Los Angeles: Santa Monica editon

Wednesday we stuck close to our home base in Santa Monica. After a lazy morning, during which I logged in remotely to watch a hospital update about COVID-19, we met a friend from residency for seafood at the Santa Monica Pier. Below is the view of the roller coaster from our table.



The Pier first opened in 1909 to disguise the sewage pipe that extended into the ocean under it (!). It was the first concrete pier on the West Coast. Somehow the fishing was still superb, and an amusement park was added during World War I. Which was all well and good until rust and a large crowd caused the end to collapse in 1919! They eventually replaced the whole thing with creosote-treated wood. Oh, and stopped pumping sewage underneath. The late 1920s and early 1930s were jumping, when a huge ballroom was opened; unfortunately, the Great Depression sank that venture. After World War II, the Pier was once again an entertainment site. According to the history on the Pier's website, a fisherman named Olaf C. Olsen was the inspiration for the comic character "Popeye"! Other famous people associated with the Pier are Charlie Chaplin, who sailed a yacht in the harbor, and Preston "Pete" Peterson, who invented the famous oblong lifeguard flotation device. Like so many public goods, by the 1960s, the Pier was in disrepair. Community activists saved it from politicians in the 1970s, only to watch it succumb to the forces of nature in a pair of winter storms in 1983. It was rebuilt as a concrete pier with a wooden deck and an amusement park, finally opening in the 1990s.

After lunch we walked the length of the pier, said good-bye to my friend, and then over-paid to ride the solar-powered Ferris wheel. The views were nice, and it wasn't too windy. No necking, though. We walked down to the beach and waded in the water, which was cold, but it wasn't as blustery as that time we tried to touch the Pacific Ocean while visiting San Francisco a few years ago.

A stroll along the receding tide line brought us back to the Perry's where we had eaten breakfast our first morning in town. We rented a tandem bicycle for an hour to pedal down to Venice Beach and back. A one-speeder with seats I thought were too low, it was a bit of a trick to balance and steer. Nevertheless, we can proudly proclaim that in ~15 years of marriage, we have now kayaked, canoed, biked, and assembled Ikea furniture together. 

By that point the sun was going down, and the temperature was cooling off, so we met our host at a local rooftop cocktail bar to watch the sun set over appetizers and drinks. Below you can see the beautiful crown palms lining the main drag and the Pier in the background. When it was dark, we drove home so I could cook us pasta and asparagus and watch Parasite.

Editor's Note: Did you miss Tuesday's post about the La Brea Tar Pits?