For my second blog post, I will write about when I went back home to visit my family in Los Angeles California and decided to go back to Manhattan Beach in the morning before I headed back to Ventura County. Manhattan Beach is the beach of my childhood so I decided to approach this blog post with a familial (family) lens.
What was interesting about going to Manhattan beach that day was that I haven’t gone there in years so I was glad to return once again, especially with all the new knowledge I have gotten from taking the course. The moment I walked on the sand I was suddenly flooded with all these memories of being there as a kid and spending time at the beach with my family, especially since Manhattan beach was, in fact, the very first beach I ever went to so this beach definitely has very special meaning to me. When summer would roll around my parents would always take us to Manhattan beach every week and throughout the years my mom and dad would slowly introduce me to beach culture and lifestyle both intentionally and unintentionally. This would include my parents introducing me to boggy boarding, sandcastle making, and volleyball. I would also absorb the environment around me and learn a lot about surfing and surf music when someone at the beach would play their radio very loud sometimes. It wasn’t until much later I realized that was called surf music and something like the ebach would have their own genre. Manhattan Beach is a public beach so it wasn’t as well kept as beaches from places like Santa Rosa Island since here I would always see trash around and if looked closely there were probably houses built at the shoreline. However, despite all of that, it was still a very beautiful and fun beach to be in and my family would always be into the beach lifestyle to the point where I would always find myself having volleyball contest with them and eating french fries which was our favorite food to eat together at the beach. A very specific memory I have from there is being introduced to sand crabs by my older sister, ever since then, I would always be fascinated with life living under the sand. Of course, as time went on we would go less since we would become more busy with life as we grew older, but we never forget the old days of when we were always to go to the beach every week and it’s something I would defiantly do if I ever I have a family of my own.
Going back to Manhattan beach brought many great memories of me and my family spending time together. Even though this is not a beach like Hawaii or Costa Rica, it will always remain one of my favorite beaches of all time. When I was there I did some sand running and it ended up being a great day as I listened to surf music like we did in class while I would notice the tide increase as the morning progressed. The simplicity of that beach is what I believe makes it really special and what was all my family and I ever needed.
Hey Bryan, growing up I would also visit Manhattan beach a lot especially during my teenage years. Me and a group of about 10 friends would hop on our bikes with our ukuleles after school and ride to Manhattan beach and chill under the boardwalk. It was definitely a highlight of my teenage years and helped me to detox my mind at the time.