I have, in the past couple of days, come up with an all-new theory of vacationing. Wait, I should capitalize it to make it look more serious: Theory of Vacationing. There, doesn’t that look better? (But, what is the theory? — you ask)
Here it is:
A person wishes to vacation in a setting that is totally opposite from where he/she grew up.
Most people these days grow up in cities or suburban settings. The people who grew up in suburbs suffer under the delusion, most of them, that they lived in country-like settings. They are wrong. Suburbs are nothing more than cities with lawns. These people, citified in their youth, want to vacation in various rural settings: beaches, mountains, tropical islands.
I grew up in the country, a twenty-minute drive from just about anything you’d care to name. I now live in a suburb. So now, when I get out for a vacation, I want a city. A big, juicy city, like New York or our current destination, Los Angeles. And not just any part of Los Angeles: Sunset Strip. I soak up the clamor and the streets. I enjoy sitting at an outside table at Red Rock, across from Tower Records, watching the cars go by endlessly. People and people and people, and more cultural icons in this square mile than you could shake a stick at:
- Chateau Marmont, where John Belushi died
- The place (though no longer the building) where they filmed “77 Sunset Strip”
- Whisky-a-go-go, where “they” invented go-go dancing
And various little Hollywood hideaway bungalows that were once so necessary to the underground sex life of old Hollywood that they now have historical markers in front.
This, dearest readers of mine, is what I find soothing.
white pebble 