Before The Flood
In an Age of Everything Everywhere Endlessly, I Swim You Over a Life Vest
No single drop of rain thinks it’s responsible for the flood.
Every day, every news outlet, every social media platform, every retargeted advertisement on the great experiment we call The Internet drops a sprinkle of today’s must-see, click-here content or product direct to your bloodshot eyeballs. A sprinkle becomes rain, rain becomes a downpour, then a monsoon. That’s when the flood starts.
Now I want you take a deep breath, and hold it. Now slowly let it out. Again. Close your eyes and breathe for ten seconds, count the time in your mind.
As summer winds to a close and the heat and humidity subside, come back with me in your mind to a time before the flood of posts to like + subscribe, TikToks reposted as Instagram Reels, Reddit posts to comment on, retweets, new product releases, recycled info-bits, and DMs.1
Charles Napier Hemy - With Wind and Tide – Off The Dodman-Head - Falmouth (1916)
You see where I’m headed with this and you’re welcome to nod along knowing I’m about to explore logging off. You don’t have to log off. But hear me out.
As the captain of your own ship you take the wheel. Sometimes it seems the sea is your master, the winds your boss, and your life is at the mercy of rising tides you cannot control. Every morning the flood starts when you unlock your phone and ends when you take your melatonin, turn on the white noise maker, put on your eye mask, and start counting sheep in hopes that tomorrow will be better. Calmer.
Your dreams often take you into emotional-psychological surreal narrative space where action and events burst forth from your brain’s need to catalogue the days events into long term memory but also to… unlock things tucked away. In this dream realm the only guest appearance of my phone in my own dreams these days appears to me and I’m frantically unable to unlock it when I seem to need it the most.
I’ve written about work. I’ve written about choice. And after spending a little time in the big energy of a big city like Toronto, I’m reminded that there is no one stopping you from doing what you can to log off.
"A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor"
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT ONCE WAS
Before the Flood I was a younger man. Full of desire and nearly always broke. Once upon a time before the flood you could stop nearly anywhere in Los Angeles for a free copy of the LA Weekly, a weekly fishwrap now just a memory, a defunct local publication (most big cities had their own, too) reflecting a youthful, exuberant, and often liberal point of view — in contrast to the more established and conservative Los Angeles Times newspaper — LA Weekly heralded the latest in culture, politics, live music, movies and television, and yes… smut smut smut in the last few pages, in between advertisements and personals.2
Annually they published a codex with hundreds of pages of “The Best” of Los Angeles by category, an informative and often cheeky look at unique and oddball people, places and things to see and do — and they would give you the address. I used it like a guidebook. For a tank of gas and a cheap burrito, Best Of in one hand and Thomas Guide in the other I could spend a day like Magellan or Cabrillo and discover new (new to me) and strange worlds in the Southland. This is in the time before everyone knew everything, and you were lucky to read about Neptune’s Net in the in-flight magazine on the airplane wherein Cameron Diaz tells you it’s one of her ten favorite places to go in LA (this is the beginning of the end of Discovery).
Best public payphone? Burton Chase Park in Marina Del Rey. Best Record Store? Rhino Records in Westwood. Best neighborhood falling into the sea? Sunken City, San Pedro. Best strip club buffet, best burrito, best new oddball store on Melrose, best hot dog, best seafood market, best Latino grocery, best Asian fusion, best Tiki Coffee House? Cacao.
I once drove all of PCH from Santa Monica to its terminus in Dana Point with my Best Of just because. I found the nearly abandoned Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes (R.I.P.) with its “Catalina Room” bar still intact, but a cocktail at noon was not part of the plan back then.
I loved The Best of LA from the LA Weekly. I miss it.
We lost Ports O’ Call, the Alpine Village, Wayfarer’s Chapel, Don the Beachcomber’s/Sam’s Seafood, Java Lanes Bowling, Rhino Records, Mann National Westwood, Trader Vic’s Beverly Hilton, the Bahooka… the list goes on. The Flood has washed some of these away. And yet: the outside world didn’t go away, it just can now be delivered to your door via Uber Eats; Postmates will deliver to you right away; Amazon Prime will ship free by tomorrow.
Except now what you order does not come with the windows rolled down, car stereo turned up, wind in the Palms, in your hair, your table ready for you, right this way friends, ice cold Coca Cola on a hot summer day, piping hot caffeinated beverage during the winter with the wind whipping your hat while you wait for the Catalina Ferry, sea spray up in your nose, now on the ferry feeling maybe a little seasick, closing your eyes, and for one magical moment you take a deep breath, hold it, and imagine that you’re Captain Jack Sparrow wielding the compass that directs you toward the thing you most desire and… you’ve got your heading.
Wait, why is the rum gone?
Coming up on A.E.E.: “Light in the Darkness”
I am a documentary editor. I like Tiki bars. I also use pictures to express myself.
The irony that you’re reading this on an online writing platform in 2025 is not lost on me.
LA Weekly maintains an online presence in the present, but to link you to it is not part of the Message at this time. Thank you.