Time in Santa Barbara

On Sabbath, Rali and I performed our play. It was nerve-racking! We had really only finished it Thursday night and only really had Friday night to rehearse it with eachother. I don't normally do plays or stage work of any kind really. Being up in front having everyone stare at me isn't a lot of fun. I'm just extremely self-concious sometimes. Thankfully, I only flubbed one line and everything went pretty ok except for the first act we did on stage with a bunch of microphones that all squeeled with feedback no mattter what we did it seemed. But in the second act we decided on just staying off the stage and standing in front. Things would probably have been better had we made that decision from the beginning. Anyway, enough people came up afterwards to tell us it was good to reassure me that not everyone thought we were weird or innapropriate.
If you want, you can go listen to the Christmas drama Rali and I wrote and performed with help. But this most recent one isn't up yet, it appears.

After church we planned on joing the young adult group we frequent for a trip to the Santa Barbara Zoo. Rali had only ever been there when she was young. I had never been there at all. Her boat was throwing mine a line.
Since we had just done this play we weren't exactly comfortable dressed so we figured we'd drive back and change then drive out to Santa Barabara and meet up with everyone maybe an hour, we thought, after they got there. That would have been ok, it's only a zoo after all, we'd just be using the animals as subject matter for conversations or humor.
In the end, we got there closer to two hours later only to discover that the zoo closed at 5PM. It was 4:30 so we begrudgingly agreed with eachother than 30 minutes was fine for the ticket price until we noticed a sign that said they just all out stopped selling tickets at the ridiculous time of 4:00. So we waited until our friends came leisurely out and made plans to eat at a seaside seafood shack.

Rali and I were starving so we ate at the sit-down portion of the restaurant while everyone else got take out so they could sit on the beach. I guess they like sand in their tacos.
The food was so good. It was the first time I've had a fish taco but I won't critique it negatively. Warm corn tortillas encasing lightly fried cod with cabbage and topped in salsa, black beans, lime, and just enough sour cream. We also ordered a side of fries that seemed more like a bucket 'o fries.
After this, we rejoined our friends on the beach and laughed for a while. At one point I swore a kid threw wet sand at us but it instead turned out to be a bomb run from a seagull. Rali and I made zen gardens in beautiful differing styles.

Everyone else was done for the night after food and left so Rali and I walked around Santa Barbara for a bit. We saw some people who were either hippies or gypsies or something all hanging out on this grassy feild area, playing various beat driven instruments and dancing pretty funkily. There was a small fire and a stove even. Some guys were playing hacky-sack. They definately lived in buses that were parked on the side of the street right nearby. Custom paint and body work buses with kitchens and bedrooms and even a computer in the window. A computer seemed less in line with the musical energy and free-spirit but I guess that's just a sign of modern times.
We passed by a skate park wit this ridiculous looking middle-aged man, or at least in his 30's, doing lame moves over and over again, trying to get some good pictures taken by his amatuer photographer friend. He kept messing up and not looking cool.
In nice contrast to this was a young middle schooler (I think) who, without much talk or even noise, tried to do a pretty complicated jump down from a raised platform. He tried about a million times. He would skate forward a few yards, try his jump, fail, and hop right back up again with maybe a grimace at the pain in his knee or foot or whatever, and try again.
Hardcore.

A bit after this we saw a sign pointing down what looked like a back alley, kind of dirty and dark, for a bookstore. I guess we decided we were young and invincible so, let's brave the offchance of being mugged to try and find some old literature! I am in need of a new book to read. So we tentatively headed down into the dim street hoping to turn a corner onto asomething a little more reassuring. Instead, every store front we passed was boarded up, either for the night or for good.
Down at the very end of this alleyway was a big and bright antique shop that luckily was open. So we perused through old junk instead of books. California trash from the 20's coughed up 7 big iced tea spoons, a large, tarnished silver tray, and a green glass egg plate that was of the same exact set that we had the desert bowls to at home so we got it, especially seeing as we hardboil eggs occasionally now.
After this, it was pretty late and we had walked pretty far so we thought to head back. The hippies were still there, the music apparently unending (...and the beat goes on...). This is when we decided that it all probably had to do with the Spring Equinox.

We were going to leave then but I remembered how I had jokingly made fun of our young adult pastor's remark that "Everything in Santa Barbara is on State St." so I thought we should at least drive down it to see what he was talking about. Well, yes, fine, ok there pretty much was everything in Santa Barabara right there: a ton of big corporate stores, bars, cafes, and the like but it was late so we just drove through. On the way back, however, we went down a side street and noticed a little cafe called Pacific Crepes and as Rali nearly screamed for me to stop we pulled off and went in to try them out.
The server brought us to our table and helped us through our order nearly all in French with a perfect accent. We would have sworn it was his native tongue. There was a table near the kitchen with some friend or relative or maybe spouse of someone involved in the restaurant who was talking in French to a few of the other workers. Everything was just very French. It seemed like we had accidentally stumbled into a Parisian cafe for au lait and crepes.
The suzette was fantastic. They brought out our orange-filled crepe with about 3/4 of a cup of gran marnier on fire which they proceeded to pour over it. After minutes of amazed watching as our crepe burned away, we finally took a bite and melted with it. The espresso we ordered was good and made with 100% organic beans which was a nice gesture, we thought.
We stayed chatting for a while after closing, in typical European style, and at about 45 minutes after close, a couple came in to try and have a seat and the very same server who had been showing us our place in French, reading the menu to us in French, chatting with his French friends in perfect French, called out in perfect American, accent and all, "Oh no, sorry we're closed" no different than if I or Rali had said it. After we cleaned up our exploded brains, we headed back home.

On my mind

Beach cities and their feel. The shack we ate at didn't have a closing time, just whenever they felt like. I wonder if that's a common trend of beach cities? What is it about common location and creating common social trends?
I wonder who studys this.

France and it being called the culinary capital of the world. I didn't really eat too much "French" food while I was in France. How much did I miss out on? I wish I had had more bread while I was there.

City layouts. I wonder about that comment that "Everything in Santa Barabara is on State St." and wonder how that comes about. Obviously it's not true, there were a few places we passed by on the side street we took out of there, and they weren't just crapo places that nobody takes an interest in. But if you aren't from around there, or don't know anyone from around there, you would never know because "Everything" is on State St.

Zen gardens. What is their real history and context? I know they didn't start as little mini sandboxes in bookstores or at Brookstone.

Who was Saint Barbara?