar has a single knot. The vertical position of the knot on each bar at either end is the same. The knot’s position rises on each adjacent bar moving toward the center bar. The result produces the impression of an arc of the same slope as the top of the section. Alternating sections have the arc formed by the knots on the bars upside down; all this to keep pedestrians and cyclists from trying to cross the road anywhere other than the major intersections.

The squeaky clean road is bordered on either side by an asphalt path, just a bit narrower than one traffic lane on the street. The path is for cyclists and motor driven scooters and cyclists to use. It’s separated from the traffic by a couple-of-foot-wide greenbelt and the same decorative divider as in the center median of the road. Next to the cycle lane is a cement brick sidewalk, where I’m trudging along. It’s a bit wider than the standard sidewalk in the states. It’s separated from the bike path by a two-foot wide section of small shrubs no higher than six inches. I notice that the cyclists and motor scooter and cycle riders use the sidewalk as a passing lane and employ their horn to get pedestrians out of the way—I observe the custom of yielding to them.

I think this is an appropriate place to speak about horns and their use in driving, here. I would declare that the horn is as sacred to the Shanghai driver as it is to the driver in Manhattan, the other city where the horn is an integral part of each motorist’s car controls. Cars and trucks use their horn to ask slower moving motorists to move out of the way. Drivers use the horn to alert pedestrians and cyclists and motor scooter drivers to make way in right turn lanes where the little green man on the traffic light clearly says it’s okay to walk. What the little man means to say is it’s okay to walk if a motorist of any kind doesn’t want to get through. The horn is also used to alert other motorist that the one honking is going to run an orange or red light. Finally, motorists use the horn to chastise one another about not obeying traffic signals. This morning during my run, I observe an older lady on a bicycle cross six-lane wide Huamu Road at an intersection where the light told her not to do so but the nearest car was far enough away that she could make it. As she moves across the road from my side of the street, an approaching car over a block away indignantly honks to alert her she has gone against the light and continues to honk after he passes her and she has reached the other side without trouble. “Don’t have a cow man,” I think, but then again, neither should I.

Yanggao Road continues on to a large elliptical-shaped traffic circle that connects it with Century Avenue and Yuanshen Road. In the center of the roundabout is a gleaming metal sculpture that resembles a many-spoked wheel. The hub of the wheel is off center and run through with an axle. The other end of the axle lies on the ground behind the wheel and keeps it slanted at an angle rather than setting straight up. I’m fascinated with the sculpture and take pictures of it from different angles around the traffic circle. I can’t see any sign indicating the name of the piece or who created it. East of the roundabout are two city blocks that form a Mall in front of the Museum of Science and Technology. Paved with terracotta bricks the open space is dotted with large garden-filled squares blocked off by concrete borders. Along the edge of the mall are bright red 12- to 15-foot high square columns each three feet on a side, completely covered in what resembles flowers blood red in color. Each column sits in a square garden filled with yellow flowers. Shanghai has spared no expense of it public art. Across the street opposite the museum is a large dark green structure that resembles two bulbous green bowls that seemed to have been joined. Two amoebas splitting as viewed from the side. Each forest green bowl is constructed of thousands of rectangles forming a grid pattern that resembles an Excel spreadsheet. The surfaces of the bowls reflect images in front of them in distorted indistinct form.

I was about to leave the mall when I notice a bicycle with a two-wheel wooden trailer in place of a single rear wheel. The trailer is loaded with large filled plastic bags, The cycle sits next to a concrete wall four or five feet high and 12 to 15 feet long, which appears to be the side of a stairway leading underground because it has a mate 20 feet to the left and the surface between the two seems to recede into the ground. In front of the cycle is more bags or plastic tarps—it’s hard to tell. Suddenly the well-ordered perfect composition took on a human form. Here were the possessions of the man who called this place home, a thought that made me happy and sad at the same time.

I move away from the mall walking northwest along Century Avenue. A wide six-lane boulevard with an access road in front of the sidewalk I’m walking along beneath a line of young trees, their leaves providing a welcome shade from the hot Shanghai summer sun. It’s got to be in the upper 80s Fahrenheit if not hotter, but the high humidity makes it feel over a hundred. Beyond the access road is a five-foot wide curb lined with trees and bushes and housing a bus stop with two new-looking shelters. One billboard advertising a Motorola cell phone forms the wall on one shelter and a second advertising Coco Cola provide the walls for the second. Buses enter and leave the access road at the beginning and end of each block. Beyond are six lanes for traffic with double yellow lines dividing them, then another curb, access road and sidewalk on the other side. High rise office complexes and high-rent domiciles line this stretch of Century Avenue. These expensive structures are set back from the sidewalk and hidden from the curious eye of pedestrians like me by newly planted landscaping—trees—tall enough to provide shade, plants, and decorative gardens with ponds and garden art. It reminds me of the Gramercy Park in Manhattan and small private parks in London’s Belgravia district though of a much younger vintage. These parks are less than a decade old.

