California Dreamin’

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, September 27, 2006

So many beaches, so little time.

When I was a teenager growing up in Stupid Boring Town at the End of the Earth, as it was known to myself and my peers, California was a beacon, promising everything that SBTEE was not: Sunny, warm and full of fun-loving teens who surfed and played on the beach all day. Ah, California livin’. That was the life for me.

When I was 14 my grandmother announced she was going to take me to California to meet my cousins who were my age. The fact that I had said relatives was news to me. I thought all my California kin were as old as my grandmother. Who knew they had grandchildren, too?

At last! The chance to heed the hedonistic call of the Golden State.

The depths of my disappointment cannot be overstated as we pulled into the dusty yard of my great uncle’s dairy farm outside a Northern California town even smaller than SBTEE. There was not a beach or beach bum in sight.

Actually my cousins lived in nearby Chico, which was a happening place if you were a college student, which we were not. Mostly we took daily trips to the 7-11 for Slurpees and tried not to walk on the sidewalk, which was almost hot enough to fry eggs on (but not quite — I tried). Then we went back to the air-conditioned house and sat around talking about how bored we were.

Carrying on the family tradition, the summer before my daughter turned 13 I announced that we were going to California to visit relatives. I swear I told her what Northern California was like, but she was still disappointed to find the beaches cold and foggy, the surfers wearing the same wetsuits that the surfers in Washington wore and the relatives old and boring.

But now, as you read this, my daughter, now 21, and I will be in the belly of the beast, lounging on a beach in Southern California, or maybe strolling Rodeo Drive trying not to look like tourists.

At her request we chose Los Angeles as a vacation destination (Las Vegas was a close second). She is checking out the possibility of living there and working as a hair stylist in the film industry, I am planning on checking out some of the oddities that L.A. has to offer. And I’ve only got a week.

One of my travel hobbies is visiting the final resting places of famous people, and Los Angeles is chockfull of the famous and the dead and the famously dead. Marilyn Monroe is on the list, for the rest I’ll just wing it. I don’t like to plan out a vacation too much. I find it’s more interesting to allow spontaneity and serendipity to ride along.

I can say a couple of things we won’t be doing are going to Disneyland and touring Universal Studios. Ditto for Knotts Berry Farm and the Beverly Hills tour of the stars’ homes.

I picked up a guidebook to help me in my quest for the weird and wonderful called “Off the Beaten Path,” published by Insiders’ Guide. It would be my guess that every path in L.A. is pretty well beaten, but what the heck. I don’t know anyone who has been to the Banana Museum or Upstart Crow Bookshop.

For the curious, the Banana Museum is actually in Pasadena and boasts a collection of 20,000 items “extolling the virtue of the bright, yellow elongated fruit from the herbaceous group that curves in the shape of a smile,” according to the owner, who call himself TB, as in Top Banana. My traveling companion nixed that option, along with a trip to the Bunny Museum, also in Pasadena.

It would be sort of a busman’s holiday, but a tour of the Los Angeles Times building, with its Art Deco edifice, is tempting. But then, I still haven’t recovered from visiting the Tacoma News Tribune’s office, with its leather furniture in the lobby and Chihuly chandelier over the escalator (!) leading to the newsroom.

But then the guidebook may end up left behind in the hotel room while we simply head for the beach, soaking up what sun we can before returning to face the Northwest fall monsoon season. Stay tuned. I plan to milk this for another column on my return.

In the “I need a vacation” department:

I offer my sincerest apologies for the following errors in the Sept. 20 edition of What’s Up:

The playwright of “Shakespeare in Love” is Tom Stoppard, not Sam Shepard, as I said in the “Buried Child” story on pages 6 and 7.

The founder and director of the cancer caregiver support group Friends of Avery is Wendy Rohrbacher. For information about this wonderful group based in Bremerton you can call Rohrbacher at (360) 613-9724, e-mail her at wendy@friendsofavery.org or visit www.friendsofavery.org.

For questions or comments, contact Marcie Miller at mmiller@northkitsapherald.com.