Given the recent data on the novel coronavirus, my wife and I cancelled our trip earlier this month to Los Angeles to visit LACMA and The Getty with Leonardo. I am recommending to everyone that cancelling elective trips to public venues/events makes sense at this point. Read More …

I bumped into Hannah while walking Wilbur the other morning, just before going down to the beach beside the Shoreline Motel. She was walking her little gray dog, Pablo, and told me she was looking for a place to rent. Read More …

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin.  Read More …

You don’ expect to run into people on the beach whose lives have been disrupted and maybe ruined by the worst fire in the history of California, a state that seems to be an ongoing tinder box. I was on the beach with Wilbur after moving through the area between the Cayucos Motel and the Shoreline Inn, when I spotted a man sitting by himself in a beach chair gazing out at the ocean Read More …

Bob “2-Beer” Bullnair refuses to listen to reason, especially if he’s into his third beer. 2-Beer works exclusively for Rafe Monk, captain of the Mary Anne. He is around my height of just under 6 feet, but at least 200 beans of non-defined farm-boy strength that is the awe of fellow fishermen, for 2-Beer will outwork, out-lift and outlast anybody on the waterfront. Read More …

I was down by the pier after walking on the beach with Wilbur, and, near the bathrooms, as a Chinese family of father, daughter and mother congregated studying photos they’d taken, Wilbur, off the leash, nosed in among them, surprising them. The daughter, who was around 20, backing away but then stiffly petting him. Read More …

I ran into a man the other morning who told me he had five kids. This was in front of the Honey Girl Cafe on Ocean Avenue on Cayucos. Read More …

Tanya and Trudie lurk just outside the back door of cavernous, sewage-reeking Happy Jack’s, leveling me with malevolent eyes and at the same time trying to get Hubie’s attention along the bar. I have 86’d these two permanently on my shifts for mooching. Read More …

The holier-than-thou crusaders of Cayucos, who recently saw fit to tear off the empty beer cans decorating the little nondescript fir tree in front of the south lot, must understand that so-called ne’er-do-wells are sensitive people. I know this because, as a person long suspected of being a ne’er-do-well, and at times admittedly existing as a full-fledged ne’er do well, I become slightly incensed when being accused of being a ne’er-do-well. Read More …