At the end of the block, the sidewalk ends and along the street off to my right, I’m confronted with a slighter older neighborhood. This one comprises a long block of high density window air conditioned dwellings, lime green in color and six stories high, four condos per floor. I’m looking northeast along Zhangyang Road. Each six story structure abuts another identical one though set forward slightly, resembling a staircase on its sides. I cross Zhangyang proceeding along Century into what looks like a two story strip mall—shops on the ground floor not obvious what’s on the second. A large sign confronts me as I approach with an attractive woman’s face dominating the left half of its surface and the word “Homes” in a non serif font with the “e” a funky pink letter of a different font on the right half. Beneath and behind the sign is a line of shops: Pizza Hut delivery, an outreach storefront—determined more by the look of the place rather than anything I can read—among other shops. A wooden 10 to 12-foot high barrier blocking the sidewalk along Century extends to the front of the strip mall and then runs parallel to the front of the stores. I’m walking along the length of these shops with the fence on my left thinking that the walkway would come out at the other end just beyond the wooden fence.

As I pass the Pizza Hut, I realize that the walkway in front of the line of stores dead ends. I’m suddenly out of place in among locals who frequent these shops and I’m the one strange being—not so much strange in looks but in the fact that I have a Nikon camera in one hand and a tourist map in the other—dead giveaway. I turn around and briskly retrace my steps to the intersection of Zhangyang Lu and Century. I change directions walking east on Zhangyang, toward a tall towering building with a Courtyard Marriott sign on top. The sidewalk on the north side of Zhangyang is also bordered by a high wooden fence barrier. Across the street is a line of shops with Chinese signs and the tired look of places that have been shopped hard and not put away, a block of 42nd Street before Disneyfication. A red sign with large yellow Chinese characters catches my eye. These shops are the ground floor of a line of three story uneven height buildings that line the street. At the end of block, I notice a McDonald’s sign on the top of the third floor of the building near the end. Somehow the Chinese characters seem more meaningful.

Further along Zhangyang Road I pass the Intercontinental Hotel and I immediately become aware of a woman on bicycle looking intently at me. It’s the camera and map that give me away. She’s spotted me as a tourist and rides up beside me and opens the box mounted on the back of her bike which is filled with counterfeit watches and offers me a two-for-one deal. I smile and say no. She persists and I walk on smiling and shaking my head and waving no and she finally relents. I don’t see many Western tourist along the street and I’m confronted by another lady with bicycle and counterfeit watches a block further down the road. I’ve found time square in this part of Shanghai.

July 10, 2006 – Running Through Shanghai Pu Dong

July 10, 2006 – Running Through Shanghai Pu Dong

It’s Sunday July 9th 2006 and I’m in Shanghai at this moment in the lobby bar of the Sofitel Jin Jiang Hotel Pu Dong. I arrived at around 10:00 PM last night on Japan Airlines flight 795 after connecting through Tokyo Narita from JAL flight 25 Narita from LAX. I managed to sleep through the night after watching the end of “The Big Lebowski” on Star Movies—the selection of English language programming is quite varied. I awoke this morning at 6:30 AM and called my wife IM to let her know I'd arrived without trouble and described the uneventful flight from Narita to Shanghai Pu Dong on a JAL Boeing 757 with two seats on each bulkhead and three seats in the middle. I stupidly forgot that though the plane has two seats on each bulkhead, they still number the seats A and C for the port side seats with D, E, and G for the middle seats. I learned this because I took the wrong aisle seat and a courteous Japanese man who was assigned the seat I was in, explained the naming convention as he asked me to vacate his seat. I finally understood my mistake and took my assigned seat after making my apology. Arrival at Shanghai was uneventful. JAL placed the correct documents I needed to complete in order to pass through immigration, customs and medical quarantine.

The first impression of Shanghai is the new airport, a concrete and steel structure that reminded me of Taiwan’s Chiang Kai Shek, though I’m sure the transportation ministry in China would take offense at the comparison. Saturday night was relatively slow if the number of arriving and departing flights was any indication. JAL once again showed video of the landing and long slow taxi to the terminal. The Japanese fellow whose seat I had inadvertently occupied was first up and out of his seat. He had moved to near the front of the plane before any of the other passengers had risen to claim their carry- ons.

