Portraits of the Artist w/Martini Shaker & Mirror

Yesterday I couldn’t stand it anymore and ran off to Moss Landing with Heidi to cruise antiques and eat oysters and chips.

Moss Landing is this cool little fishing village halfway between Santa Cruz and Monterey. It used to be a whole lot cooler eight years ago when they had this ancient boatyard filled with the rotting hulls of seiners and trallers that had last worked the sea circa 1940. There was also this funky fisher dive where the entire squid fleet got loaded on Friday nights.

Then some land developer decided to remake Moss Landing into a fabulous tourist mecca. Shut down the boatyard, closed the bar, tore out all of the quaint one-room shacks, the dilapidated Victorians. Built this hideous cement platform on stilts, still visible from Highway 1 which was supposed to be a commercial center of some sort.

Then the money ran out.

Moss Landing used to have a fabulous collection of truly interesting antique shops but most of them are closed or closing. This portrait of me with a vintage fifties martini shaker is one of the few recent portraits I can actually stand even though it shows off my crepe neck and sagging jowls in lurid Technicolor. Enough vanity! I’ll be 57 in two weeks, for God’s sake.

Still, I like this portrait better: