Accidentally 6th Street

So I’m walking on into work this morning, too sleepy to be cognizant of much, when I pass by the BMW service shop. I pass by it daily, there are typically some guys wandering around the lot, doing their BMW service shop things. This morning as I’m passing, I notice two guys detailing a Beemer with this crazy little car washing doohickey – it sort of looks the machinery that resets the pins in a bowling alley, but this sprays sudsy water on expensive cars.

At first I was thinking, “Huh, I’ve never seen machinery such as this. I wonder if this will count for my something to learn today.” Then I thought, “It’s six in the frigging morning. These poor guys have to detail Beemers at six in the morning.”

I have had some disgruntled moments in my career, moments where I question the amount of shitty work I’m doing while CEO’s give themselves a few more million in bonuses. But I have to imagine that washing someone’s expensive status symbol in the dark of the early, what with the water spray in the early winter cold, I’d be signing up for the draft for the building class war. “Yeah, smoke up Johnny,” I said softly to the detailer with the turned around baseball cap. “Why not?”

This then, for some reason, reminded me of my misspent days in Newport Beach, CA. When I was living in Orange County, I fell in love with Newport Beach. It’s odd as Newport is the center of conspicuous consumption in Orange County.

And no, to nip it in the bud, when I was living there, we did not call it the “O.C.” We did talk about an “orange curtain,” beyond which all good things could not get past – things like art and culture, things that would shock the deadened senses.

But yes, I was taken by the Balboa Strip, a thin stretch of land sandwiched between Newport Bay and the ocean. I was specifically taken by 6th Street. Things were a bit more rundown towards that end of things, there was the old Balboa Theater that played Rocky Horror on Friday and Saturday nights, there were alleys (one of which I used to conceal my vomiting of a large number of Kamikaze shots done on the beach) – you didn’t see a lot of alleys in my part of Orange County.

It was where I was when I smoked my first bowl, and I would return there to do so many times while watching storms blow in over the Pacific. It was often where I wished I was. I remember quite clearly standing outside a Western themed restaurant near Ojai while Captain MIA purged some more of his Santa Barbara excess into their men’s room toilet and thinking, “Man, I wish I as on 6th Street.”

Odd, the thoughts that car detailing will bring to mind.


Rocktober song of the day: “Fascination Street” by The Cure. It came out around the time of these misspent days and reminds me of them. It also reminds me of being all done up on hallucinogenics and thinking I was an amazing dancer. I may have been, it’s difficult to be objective with a head full of blotter acid.