The first stop after getting off the plane was the quarantine desk, a lone lady government official collecting the white forms each of us was supposed to have completed while in flight. Beyond the quarantine desk, our progress slowed as we queued up to pass through immigration, once again ladies behind two of the desks that I had a choice of taking. Each passenger took about a minute to make it through the process. On the other side, we move down an escalator to baggage claim and as we arrive, our luggage is being disgorged onto the moving carrousel. I have to wait for my beige hanging bag to make it out. Bags for first and business class passengers are being sent out ahead of economy class. The wait isn’t long though and I’m soon in possession of my business garb I’ll need for the Monday meeting that I’ve traveled here for. The next stop is customs where I go through the “Nothing to Declare” line but get stopped because I haven’t signed the form. I dutiful sign and date the form and hand it to the lone lady official and follow my fellow passengers out the secure area into the civilian side of the airport, a gauntlet of expectant faces and signs—some printed others handwritten with names of arriving passengers on the other side of a waist-high barrier. I see my name beneath a neat sign with the Sofitel logo at the top and I wave at the young man holding it. He motions me around the crowd of expectant faces and I catch sight of him after loosing him as I round the barrier. He takes my beige garment bag and motions me to follow him. He says to me in English, “I’ll have to call the driver.” I say “that will be fine,” and follow without further exchange. I’m tired and the thought that someone else will get me to the place I need to be is comforting. It takes a few minutes for him to raise the driver but soon enough he says the driver is waiting for us outside and he leads me into the humid, Shanghai night where a new Buick is waiting for us near the exit. I get into the back seat—notice thankfully that the AC is going—while my companion puts my garment bag in the trunk and then joins the driver in the front seat. We drive in silence down the wide airport highway finally connecting to a larger freeway. It’s just after 9:30 and the night doesn’t allow much visibility beyond the freeway lights, which leads me to believe we’re passing through a sparsely populated rural area. The driver is observing the speed limit but other drivers pass him on the right and the left, most of the light traffic is late model Japanese, American and European cars, I notice a couple of Mercedes, a few Buicks, a couple of Volkswagon Jettas, and Nissans, Toyotas, and Mazdas—zoom zoom. We finally exit the freeway and drive down a broad boulevard four or five lanes wide in each direction. Along the road I keep wondering why the driver stops only to look to the left to see a lone red light near the center divider. You have to be looking for this light otherwise you’ll run right through it. Along this stretch of road I begin to see new buildings appearing lining either side of the road. Soon there are multistory buildings on both sides of the road and finally I see out the front of the Buick a tall building with an oval shaped structure on top. I notice it because it’s lit up calling out for attention. The driver makes a left and the building is visible outside the passenger windows. He makes another right and we appear to be driving toward it. A couple of minutes later we arrive at the building and I realize it’s the Sofitel.

I’m tired and my legs are wobbly as I exit the back seat of the Buick. The young man in the passenger side of the front seat tells me that he’ll have my bag sent up to my room and that I should go inside to the registration desk. I thank him and enter the spacious, nearly empty lobby of the hotel, notice the check-in counter off to the left of the entrance, and approach with my passport and American Express card in hand. The male desk clerk takes both and begins keying information into the computer he’s standing in front of. A lady behind the counter sees me arrive and comes to the male clerk’s aid. She fills out a form by hand that she shows me, explaining that breakfast is not included in my rate, asking me to initial my check in and check out date and agreement that I won’t smoke in the non-smoking room and finally asks me to sign the form, which I do. She hands me a plastic key as the young man returns my credit card and passport. She says my room number 2105 and indicates the bank of elevators off to her right. I ask for change for a 100 RMB and she gives me five 20s. I follow her directions and find my way to my room. A short few minutes later the bellman arrives with my bag and I give him 20 RMB after he shows me where the PC AC outlet and LAN connection are hidden in the top of the blond Scandinavian wooden desk beside the matching low-to-the-floor king size bed.

When I finish relaying to IM the events of my arrival in Shanghai she gives me an update on our daughters RD and ME who both called IM to wish me well on my trip. Afterwards, I ring off and don my running shorts, white T-shirt, and shoes and make my way down the elevator to the lobby and out the door of the Sofitel onto Yanggao Road. It’s a wide, four-lane in each direction, thoroughfare. I head north for a long block. There Yanggao Road intersects smaller Huamu Road where I turn right and head east toward Central Park, an expansive “V”-shaped garden park with the tip of the V formed by the Jinxiu Road, Huamu Road intersection, and the top of the V delimited by Fangdian Road, the length of the park equal to if not greater than Central Park in Manhattan. As I run along Huamu Road, I’m awed by the high rise condo development lining the road opposite the park, all multistory Italian architecture developments. Each stretches the length of a Manhattan block along Fifth Avenue.

As I start my run, I meet few others out on the road this early in the morning either walking or riding a bike or motor scooter. Those out this early are the lone workers cleaning up the sidewalks along the park, solitary men and women with rudimentary broom and dust pan collecting up leaves, cut grass, and any man made discards. I’m reminded of the maintenance crews Kurt Vonnegut describes in his novel “Piano Player.” For a moment I consider what kind of life they must have and how they must view their existence amid the expansive splendor they see in the buildings around them. I do make it to the end of Central Park and I turn to retrace my tracks and I feel the heat and humidity getting to me. I’m completely drenched in sweat and no matter how much I wipe the accumulated sweat from my brow, it keeps returning. I’m reminded of running in Hong Kong and Singapore where the humidity was about the same. The humidity doesn’t seem to affect the natives in the same way as me. I know it’s my body adjusting to the environment and should I stay for a longer period of time, it would determine how to keep cool without this excessive sweating.

