Life with Iron Giants: The San Pedro Diary

Welcome to San Pedro.

That's what the blue and white fishing-village style sign says when you reach the end of the 110 Freeway in the southern end of the suburban sprawl that is Los Angeles.  After this point there are no more fast ways to get anywhere unless you count the winding Pacific Coast Highway that snakes across bumpy landslide terrain at the south end of this isolated Peninsula, and even then if you don't slow down you run the risk of taking off like a runaway 747 if you hit one of the speed bumps nature has provided as the edge of the landmass slowly slips toward the ocean and tears the road apart.

Natural beauty is ever present here in sharp contrast to the sprawling commercial enterprise that is the combined Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.  But it's been a tough hoe: Until recently it was nature: 0, rustbelt enthusiasm for the almighty consumer dollar: 100.  The unspoiled preserves of open water, sandy beach and wetlands were as rare and as persevering as a weed pushing its way through the crack in cement.  We all notice the ornery, stubborn bit of green with the same primal respect we show for all things that survive our relentless assault on the land and yet we are rushing, rushing, somewhere so the glimpse is swift.

The moment I first saw the graceful lines of the first of two pale green bridges that span the port waterways I felt an immediate connection to this small city and the road that follows the water's edge, sharp and clean lines of demarcation between us and the giant freighters, fish markets, cruise ships gleaming like opals with their blue flags snapping in the breeze.  This was a place unlike any other in Los Angeles and it felt a million miles apart from  the giant sprawl of comfortable patchwork of housing tracts and convenient shopping malls that had been the map of my life since I'd arrived from Canada in the 80's.

Like most Angelenos I had a distant but proprietary relationship with the Pacific coast and the great ocean beyond its sandy shores. Visits to Santa Monica or the necklace of beach cities that dot the western coastline were always places of retreat and reflection for me.  They were also, for the most part, a cozy wrapping of affluent promise mixed with the bright air and breezy relief of marine layers bringing the sights, smells and sounds that kept me connected with the last elements of raw nature still clinging to the edge of our vast metropolis.  So vast, that in early days I thought nothing of boarding a bus in Silverlake and emerging into the bright sunshine of the Santa Monica Pier in more time that it might have taken me to fly from here to Canada.  And yet it still felt close since the boundaries were simply street names with no other break in the city landscape. There was something lemming-like in my predictable runs to the water, flip-flops, sunscreen, hat and beach bag in hand.

And like most Angelenos, I knew nothing of the small town at the bottom of the city map on a rare east-facing coast except that you could take a fast boat to Catalina from one of its ocean berths. I never ventured into the town, never saw the need.  But when I arrived as a tentative and perspective immigrant to San Pedro, I felt an unexpected rush of familiarity and the exhilarating knowledge that this place was very special.  And in my naivete, I was equally enchanted with the location of the house we were considering.  The street ended within sight of the front yard, dipping down into an open park with the marina and our slice of blue ocean shimmering beyond.  To the left was the tail end of the port, with one or two of the giant cranes lifted up and resting.  While we stood and watched the sun dip closer to the mountains across San Pedro Bay, a boat glided by in the distance, big, muscular, loaded with goods to feed, clothe and grow the nation.  It moved by in absolute silence, or so it seemed at the time, and then it was gone.

Because Vancouver is one of my favorite cities in the world, this vista with sea, snow-capped mountains, ships, sails, and arching bridges was the connection I felt I'd lost when I moved here to the arid desert and brown hills.   The house was a broken-down salt box on a patch of weedy land.  But the wooden fence running along the length of the shady alley was graffiti free, as was the neighborhood, and the solidly working-class homes mixed with a few older cottages and sea captain beauties, were all well tended and quiet.  A hanging garden of wisteria threaded its way along a neighbor's porch and the mauve blooms were reminiscent of another, slower time.

My strongest memory of that first day was the brightness of the light and the faint smell of fish on the air, a smell so subtle that now I cannot detect it anymore, except on foggy mornings. There was a constant breeze coming up off the water and it fought for dominance with the arid downdraft from Palos Verdes, a fog-shrouded rocky mound to the west that rose above the town in green splendor.

My time to leave a place I'd come to see as a vast wilderness of cool, chic, urbane, mysterious and aloof sensibility had finally arrived.  I knew at once that I didn't have to go home to Canada to finally put down roots again.

And in the distance, the iron giants loomed.  Our street, so bright and breezy, was bare of trees, a sea of concrete medians.  And we were about to chop down the very tree that kept our lane shady to make way for construction.

Next: Four Walls, a Roof and Political Bedfellows