GUTSHOTWOLFDOG

I went to Long Beach for the first time with my partner for both of our birthdays a few weeks back and had a lovely time… even though it was COLD AS HELL. I thought all of southern California was supposed to be hot and was thoroughly punished for my hubris in underestimating the frigid power of the World’s Largest Body of Water.

We spent most of the trip wandering around Long Beach, although we also visited the LA Zoo, the Getty, and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (I’ll make separate posts for the former two, but I didn’t take many pictures at the Faire). Long Beach was very pleasantly walkable, almost entirely flat, and most of the people we encountered were cool and friendly. Unfortunately, possibly owing to the walkability, there was dog poop EVERYWHERE. I don’t know what they have culturally against cleaning up after their dogs in Long Beach, but I’m what you might call a habitual ground looker (always scanning the ground for Sick Loot, which I’ve heard referred to by normal people as “garbage,” “literally just garbage don’t touch that,” “why are you like this,” etc.) and it definitely detracted from my ground-looking experience.

Minor grievances aside, I really enjoyed seeing all the local plants and birds, since I live in a very different climate with a very different ecosystem. My partner is a palm tree hater but I’m a sucker for any tree, so I don’t have it in me to dislike them, although I recognize they’re bad for the local environment (at least from what I saw in my very brief research).

I did a study of one outside the window of the room we were staying in and researched the different kinds to figure out which one I was drawing. For the ecologically curious there are predominantly three in the LA area: the huge ones with feathery fronds, like the one in my study and the photo above, are Canary Island date palms, and the rest are either Mexican fan palms or California fan palms, which are more difficult to tell apart. You can read more about all three here.

We also walked around quite a bit after dark, which was perfectly peaceful except for the time some bar-going white guy belched directly into my face as he passed me on the sidewalk. Someday he will pay for his crimes.

Of note during the nighttime escapades was this mysterious hole in the sidewalk leading down to some kind of strange liminal corridor. I wanted to hop the gate and sneak down to take a look, but there were people down there so we got scared off.

Anyway that’s all I got. As promised, here is the DOG OF INFINITE JUDGMENT.