Dane lives in a sweet county just north of LA. Here’s everything you need to know…
By Charlie Smith
Ventura, eh? Sit right down and I’ll tell you a wild story about Dane Reynolds’s home digs.
Ventura’s full Christian name is San Buenaventura and she was born in 1782 as a mission town. Back when Spain was a real country California was her bitch and was bisected from top to bottom with Spanish Catholic missions. Each of the twenty-one was one day’s travel from the next. This stretch was called El Camino Real and the mission at San Buenaventura was the last stop before El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.
Ventura is still the last stop before L.A. if you’re heading south, some 60 miles away, yet resembles none of her bigger, sexier sister’s qualities.
The burgh is almost pastoral, for one. Strawberry patches, citrus groves, grape vines and Mexican migrant workers cover the landscape both north and south. The growing conditions are ideal because the weather is a perpetually temperate 77 degrees. Also because the Santa Ynez mountains, just to the east, block out gross things like clouds. The Malloys live in these mountains. Michael Jackson does too.
There is a tiny bit of fancy urban strip mall sprawl going on, but Ventura is mostly a centralised, easily navigatable older town. Her population of 100,000 like it that way. There ain’t no skyscrapers blotting out the sun, or really any other recognizable mod architecture, for that matter. A big neo-classical courthouse sits on the hill and looks smug.
The main street is actually called Main Street and smells like barbeque. The fronting commercial structures are mostly boxy, clapboardy, pioneer style. Some Italianate, Beaux Arts and Monterey are in there too. Nothing is over 3 stories tall and, honestly, every other storefront is a secondhand shop. Venturans love shitty things.
Leafy trees line the sidewalks and extend out to the neighborhoods, which are in all sorts of single-family dwelling modes. Pueblo revival, craftsman, prairie, minimal traditional etc. etc. A real Leave it to Beaver scene.
The people are white, or at least 79% of them are, and they seem a little slow. Small towny folk. The kids ain’t jaded, for example, and when hot acts like Incubus come rolling in everyone puts on their most favorite concert tee and no one feels weird about it. The kids also wear baggy short, flannel shirts, and puffy-tongued skate shoes.
Vegan restaurants are everywhere so I think health consciousness is big stuff. I don’t think there is a McDonalds on Main Street but there are a few fast food joints off the 101, which is the biggest freeway taking people north and south. The 101 doesn’t have too many lanes here and traffic can be a horrible nightmare. I’ve cursed Ventura’s name more than once for greasy motherfucking traffic. “Please, let me go back to L.A” I say.
The whole ocean scene is not typical So Cal. There’s a large empty swatch of sand that runs from the Marina on the east end of town to the pier at the west end but it’s rarely crowded with bikinied ladies. It feels more family to me. White kids building sand castles and white parents approving. PG.
The marina houses mid-level yachts and pleasure cruise trawlers. You can easily see the Channel Islands off shore and people like to go out there and do things. I have no idea what.
“It’s most famous citizens are the Timmy Curran brothers. It catches hot swell and the locals get hot under the collar so fights are a dime a dozen. Tim has personally broken three people’s kneecaps after minor snakes.”
The wooden pier is the longest in California and more families do family things like fish and eat ice cream cones. Yummy! A rather insignificant looking hotel looms nearby. I don’t think there are any designy hotels in the city.
There’s a big farmers market every Thursday evening on Main Street and the city claims, “It’s a wonderful way to access a variety of fresh produce. It’s also a fun way to mingle with your neighbors.” There’s a huge Fourth of July celebration where Venturans burn people from other counties in effigy.
The surf scene is big shit, obviously. Al Merrick’s Channel Islands factory is a few clicks south of town and almost everyone in the water is perched on the tri-hexagon. Rincon, Emma Wood, C-Street, Ventura harbor. All sorts of waves for all sorts of people for one brand of board.
A touch south of Dane’s house is a famous strip of sand known as Silver Strand. Million dollar mansions and post-war split-levels dominate the fifteen short little streets that run parallel to the ocean. It’s officially in the town of Oxnard, but people keep that quiet. Who wants to live in Bull Ball? Movie stars used to frequent the Strand but now it’s most famous citizens are the Timmy Curran brothers. It catches hot swell and the locals get hot under the collar so fights are a dime a dozen. Tim has personally broken three people’s kneecaps after minor snakes.
Wait. That wasn’t a story, was it. It was just a series of random observations about Ventura. Fuck it. Let’s get something to eat.
Posts: 3
Reply #3 on : Tue November 04, 2008, 01:35:55