Los Angeles seems to be the epicenter of the movement of mobile food though many in New York, Portland, San Francisco and even here in my fine town of Durham would take issue with giving LA the top honors. Just google “food truck” and see how many LA-related sites come up first. If you think about it for a moment it makes sense when you consider southern California’s car culture that mobile food would be born there.

Before the food truck thing got noticed by hipsters and white people in general (let’s face it, there have been food trucks serving brown people for decades in SoCal. Let’s not co-op something that isnt yours) there were and still are food stands. Static locations that served rich, local fast food from a not quite traditional brick and mortar restaurant. Seating was sometimes a picnic bench at best or a few stools at a counter. Again, Los Angeles has a variety of nationally known food stands in Tommy’s and Pink’s Hot Dogs.

Legend had it that Jay and Tommy first started out together opening Tommy Burger together (though no mention of Jay in their history page). For one reason or another the relationship soured and a year or two in, Jay started his own burger stand a few miles up the road. Nearly 45 years later, Jay’s Jayburger would meet its demise. In 2000, during a period of runaway gentrification in the Silver Lake neighborhood, the property owners raised Jay’s rent by more than 100%. Coincidentally they also owned a 7-11 across the street. This in effect shut Jay’s down and Jay apparently had no fight left in him.
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After many a protest, rallies and benefits to save Jay’s (after one particularly rowdy night involving whisky, me and my cohorts bombarded the 7-11 and shouted protests at the clerks, who along with the guests just looked at us in awe) Jay’s Jay Burger was to close. I was there on closing day to have one last burger. He offered free burgers to the community on that day as a way of saying ‘thanks’. Hundreds of people turned up and Jay cooked every scrap of burger meat he had.
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And then he was gone.

In later years I would go on to replace Jay’s with one or two taco stands when I moved into the barrio further east of Silver Lake. The kind of places that seemed like a good idea late at night after drinking, or on a late Sunday afternoon when you were too lazy to cook. Now 3000 miles away, I have yet to replace the experience of great local fast food. In Durham we have a fistful of burger, taco and indian food trucks but its just not the same. While these largely unregulated food vendors enjoy a hey day, its only a matter of time and lawyers before corporate and brick and mortar fast food find someway to put the food trucks back into the industrial wastelands and construction sites they once came. Perhaps I’m overstating that expectation or underestimating the ability of KFC and the like to start revving their engines.

But alas, it was either meat or beer. And well, I’ve determined that beer makes me happier….at least for now. Talk to me in a month.

And my thoughts on meat lead me to my Costa Rica cows. I love these cows.

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I’m not sure if it’s their floppy ears, their paltry stance or some sort of primitive envy of mine at their luscious green expanses but I couldn’t resist stopping off the side of the road, at great risk to my personal safety, to talk with them and take their picture.

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Most notably about the vacation I won’t be having this summer. Admittedly we knew when we planned our Costa Rica trip last summer that we, in all likelihood, would not be having a vacation this summer…you know how it is with babies and their budgets.

So with thoughts of the vacation I won’t have come thoughts of the beach I won’t visit. Costa Rica has a marvelous array of beaches, at least the region we visited did. Each day we went to a different one and each day it was a vastly different beach. This particularly deserted one was notable for its wide expanse. We discovered it just north of Malpais on the Nicoya peninsula. With the jungle moving in on it’s turf, the sand just seemed to stretch further out to sea in defiance. It came complete with no one visible for most of the day, a small family-run snack shack and convenience store just off the road behind the beach with plenty of cold beer and a reasonably sunny few hours. It was pure beach bliss.

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Malpais beach

And while I’m speaking of Costa Rica, understand I’m terribly ashamed of the fact that its been almost a whole year and I have yet to share a damn photo with you of our journey. It was one of those experiences that I am certain I could have done better. I have yet to conclude how, but I’m sure of it. Costa Rica has a lot of strange beauty to it. The trip was filled with a variety of ups and downs, from the precarious hike up a creek to a muddy and disappointing waterfall, the surprising cost of booze, some amazingly authentic Italian food on our last night and the sheer fun and agony of driving in a mostly 3rd world country where pavement is considered a luxury.

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I saw these folks several times in the span of a week in Montezuma, the beach town popular with the back-packer set. I speculated much about them and their story as they didn’t appear to be native, at least not Tico. Perhaps they are American expats who have been in Costa Rica so long yet have come to loathe tourists so much as to take to scowling at them high atop their horses. They were one of many of the curiosities that for one reason or another I didn’t resolve in Costa Rica.

More to come in the next few days.

Oh Look. Summer is here.

You’re a few minutes early.

I see you brought friends.

Summer has crashed the party a little early in these parts bringing a few 100+ degree friends with him. Love, love, LOVE IT when they show up. Especially when I’m obligated to a beer festival from dawn to dusk, on an island, in the middle of a river, in a town called Richmond. The last time I cuddled with heat stroke I was in the California desert shooting a burlesque contest with a Rolleiflex TLR and an 35mm strapped around me. I had a head ache for days afterward. I should dig up some of that work.

It’s hot. And I contemplate panting like a dog.

I’m starting to relive my own summers as a kid vicariously through the 7 year old. I get antsy the last two weeks of school for her. “So, did you have movie day today? How about the ice cream social?” and to my surprise the replies were “No dad. What’s an ice cream social?” and “We don’t watch movies”. She’s being robbed but I don’t tell her. At least they still have field day.

Riding bikes till dark, digging for change when you hear that not-so-distant ice cream van bell, chasing lightning bugs, teasing bats at dusk by throwing objects in the air, the neighborhood pool (we are currently crashing a nearby apartment complex pool. Its ridiculously expensive to join a community pool to the point of where it would cost upwards of $5 a day the whole summer) and days where you sit around bored to tears because there is nothing to do and no one around to do it with. It’s an eternity for them and as an adult its seems like a millisecond. I’m looking to slow it down by catching some lightning bugs & chasing the ice cream man.

Do you think they planned getting icees that matched their outfits?

A lot has happened in 233 days. At least 233 strange and unexpected (and expected!) things have happened in those 233 days. I would consider them to be some of the more life altering 233 days of my life, some of them definitely in my top ten to be sure.

Wedlock, birth, major career considerations on top of other major shifts in certain relationship all went down in the last 233 days.

Most cute of all the strange is this stranger coming into my life and getting less and less strange every day.

Hello blog!