I put that out of my mind and begin to notice that the activity along Huamu Road has picked up with more bicycles and motor scooters running along the bike path as well as pedestrian walkway along this southern side of Central Park. When I finally make it back to Yanggao Road, I’m beat and decide to walk the block back to the Sofitel. After my return, I shower and go down for breakfast in the Grand Café on the ground floor of the hotel. It’s a sparse crowd today, a number of westerners among the diners. I drink my fill of coffee, five cups—the waitress is impressed with my capacity for caffeine—and finish a breakfast of eggs over easy with hash browns and bacon.

July 9, 2006 – San Simeon

July 9, 2006 – San Simeon

It’s Sunday, July 2, 2006 and my wife IM and I are in San Simeon, not the place where Hearst Castle is, but the town on Highway 1 about six miles south of the castle. The road sign coming into town says the city has a population of 462—I’m assuming this means full time residence not travelers—and is 69 feet above sea level. You can actually measure the height as well since the five-city block long settlement is literally right at the edge of the Pacific. At the northern end of town is an under-one-city-block long, gently-sloping, compacted sand path leading from Highway 1 to the ocean’s edge. At the southern end of town, the distance, which also cslopes, from main road to water is just about two city blocks long and at the end there is a cliff that falls 12 to 15 feet. Nine streets with signs form the settlement’s grid. On the western side of town is Hearst Drive which runs the length of the town in a north-south direction. On the southwest side of town is Balboa Avenue which runs parallel with Hearst Drive and dead-ends at its northern extreme and curves into Vista Del Mar, which is perpendicular to Hearst and crosses Highway 1—along this stretched called the Cabrillo Highway—and right-angle curves into Castillo Avenue on the east side of town, which also parallels Highway 1.

We’ve come to spend the 4th of July weekend at San Simeon—my company gave everyone Monday off—and we’ve booked a sea view room for two nights at the Seacoast Lodge, which is the third hotel from the southern edge of town; the southernmost is the Sea Breeze, which used to be the Jade Motel and the next is the Orchid Inn, which also owns the Seacoast. We’re here because all the rooming establishments along Moonstone Beach Drive are filled even with their room rates nearly double their off-peak prices—rooms are going for about the cost of a suite at a San Francisco 4-star hotel. When all the rooms along Moonstone Beach Drive are filled, the entire length of the road is crowded and noisy, another reason we’re at the Seacoast. We’ve come to the California Central Coast for a quiet couple of nights reading and listening to the Pacific relentlessly pound the coast of California. The room we’re scored is actually delivering on both these needs. Our room on the second floor in the middle of the motel has blue water views of the ocean and you can hear the distant rhythmic sound of surf. There is no foot, nor automotive traffic outside our window, just an open field the size of a city block square sliced through in a north south direction just outside our room by a creek overgrown with vegetation fed by the underground water trapped beneath the creek bed. In fact the shrubs, which resemble trees, have gotten high enough to block the view from the rooms on the first floor.

San Simeon is different from Cambria in that the former serves travelers, visitors on a trip along California Highway 1—656 miles of great scenic California coast line, from southern Orange County to US 101 near Leggett. The latter also serves these travelers but is also a destination spot for visitors who linger at this point on the California coast to tour the wineries dotting either side of Highway 46 from Highway 1 east to beyond its junction with US 101. Tourist also come to visit the artist colony that has sprung up around Cambria. The small village’s other appeal that few visitors notice, except those who come seeking it, is its complete lack of commercial development. There are no housing developments of ticky tacky houses as described in the Malvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes.” You get a sense of individuals rather than a group, though to be fair, a good many of the homeowners are occasional residents rather than year around occupants. The contrast to the housing development IM and I visited in Oxnard a couple of weeks back is startling. In retrospect, the Oxnard development was akin to a factory with homeowners as cogs in the wheel of the factory and their money the energy that turned the wheel, an endless stream of money flowing to the shops surrounding the development, to the government—a toll for living there—and housing association, for ensuring the development maintained a consistent look and feel to keep the property value inching upward rather than depreciating.

In Cambria, you will also not see any national or regional brand restaurants, bars, or merchandising outlets—no Starbucks, no McDonalds, no Chevy’s, no Denny’s—you get the idea. Cambria is your mom and pop restaurant, grocery store, and retail outlets. About the only national brand you’ll find in town is a Best Western Motel on Moonstone Beach Drive. Most all the rooms on Moonstone Beach Drive are owned by absentee landlords who hire local management to run their operations. They have gotten web savvy and a group of the establishments have engaged a web and phone reservation service. Some of the hotels in the East Village are owner operated, the Blue Bird Motel, for example, a nice couple who’ve made their living waiting on visitors, many of them returning regulars, my daughter RD and her family for example. IM and I have stayed there on occasion but prefer the Moonstone Beach location.

