I’m visiting Santa Monica, where the sand meets suds
Back in Santa Monica, where the men are mostly metro and the women all look like breadsticks.
See, I cover the waterfront. So I notice these things.
As luck would have it, we find ourselves in a bucket of beer near the pier. If Big Dean’s isn’t the best saloon in America, it’s in the conversation. I feel so strongly about it that I posted to Instagram.
“Best bar in America, Big Dean’s, where the sand meets the suds,” or something to that effect.
My feeling is that if it’s on social media, it must be true. It has the whiff of “right now!” to it, which is one of the measures of news these days. Plus, there are little hearts and kisses — those touches the mainstream media has yet to master.
Sure, my post may be too provocative. Big Dean’s might be only the 10th best bar in America. Then again, what are your yardsticks for a think tank like this: Sarcasm? Stickiness? Laughter?
Those would be mine. The best joints anywhere — L.A., Chicago or Boston — are held together with one-liners and 300 coats of lacquer.
Doesn’t hurt that Big Dean’s is perched on the Pacific, with ocean air drifting right up its big snout. It’s the Cheers of the surf-and-sand crowd. Except nobody knows anybody’s name.
It’s a thoroughly L.A. bar, in that everybody is from somewhere else. In that sense, like L.A. itself, I think of it as an all-star organization. No city, not even New York or London, has so much out-of-town talent on its roster.
Plus, any bar with my daughters in it gets bonus points. I watch as they give up their bar stools to well-dressed older gentlemen, just like their mother taught them.
“Here, Dad. Sit,” my lovely and patient older daughter says. So I do.
Their boyfriends are also here, respectful old-school souls with childhood allegiances to the Cubs and Yankees; that’s always fun to witness.
Then there are my pals Verge and Eugene, which sort of sounds like a boutique on Melrose. Verge & Eugene, where the scarves are all 600 bucks.
Verge and Eugene might be the two funniest dudes in any bar in America. Again, even if they are top 10, that’s pretty impressive.
Admittedly, a certain playfulness is important as you get older, and I’m coming to terms with the fact that I am indeed aging, if only incrementally. I haven’t lost much hair, and I still have my original hips and knees. Need a kidney? Take one.
In fact, the only indication that I am piling on the years is that car valets and baristas insist on addressing me as “sir.” Sigh. Fortunately, I am not prone to sadness or self-reflection, even in these troubled times. My wife is still ill and my best pal Paul is fighting the same sort of awful crud. All at once, my world seems to be collapsing.
I suppose that at any given time we are all dealing with something rotten, right?
My new buddy Brownstein and his bride, Kate, are Texas football fans, for example, and they’ve had their share of frustration lately. This day, they are draped in Longhorn silks – that burnt orange that resembles the sauce they paint on chicken wings.
There is plenty of chicken wing sauce here too — it’s sort of an accent color. It sticks to the congregation’s fingers and elbows and even Eugene’s nose, so much that the bar has taken on a rusty, autumnal glow.
No, the leaves here aren’t changing, but my buddies are. Don’t you love October?
We don’t get much of a fall out here, but we do enjoy its fading incandescent light.
There is also the spontaneity of public houses like this, where there is a game on every night. Every time I pull myself off the couch, I am glad.
At one point, Verge and I race upstairs to the Lobster restaurant to meet Jeff and his dad, Mike, who is 96, looks 76 and acts 46.
Verge grew up in Santa Monica, and being here with him is like being in Paris with Napoleon after the Siege of Toulon. He knows everyone and introduces us to Sigourney the Waitress, a breadstick who resembles a young Grace Kelly (though she confesses to not quite knowing who Grace Kelly was). Sigh. Then a bunch of us head out to a food fest on the pier, where Verge knows even more people. In L.A. it pays to know people who know people who know people …
I’m a little overdressed for the occasion, in shorts and a Cubs T-shirt — you can’t forget your roots.
You’d think this might incite the Dodger-loving locals, but the opposite is true. Here on the pier, they love my Cubs and all they represent.
After all, in Santa Monica, it’s diversity of interests they stand for, it’s diversity of life they toast.
In many ways, it’s the very best town in America.
As luck would have it, we find ourselves in a bucket of beer near the pier.