For the past several years he's churned out essays about California as he sees it from his home in a pretty beach town. It is a community where citizens celebrate their enlightenment and good fortune.
But that's not all that Blackview sees. He writes of lives that have been warped by the real estate bubble and the Great Recession. He writes of invisible people who mumble by the roadside in Paradise, and the boisterous college students who hit town every year.
But mostly Blackview writes about ordinary people, trying to get by in a sunny land where "getting by" becomes harder every year. And he remembers how things used to be, and how they changed.
If you remember a time when things seemed better, read these insightful and dryly humorous stories about people just like yourself. As they scramble for a decent life, remember where they came from, and wonder what's going to happen to them next.
Among the book's 70-odd essays:
- The Green Psycho: the hunter-prey relationship between hybrid cars and college students.
- The Kandy-Kolored Monster from the Id: Let Carl Jung and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth put you behind the wheel on the Santa Monica Freeway of Life.
- Tell it to the Marine (Layer): When a heat wave strikes a beach town with no AC, fog is your friend. Embrace the grey.
- The Shot that I Didn't Get: In the '60s he was the bodybuilding king of Venice Beach. Now he's come to rest in Santa Cruz in relative obscurity, pushing 70 and still lifting till it hurts. Is he a sad case -- or exactly where he needs to be?
- In a Lonely Place: She used to have it all. Now she's standing in a deserted parking lot selling what little is left, just to make the rent.
- Oxalis Nation: The weed with the pretty flower rules the coast every spring. And maybe that's the way it ought to be.
- Caution: Flammable: When air tankers orbit overhead and fire trucks make a stand at the edge of town, you know there's a price to pay for living in Paradise.
- Yesterday: Right Lane Only: I had to pay a visit to the past, so I took the back roads. In California, the back roads are where the past lives now.
- Happy Labor Day: A young co-worker does the happy dance upon learning that she doesn't have to work on Labor Day. Which makes a grim old Boomer remember when things were different...