This small town without major commercial development is rare in California. Look at any small town on a major highway in the state and you’ll find a fast food chain there to feed the hungry masses that stream through without ever noticing the small town where they dumped their kids’ soiled pampers and the accumulated garbage from their last 100 miles of high-speed driving. I won’t romanticize the quaint, uncomplicated Mayberry-like quality of Cambria and San Simeon, but it does make my heart glad to know there is a place in the world where corporate America and its mass producing mentality hasn’t taken over. If you’re like us, you can come to this area, not turn on the TV and not log onto the Internet—this part is the hardest for me—and experience a time before mass media completely took control of your thoughts. I’m spared the temptation of logging onto the web because the Seacoast has no high speed WiFi connection and yes if they had I would be logging on.

IM and I settle for catching up on our reading, two back issues of The New Yorker, June 19th and June 26th for me. The earlier issue has a profile by Hilton Als on the life of Geoff Toland, the cinematographer, who helped turn the camera into an integral part of the narrative of film. His work with Olson Wells in Citizen Kane brought to the art the use of “deep focus” setting the camera’s F-stop to its lowest possible setting F/16—smallest aperture opening—and lighting the scene with an intense amount of light to allow the character in the foreground and background to both be in focus. The shot in the film capturing Kane in the background—bored, distant—and his opera-singing wife in the foreground more effectively conveyed the disintegration of their marriage than any spoken word. I liked this piece. The June 26th issue had an interesting review by Louis Menand of a biography by Robert Greenfield entitled “Timothy Leary.” From it I learned among other things that Aldous Huxley gave “The Doors” their name, which was taken from a 1954 book Huxley published entitled “The Doors to Perception.” I wasn’t much into the drug culture of my age, though I’m fascinated by those who seemed convinced that it was a way to achieve self-enlightenment. The issue also contained a piece entitled “The Dessert Lab,” by Bill Buford, which profiled the life and times of Will Goldfarb—proprietor of Room 4 Dessert on Cleveland Place in SoHo. Goldfarb is a gastronome geek, who has made a lifes work of developing counterculture desserts—don’t expect cakes, pies, or even Zabaglione (an Italian dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine whipped up to a light custard consistency—my favorite). This chef is into desserts made with, for example, Chinese spices, curries and black olives, but this is only a small portion of the palette of flavors he draws upon in his creations. The profile is compelling because of the chef ascetic dedication to developing tastes that are unique from any experienced heretofore. I read so much on the Internet and get much of my day to day news from TV broadcasts that reading always provides a welcome change.

After a night sleeping with the window open and no sound by the distant surf rhythmic rushing the shore, we woke late on Monday morning—after nine—and sat watching the field outside our window come alive with activity as the sun burned away the lingering morning mist. The Seacoast is home to a few feral cats, one of the two sitting outside our window this morning on the hotel side of the creek is pure white and the other the coloring of a tiger. Both appear to be well fed—is the hotel staff sharing discarded uneaten breakfast items with the cats? The field on the other side of the creek is alive with birds pecking away at the ground feeding on insects and seeds, which appear abundant. Soaring overhead are two hawks, wings outstretched looking for the unsuspecting older or younger animal to swoop down upon. Life on the Central Coast is good.

July 9, 2006 – San Simeon

July 9, 2006 – San Simeon

It’s Sunday, July 2, 2006 and my wife IM and I are in San Simeon, not the place where Hearst Castle is, but the town on Highway 1 about six miles south of the castle. The road sign coming into town says the city has a population of 462—I’m assuming this means full time residence not travelers—and is 69 feet above sea level. You can actually measure the height as well since the five-city block long settlement is literally right at the edge of the Pacific. At the northern end of town is a under-one-city-block long, gently-sloping, compacted sand path leading from Highway 1 to the ocean’s edge. At the southern end of town, the distance, which also slopes, from main road to water is just about two city blocks long and at the end there is a cliff that falls 12 to 15 feet. Nine streets with signs form the settlement’s grid. On the western side of town is Hearst Drive which runs the length of the town in a north-south direction. On the southwest side of town is Balboa Avenue which runs parallel with Hearst Drive and dead-ends at its northern extreme and curves into Vista Del Mar, which is perpendicular to Hearst and crosses Highway 1—along this stretched called the Cabrillo Highway—and right-angle curves into Castillo Avenue on the east side of town, which also parallels Highway 1.

