Beach Traffic

Living where I do, I tend to have a lot of beach traffic piling up outside my place on weekends. By the afternoon, the main drag outside is usually packed with cars trying to get into one of the already-full beach lots, as well as large number of young people who appear to just be "cruising" around, blasting the radio and occasionally yelling at passersby.

Or at least that's the way things used to be. Last year.

This year, the traffic jams have mostly disappeared. We've had better beach weather, but the traffic just doesn't seem to be there. The only two really bad afternoons were the Sundays of Memorial Day and the 4th of July weekends.

Maybe, just maybe, at $3.30 per gallon, those young "cruisers" have decided to do something else?

And a Completely Abandoned Beach

This morning. I could have walked right down the middle of Venice Boulevard at 10am, when I was walking over to my brother's place to watch the game. In fact, the whole city seemed pretty dead until about 2pm.

Which makes me think that those who believe soccer has no future in the US are probably wrong. Granted, the demographic makeup here is skewed towards those who arrived from soccer-playing countries, but I can no longer believe that this isn't a long-term trend.

And Speaking of Long Term Trends

A lot of "for sale" signs have gone up in the area recently. I have yet to see a single one come down. Obviously not a scientific study, but just one datapoint from one market that has been red-hot for the past few years.