Not so long ago, before Covid-19 came to town and fucked up the world for everyone, I was on a trip up north of Los Angeles with my gf when we decided to stop into Santa Barbara.
To a transplant (who has now been here over 20 years), Santa Barbara represents, to me, the quintessential California. If you were to dissect the various elements of the California experience– the beach, the mountains, the civilized, the groovy, the nuanced, the primative, the native, the boullabaise of cultures, and the essence — and throw it all into the massive IBM super computer/ice cream mixer and run all those elements through, and let said computer spit out, in a flurry of clicking and whirring, the ultimate answer, it would be Santa Barbara. The region is beautiful and breathtaking and you can drink pinot noir in the mountains, or margaritas by the ocean. The young people are thoughtful and beautiful, and the older people are learned (learn-ed) and experienced and still beautiful. It’s not without its characteristics that mirror the real frustrations of California living: traffic and overpriced real estate and a clear divide of rich/poor, and people unfortunate to be homeless and struggling through the day-to-day. But all of that IS California, too, and if the bad didn’t exist with the good then it wouldn’t be this (and you can say that about anywhere really). I know that everyone has their opinion, and their ideal, and I get that. But when it comes to capturing the massive myriad of all parts of the experience… if someone dropped into my universe from Mars or Wisconsin or some other far away place, and asked me, “What is this place that you call California?”, I would send them up north on the 101, past Ventura, to SB.
There are lots of reasons to stop into Santa Barbara, but our reason on that day, as superflous as it sounds, was to sample the wares of the best ice cream store in the universe, McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams.
There are a number of McConnell’s now, ranging from downtown LA to Pacific Palisades, up the 405 to the 101, in Studio City, San Luis Obispo and finally to its origins in Santa Barbara. There are two McConnell’s there, but the one that feels like the original is the one in downtown SB. Depending on the time of day, you would almost always expect to find a line out the door, and on that day, we sure did. Families, couples, singles, all stacked close with the line snaking out the door onto the sidewalk. It takes patience and time to get into the store, and to complete the serpentine trail until you can reach the coolers where a fresh-faced (similar to those faces that seemingly are always working at In-And-Out) college-esque server stands ready to give you samples and scoop you up something insanly rich and creamy and memorable.
Waiting your turn, you can spend time reading through the faux-modest but believably accurate description of the process McConnell’s uses to craft this brilliant delicacy (their own diary farm, fresh natural ingredients, no preservatives, and the secret weapon, the European French Pot ice cream making process– apparently the old man was a bit of a mad scientist, and post-WWII rebuilt an ice cream machine into his version of the French Pot, and this is some delicious and inspired mythology).
You also have time to scan the board for your favorite flavors. I kept it simple: a coupling of Salted Caramel Chip and Santa Barbara Strawberry.
(No, I’m not on their payroll, but as far as ice cream goes, it’s really really fucking good.)
I write about this ice cream fantasy now because as I sit Safe-at-Home, like so many many other humans, I think sometimes about what kind of world we will be reentering into. I think of that fabulous ice cream store in Santa Barbara, and try to imagine those long lines that were already out the door, now extended with 6′ of clearance between patrons (who probably won’t be able to sit, but will have to get their icy creamy pleasure, and scram), and those lines would now be extended for at least a couple blocks. It seems an unrealistically long time to wait for a couple scoops. But we have all been inundated by now with WHAT MAY BE (at least those of us cheeky enough to step outside our sanitized bunkers, drive to the local grocery, and stand on marks designated to keep us social distanced), with the reality of lines, waiting, being patient.
Patience is going to be a big part of the process. No longer in our lives will we be able to dash in a store and grab something quick for dinner, run into Starbucks to circumvent the long drive-thru and grab a chai latte, or do similar actions with brevity. All of this will now require planning, plotting, and establishing a time frame where you can afford to have the process take longer than you would have ever imagined it would prior to, say, early March, 2020.
And there’s more. We will have to have mounds and mountains of patience, as we wait for governments to reopen civilzation, make us healthy and safe, and devise plans for how we are going to reenter our lives. It’s almost like emerging from a time capsule (or a bomb shelter), one where we were trapped (sort of) and had to tussle with more information from more divergent sources than ever, and enter back into a world that appears the same, but feels different. Part of a mighty, restless, shook-to-the-core partisan-divided United States the likes of which not seen since the Civil War.
I’m trying to imagine how we handle crowds going forward. I can’t. Stadiums filled with screaming fans cheering on sports teams. Concert halls with thousands of heads bobbing and swaying to duclent rhythms. Crowds in restaurants, and theaters, and nightclubs. Las Vegas. Bigger and better minds than mine are working hard and struggling with these concepts, the resulting solutions that probably won’t resemble anything like we’ve been used to. Things may very well never be the same.