We’ve come to spend the 4th of July weekend at San Simeon—my company gave everyone Monday off—and we’ve booked a sea view room for two nights at the Seacoast Lodge, which is the third hotel from the southern edge of town; the southernmost is the Sea Breeze, which used to be the Jade Motel and the next is the Orchid Inn, which also owns the Seacoast. We’re here because all the rooming establishments along Moonstone Beach Drive are filled even with their room rates nearly double their off-peak prices—rooms are going for about the cost of a suite at a San Francisco 4-star hotel. When all the rooms along Moonstone Beach Drive are filled, the entire length of the road is crowded and noisy, another reason we’re at the Seacoast. We’ve come to the California Central Coast for a quiet couple of nights reading and listening to the Pacific relentlessly pound the coast of California. The room we’re scored is actually delivering on both these needs. Our room on the second floor in the middle of the motel has blue water views of the ocean and you can hear the distant rhythmic sound of surf. There is no foot, nor automotive traffic outside our window, just an open field the size of a city block square sliced through in a north south direction just outside our room by a creek overgrown with vegetation fed by the underground water trapped beneath the creek bed. In fact the shrubs, which resemble trees, have gotten high enough to block the view from the rooms on the first floor.

San Simeon is different from Cambria in that the former serves travelers, visitors on a trip along California Highway 1—656 miles of great scenic California coast line, from southern Orange County to US 101 near Leggett. The latter also serves these travelers but is also a destination spot for visitors who linger at this point on the California coast to tour the wineries dotting either side of Highway 46 from Highway 1 east to beyond its junction with US 101. Tourist also come to visit the artist colony that has sprung up around Cambria. The small village’s other appeal that few visitors notice, except those who come seeking it, is its complete lack of commercial development. There are no housing developments of ticky tacky houses as described in the Malvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes.” You get a sense of individuals rather than a group, though to be fair, a good many of the homeowners are occasional residence rather than year around occupants. The contrast to the housing development IM and I visited in Oxnard a couple of weeks back is startling. In retrospect, the Oxnard development was akin to a factory with homeowners as cogs in the wheel of the factory and their money the energy that turned the wheel, an endless stream of money flowing to the shops surrounding the development, to the government—a toll for living there—and housing association, for ensuring the development maintained a consistent look and feel to keep the property value inching upward rather than depreciating.

In Cambria, you will also not see any national or regional brand restaurants, bars, or merchandising outlets—no Starbucks, no McDonalds, no Chevy’s, no Denny’s—you get the idea. Cambria is your mom and pop restaurant, grocery store, and retail outlets. About the only national brand you’ll find in town is a Best Western Motel on Moonstone Beach Drive. Most all the rooms on Moonstone Beach Drive are owned by absentee landlords who hire local management to run their operations. They have gotten web savvy and a group of the establishments have engaged a web and phone reservation service. Some of the hotels in the East Village are owner operated, the Blue Bird Motel, for example, a nice couple who’ve made their living waiting on visitors, many of them returning regulars, my daughter RD and her family for example. IM and I have stayed there on occasion but prefer the Moonstone Beach location.

This small town without major commercial development is rare in California. Look at any small town on a major highway in the state and you’ll find a fast food chain there to feed the hungry masses that stream through without ever noticing the small town where they dumped their kids’ soiled pampers and the accumulated garbage from their last 100 miles of high-speed driving. I won’t romanticize the quaint, uncomplicated Mayberry-like quality of Cambria and San Simeon, but it does make my heart glad to know there is a place in the world where corporate America and its mass producing mentality hasn’t taken over. If you’re like us, you can come to this area, not turn on the TV and not log onto the Internet—this part is the hardest for me—and experience a time before mass media completely took control of your thoughts. I’m spared the temptation of logging onto the web because the Seacoast has no high speed WiFi connection and yes if they had I would be logging on.

IM and I settle for catching up on our reading, two back issues of The New Yorker, June 19th and June 26th for me. The earlier issue has a profile by Hilton Als on the life of Geoff Toland, the cinematographer, who helped turn the camera into an integral part of the narrative of film. His work with Olson Wells in Citizen Kane brought to the art the use of “deep focus” setting the camera’s F-stop to its lowest possible setting F/16—smallest aperture opening—and lighting the scene with an intense amount of light to allow the character in the foreground and background to both be in focus. The shot in the film capturing Kane in the background—bored, distant—and his opera-singing wife in the foreground more effectively conveyed the disintegration of their marriage than any spoken word. I liked this piece. The June 26th issue had an interesting review by Louis Menand of a biography by Robert Greenfield entitled “Timothy Leary.” From it I learned among other things that Aldous Huxley gave “The Doors” their name, which was taken from a 1954 book Huxley published entitled “The Doors to Perception.” I wasn’t much into the drug culture of my age, though I’m fascinated by those who seemed convinced that it was a way to achieve self-enlightenment. The issue also contained a piece entitled “The Dessert Lab,” by Bill Buford, which profiled the life and times of Will Goldfarb—proprietor of Room 4 Dessert on Cleveland Place in SoHo. Goldfarb is a gastronome geek, who has made a life work of developing counterculture desserts—don’t expect cakes, pies, or even Zabaglione (an Italian dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine whipped up to a light custard consistency—my favorite). This chef is into desserts made with, for example, Chinese spices, curries and black olives, but this is only a small portion of the palette of flavors he draws upon in his creations. The profile is compelling because of the chef ascetic dedication to developing tastes that are unique from any experienced heretofore. I read so much on the Internet and get much of my day to day news from TV broadcasts that reading always provides a welcome change.

