Three days on the West Coast in December and my only personal plans were to see three sunsets. The first was in Venice Beach, the second was in Manhattan Beach, and the third was in Santa Monica. I’d been enjoying the peace, quiet, and crossword puzzles of my time alone there, but I was excited when I found out a friend was also randomly in Santa Monica that night. This was a friend I hadn’t seen in years, who I used to work with at a seafood restaurant in the summers when I was in college. We made arrangements to meet up later that night and I sat on the beach to catch one last sunset, which I watched while listening to Savage Garden’s Santa Monica (a seriously wonderful song) about 5 times in a row.

In the afterglow of the sunset, I walked along the famous Santa Monica pier which reminded me of the ’90s because of its similarity to the Ocean City Boardwalk that I grew up on, but also because of the Zoltar machine and my Savage Garden playlist from a few moments prior. I sat on a bench at the end of the pier and listened to a gentleman playing my favorite Simon and Garfunkel tunes with his guitar until my stomach told me I was hungry. A few feet over was Marisol, a Mexican restaurant, where I ate a quesadilla and sipped a margarita. I saved room for a few bites of a funnel cake, which I used to beg my parents for as a kid, but which is definitely too sugary and fried to eat with a good conscience as a responsible adult.

A little later, Nick and I met up at Rusty’s Surf Ranch for some live music, a seven-years-too-late catchup convo, and a few Golden Road’s brews – Get Up Offa That Brown was my favorite. Part of our convo was about how I needed to spend more time on the West Coast. I’ll be doing a little more of that in the upcoming year, but I might need to explore the sunsets of other California towns as well. I’m hoping my future West Coast sunsets are just as beautiful as what I experienced in Los Angeles, after all, my Zoltar fortune told me “there are great things in store for you.”

xx