#11 BEACH MUSIC: A time of tans, blonds and hot pants

IT WAS A TIME OF TANS, BLONDS AND HOT PANTS, WHEN THE ENDLESS SUMMER WAS JUST A SHORT WALK DOWN A HOT SIDEWALK
Beach Music, originally published in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, is really a tale of two cities: San Juan, Puerto Rico and Santa Monica, California. File it under On the Street Where I Live



Beach Music
We came to California from Canada, with a detour to Puerto Rico that lasted one endless summer of a year. A year in which I turned 15, and my hair turned blond from living in the sun.
“Psst,” the boys and men would call after me in the blue-cobbled streets of San Juan. “Psst! Hey, blondie. Psst! Hey, cutie pie.”
I was devastated when my parents said we had to go, that it was time to leave the island so that my older brother, Russell, could get a first rate education.
The plan was to drive cross country from Miami and settle in San Francisco so that my brother could finish high school before going on to UC Berkeley. But, once we got there in the fall of 1968, we found th…
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805 Living archives




I just added some links to a smattering of the work I did for 805 Living where I was a regular monthly contributor from 2004 to 2008. I stopped writing when my real estate work amped up to the point I simply didn't have time.

Somewhere in storage there's a big old cardboard box full of pieces that I wrote about area places and people including Q&A's with some notable names ie Colbie Caillat, The Bachelor's Chris Harrison, CNBC 's Jane Wells, ABC's Ellen Leyva, Patrick Warburton, Anne Lockhart, surf queen Mary Osborne and more for the magazine's last page feature, PS. I'm going to try to find that big old box and scan some additional pieces and put them here. 

I'm not delusional enough to pretend I'm doing this for you. I know it's for me. For my ego. You don't even have to read 'em; I can see them. I can say 'okay, Simmy, you never threw a decent dinner party in your life but every once in awhile you wrote something. And sometimes, even if it was some non-creative, non-fiction piece about a local business, someone - mostly editor Lynne Andujar at 805 Living - paid me for it!  


While I've mostly stopped being a realtor, I realize now that a writer - whether she's a great American novelist, blogger, poet, short story writer, journalist, screenwriter, essayist, author, memoirist or an 'advertorial' writer like Hannah in Girls - can never stop being a writer. Good writer or bad, a writer is what I am. 


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Comments

  1. Paulita 7:36 AM

    Admitting your addiction is the first step. Lol. Thanks for sharing your writing. I can't wait until I have some downtime so I can revel in your words.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sim Carter2:53 PM

      You are my greatest fan ... oh wait, you're my only fan, LOL! But seriously, you're so sweet to bother :)

      Delete

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