After a night sleeping with the window open and no sound by the distant surf rhythmic rushing the shore, we woke late on Monday morning—after nine—and sat watching the field outside our window come alive with activity as the sun burned away the lingering morning mist. The Seacoast is home to a few feral cats, one of the two sitting outside our window this morning on the hotel side of the creek is pure white and the other the coloring of a tiger. Both appear to be well fed—is the hotel staff sharing discarded uneaten breakfast items with the cats? The field on the other side of the creek is alive with birds pecking away at the ground feeding on insects and seeds, which appear abundant. Soaring overhead are two hawks, wings outstretched looking for the unsuspecting older or younger animal to swoop down upon. Life on the Central Coast is good.

July 4, 2006 - The Oxnard Getaway

July 4, 2006 - The Oxnard Getaway

A couple of weeks ago my wife IM and I found ourselves at the Best Western Motel on South Oxnard Boulevard just southwest of its three-way intersection with Wooley Road and Seviers Road. We were there to tour a new home development being built near the western end of Wooley Road, a complete community constructed around a newly created harbor with boat docks for highest end homes and harbor views for the next high-end of the scale and a posh zip code for the low-end residence sheltered from the views by the other two. The Best Western has wireless DSL access in every room proclaims the sign outside and it was right. At the entrance to the sprawling two-story beige stucco hotel is a sign on a light post with a blue background and a orange sunburst covering most of the blue with the words “Downtown Oxnard” spelled out in white identifying where we were, which is three-quarters of a century away from the new development we’re here to visit. Across the busy four-lane street is a lumber yard that takes up a good part of the block opposite the hotel. Part of the single-story building hiding most of the lumber at the left as you face the structure is painted a deep maroon color and rest to the right is painted a baby blue. All the lumber in the yard is not hidden though; neat stacks of boards are stored in the area in front of the long building that extends a good part of a block.

Oxnard, California is a sleepy farming town in Ventura County, California about 90 miles north of Los Angeles. It lies at the western edge of a fertile alluvial plain created by years of run off from the Topatopa Mountains off to the east. Two major influences on the community are the Navy presence at Point Mugu and the deep water harbor at Port Hueneme, which was originally built to transport agricultural produce but now handles every form of cargo. Downtown Oxnard is a 1930s California farming town, mostly single story buildings built in the first third of the 20th Century with little new development along Oxnard Boulevard (part of California Highway 1) the city’s main drag, which has the modifier south where we are. The new development is where the boulevard intersects California Freeway 101—there the road is called North Oxnard Boulevard: large open air shopping centers with regional and national chain store residents. The city of Oxnard has a large Hispanic population, seen on the street and in the cars passing us on both sides of Oxnard Boulevard. The Best Western is probably not 1930s vintage, more likely built in the 1960s. It consists of two halves. The main part of the two-story motel forms an unequal “U” with the hotel’s porte-cochere and lobby at the longer leg of the “U” and a parking lot for the rooms within the inner section of the structure. Off to the right is the second half, an “L” shaped structure with our room on the second floor close to the end of the “L” near the road. There is a convention being held in the motel’s conference room on the ground floor of the L-shaped structure at the opposite end from us and the parking lot is crowded with cars of those attending.

It’s early afternoon on Saturday June 17th. We decide to rest a bit before driving over to the new development we’ve come to see. I’m craving chocolate and after making coffee in the in-room coffee maker, I go to the motel office and ask where the vending machines are. I’m directed to a gazebo-shaped building between the U and L shaped structures next to the motel’s swimming pool. I use my key to enter the building which is a workout and laundry room all in one. It’s hot and muggy inside and I find the vending machines near the washing machines and dryers which are running. I purchase a Heath bar for IM and a Snickers bar for me and I find my way back to the room. I use the room’s microwave to boil water to make IM tea and pour myself a cup of coffee, from the four-cup Mr. Coffee in-room coffee maker. Outside, the temperature is in the upper 70s or lower 80s Fahrenheit, and there is an on-shore flow driving “June Gloom” fog inland, but the Southern California sun, which keeps fighting somewhat unsuccessfully to dissipate the fog, has heated the air sufficiently that it feels muggy.

