UkuAdventures in LA: Beach Picnic & The Nuclear Meltdown of LA

PHOTOS: My Mom, SF Bellydancer, circa 1962, Ukulad!


Dear Blob,
Being a Date-Night Enthusiast and the seeming-literary-romanticness of night-beach-picnicking, The Ukulad and I ventured through the summer-hordes of sexy-outfit-clad Friday-Night-Beach-bar humans to our neighborhood beach, Venice Beach. We were hoping to catch sunset, but unlike Mexico's 8:30-9pm Sunset, LA sun goes down by 8pm.

We nibbled on a C-themed dinner, chicken, chips, carrots & cookies, discussing the virtues of panko and watching the insane twighlight-surfers and then it got cold. An evening beach-picnic is a much more theoretically-pleasing Date-Night than real life, which is cold, seagully & requires constant sand-in-snack vigilance.

We saw the LAPD in action, driving up the pier, through the freezing-tank-topped-tourists, to arrest a be-hoodied figure. The cops are out in droves in Venice, on bike, in car, on foot and helicopter, as well as beach-driving lifeguards in SUV's; The Urban Beach.

Venice Beach is a fabulous seashellery, with tons of interesting treasures washing up in the mornings and later evenings, with the tides. It's a great swimming beach when the toxin-levels are low, but always shower off the potential toxic-waste afterward.

My mom, who grew up in LA in the 1940's and 50's, remembers riding the Red Cars as a child, down to the beach with her little brother. Kids could take the trolley cars alone, play and swim all day safely; a sense of community-safety with everyone watching out for the children, abounded.

In the '50's my mom's family moved from Mar Vista to Grenada Hills, in the San Fernando Valley. She went to high school with Richie Valens of La Bamba fame, roller-skating with him and Donna. In 1959 there was a Nuclear Meltdown larger than Three Mile Island at Rocketdyne in Simi Valley/Northridge. It was never reported, never spoken of and has never been cleaned up.

My mom suffers from chronic, odd illnesses and when I tell Angelenos, particularly Valley-Dwellers, about the Nuclear Meltdown, they rarely are interested. Who wants to know they are living on a toxic-waste dump? The past 10 years has been a time of Truth-Uncovering and my aunt is a cleanup-activist. The activists pour endless energy, time and their limited money into fighting The Giant Evil Corporation, who just overthrew a court-ordered cleanup.

I hold a consta-invisible balance-scale of Lala Living; one side of the scale holds a deep love of LA's history, culture & industry, the other side is a deep aversion to the enormous cons of nuclear waste, vapid-humanity & overall-difficulty-of-simple-chores, like going to the bank.

In other news, today is a Cultural-History-Fun-Outing day to Little Tokyo where the Ukulad is playing a music show with Mista Cookie Jar! Good times to come!

Love The Ukulady

ps: Apparently Fava Beans cleanse soil of toxins. Everyone in the Valley should plant Fava Beans.

pps: Lad is holding Mini-Oreos because they were on-sale, not because we are frequent-Oreo cookie eaters; in fact, it was my first time eating a Mini-Oreo! Very dangerous.