This music video by Martha Stromberg always makes me want to go back, and I have only just returned from a holiday visit. I have walked the streets in this video many times. Notice how the homes there are all built differently. I love that. Everyone puts their mark on their homes in a place where there’s no master developer plan, just lots people could build on. You don’t really see it in this video but there is an impressive amount of agriculture going on around there, and in the towns south of it along the coast. There’s a strawberry field where when in season you can get the best strawberries you have ever had. The food everywhere in that “five cities” area is amazing. The best clam chowder you will ever taste is found in a little place on the Pismo main drag called Splash, which usually has a long line out the door.

I love it there…the plan originally was to retire back to Oceano. I was born in Pasadena and my dad’s side of the family is from Oceano and it has always called to me, ever since my first visit when I was 15. But alas, the cost of even basic housing there is way out of my retirement income reach and I can’t afford it. Home prices and rents there have exploded even more than they have here in central Maryland. I suppose because the climate is so perfect, and the nearby coastline is so beautiful. My brother often says he lives in a postcard. So I’m probably remaining here in my little Baltimore rowhouse forever. But at least I can visit. I visit often enough that the bartenders at Old Juan’s  (you see their sign in this video) know me and what I’m likely to have.

I’m back home from a holiday visit to my brother and family that live in Oceano, and I have stories to tell. But they’ll have to wait until I’m recovered from the bug I caught on the train ride back.

In the meantime my brother there is suffering under winter conditions of 40s and 50s, and here in central Maryland they’re calling for 9 degrees tonight. Count your blessings brother mine.