After finishing our candy bars and resting a bit, we decide to drive over to the development and tour the model homes. If you look at a Google satellite map of the coast off Oxnard, you’ll see the massive port facility, located at the southern end of a peninsula that guards the harbor and an inlet. The inlet channels salt water over a mile north to a yacht harbor, where east-west Channel Island Boulevard intersects West Channel Boulevard on the peninsula, after crossing Victoria Boulevard on the mainland. N the Google satellite image, the area a half mile south and west of the intersection of Victoria Boulevard and Wooley Road is farmland. The newly created town of Seabridge—established 2006—has converted that farmland into an extension of the existing yacht harbor. The developer has built a channel through the landmass in the shape of the number 6 formed using a square for the bottom and another square on top with the right side missing. At the bottom left of the 6 is the “Shops of Seabridge”—a community shopping center with an Albertsons, a drug store, and all the other shops you’d find in any suburban strip mall. On the inside of the bottom left of the 6 is a dock with four mooring ramps that resemble spokes in a wheel fanning out from the hub—across from the shopping center. Each mooring ramp can accommodate from 10 to 14 boats. Elsewhere all along the inside of the 6, boat mooring docks are ever present.

The center of the bottom half of the 6 contains all the new homes in the development, each with postage stamp size front yards, and comprising the Port Meridian, the lowest priced; the Port Provence, the mid-range; and Port Haviland, the high-end, each of which has a boat dock and a back yard, though not one kids could run around and get tired in. Over half of the Port Province homes—none with a back yard—have boat docks. These two housing tracks encircle the low-end Port Meridian homes which have no back yard and most even lack water views—those with views are considered premium lots. The houses range in size from around 2600 to 3750 square feet and IM and I walk through all nine models—three each for the different price ranges. Like so much of California, this development sprang out of nothing within the span of a few years—assuming the Google satellite image showing an open field where the development now stands is at least five years old. We return to the Best Western and try to digest all the information we’ve accumulated during our visit.

One glaringly obvious lesson is that this development is an insulated community set apart from the rest of Oxnard, with which it has little in common. The other is that new developments have become sterile outposts in a dirty world, Disneyland converted into housing developments. There’s a development in Northern California which created homes based on the paintings of Thomas Kincaid. The great problem with all these endeavors is that they are created on illusions of happiness that can never be realized in living there. Humans are not a disciplined lot. They do no behave in a uniform way, which is what such “theme” communities expect. To impart discipline on the community to force the conformity is the job of the homeowners’ association, a ruling body that enforces the rules established for the neighborhood---no cars parked in the street, no garage door left open for extended periods of time, no parking in designated areas, and the list goes on. Buying property in this community resembled joining a country club and the analogy holds. The country club is typically built around a golf course, which is the draw for joining. In this case, the draw was the harbor, which meant you had to have a boat. In the case of the country club you had to play golf. IM—despite the fact that she’s Scottish, the innovators of Golf, she has never played nor has any inclination to play the game of golf. In the case of the harbor housing development, neither one of us are sailors—despite the fact that I spent several years in the Navy, none of which were on sailboats, I have little inclination to sail or to learn how. Having a harbor view would be nice, but certainly not sufficient justification for the higher cost of the view.

We returned to the Best Western and after a brief rest decided to have dinner at a nearby iHop. The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived at just after six o’clock in the evening. As we sat waiting for our dinner to arrive, we reflected on the days events. The experience had reminded us of our lifelong aversion for joining clubs and social communities. The one other rationale for purchasing a piece of property in the development was the expectation of financial gain from buying a home, holding it for several years, and selling it at its appreciated value. This alternative had appeal, but after considering the high cost of monthly expenses—homeowner association fees, property and Mello Roos taxes, and insurance—and the hassle and expense of selling the home afterwards, we decided against it.

We had planned two nights in Oxnard, but after we had come to a conclusion on the property, we decided to spend Sunday evening, Father’s Day, in Cambria. I call the Sand Pebble Inn on Moonstone Beach Drive and score an Ocean View room for the following night and I call the Best Western front desk and tell them we’ll be checking out the Sunday morning. We spend the evening watching “Memoirs of a Geisha” on my Dell laptop then called it a night.

The following morning we check out at around 10:00 and drive back to the iHop hoping to grab breakfast before hitting the road for Cambria. When we arrive at the restaurant, the sparse crowd of Saturday evening is replaced by a restaurant overflowing with diners and those waiting for tables—lots of families celebrating Father’s Day. We leave and head for the freeway on Oxnard Boulevard. As we near the freeway, we spy a Baker’s Square near the freeway entrance and pull in. We enter just ahead of an onslaught of others behind us and manage to get a table before a line forms out the door. When we travel, breakfast of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and white toast is a treat IM and I both look forward to. We finish our meal, leave our earnest, middle-age waitress a 25 percent tip and get onto Highway 101 heading north.