I get the restlessness. I suspect that most of America (and the world) is feeling it. I feel it sometimes in the morning, if I don’t have a succinct plan for my day. I feel like I’m floating a little, uneasily. It’s like I’m tethered, but it’s way way below me, as I’m floating above the clouds, and it’s too foggy to see WHAT I’m tethered to. And I start to get anxious, and move in a jittery-dance sort of way, going from one place in the house to another, picking up a book, my computer, looking for something to give me focus. But it’s fleeting, or tenuous, or futile, and then I’m moving towards the next thing.
But even with all that, it never occurs to me, not for one single second, that I should don cosplay camouflage, and hoist an AR-15 on my shoulder, and go to the capital of the state I live in, and agitate that I need to be free to do whatever the hell it is I think I should be able to do.
I don’t get this feeling that I’m “locked down”, that I am confined to my house, or apartment, or that I’m horribly restricted. I can draw on life’s experiences, and learnings, and lessons, and if not completely relate to, at least understand what’s happening in a place like New York, in terms of the limited space and movement in a city that densely populated, retreating from a shape-shifting virus that lurks ANYWHERE. And not knowing that someone on the streets, so close to you, so close you can feel their breath as they pass by you on the street, could carry this silent invisible potential killer. And you might not even know you’re infected but then all the sudden– and it must be a frightening sickening thought to realize… “I have it.” And to have to wait to see what happens next. And even if you’re pretty sure you’ll survive… you just don’t know… and even if you do survive it could be minutes, hours, days of sickness that folds you in two, crouching and doubled over in an infantile state, just helpless to do anything but wait and wish. And for those who are lucky enough not to have it, the horrific feeling that it could be… somewhere near, so you dig into your space, and then the shock of looking on your tv, on your phone or computer, OUT YOUR WINDOW, and seeing the most energetic vibrant city in the world, on it’s knees, scared… empty… devoid of daily life. Whether I’m correct or wrong, this is what I imagine it to be. But there are people everywhere who are dying from the virus– it’s a fact. And it’s not the flu, Dumb Ass, it’s more lethal than that, far more lethal, and there isn’t a vaccine yet, and won’t be one for a while, maybe for a couple years. Or longer. And the way Covid-19 has brutalized one of the most alive and strong cities in the world, you can be sure that this shit is REAL.
People need to work, of course. And it’s scary shit to be wondering when that will happen, because no one knows anything. One article on the internet says something hopeful, and it lifts your spirits. And the next article predicts something far more dire, and then your spirit sinks. For me, I actually am in rhythm with this ebb-and-flow of work uncertainty, for that’s my existence. As a freelancer, or independent contractor, I NEVER assume I’ll be working. I always am prepared for periods of inactivity, or unemployment. My unemployment paperwork is always filed, chief. If yours isn’t, sorry, and maybe I’m happy for you that your career is so steadfast and rock solid and certain that you don’t need to bother. But here we are now, and who’s stressed out and freaking? I’m not. It’s similar to the schools being shut down, and the kids suddenly at home, and having to learn a whole new kind of discipline– normally, kids come home to ESCAPE school! All the sudden, home IS school, and when they should be laying on their bed playing Fortnite or World Seeker, instead they are sitting in a Zoom classroom trying to pay attention. But you know who is ok? Homeschoolers. It’s like they prepared for this. This is their life, and all those parents who have for years been teaching their children in their homes, by themselves, they must be sitting back and nodding silently to themselves as they look over the smoldering remains of the 2020 spring semester for children around the world, and they are thinking, “See? Do you see, why, now?”
We are lucky to be here in America, though… most of us anyway. Not all of us, not by a long shot. But most. Even with the divisiveness, the Grand Canyon-sized and still-growing gap between the billionaires and… everyone else, the fucked-up daily Kabucki theater dressed up as press conferences authored by the figure we would usually presume (pre-2016) to calm us but instead incites and inflames us, the silly protests (the guns, I will assume, that are there to intimidate, and not for shooting the virus?)…. All that, and we are still so much better off than people in so many other parts of the world, places that are stricken with disease and poverty and villany. People who wish trying to acquire toilet paper is the worst problem they have. I know it sounds like I’m describing us (US as in USA), at this moment in time. But so many millions of citizens in other parts of the world have it so so much worse than your desire to get your hair cut. I suggest, if you haven’t, that you listen to and read about what’s happening in other places in the world right now, and get some perspective.
Covid-19 is a truth, the pandemic is a truth, people infected with the virus even though they don’t know it is a truth, and even if there’s a group of people inflammed by the rhetoric of a propaganda factory masquarading as a news network, and by lobbyists, and by 2nd amendment-supporting zealots that insist it’s not a truth… to them, like racism in America, Covid-19 is an inconvenient truth. It’s an inconvenience for many fortunate and privileged people in this country, and therefore can be easily pushed from our minds and into a ditch on the side of our thoughts, and especially when it’s a sunny and beautiful and otherwise normal day in the crazy fucking world, and we want to get our roots dyed, and get our lawn fertilizer, and our ice cream.
I hope we all get perspective. Two scoops.