{"id":13435,"date":"2025-01-20T14:13:46","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T19:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=13435"},"modified":"2025-01-20T14:16:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T19:16:25","slug":"escape-routes-of-the-rich-and-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/13435","title":{"rendered":"Escape Routes Of The Rich And Burning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m hanging out at the bar at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oldjuanscantina.com\/\">Old Juan&#8217;s<\/a>, a favorite place for good Mexican food and margaritas. It&#8217;s a short walk from my brother&#8217;s house and by now some of the bartenders there recognise me and know what I&#8217;m likely to order. As I&#8217;m savoring my margarita I happen to glance out the window by the bar and see a brand new Rolls Royce Phantom (but seriously&#8230;it&#8217;s a BMW masquerading as a Rolls Royce) pull into the parking lot with three older folks inside. This is something I&#8217;m not used to seeing in Oceano, which is a completely wonderful place to stay and to live, but what you&#8217;re more likely to see on four wheels there is somebody&#8217;s meticulously restored to better than factory new classic muscle car, not that empty status symbol for the rich and tasteless.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After a while I mention it to the bartender, who tells me that because of the massive fires in LA, a bunch of celebrities and wealthy Los Angelenos have come up the coast and are hanging out in San Luis Obispo.<\/p>\n<p>I can see it. Regretfully. That part of California, to which Oceano, Pismo, Grover Beach, Arroyo Grande, and Sun Beach also belongs, and also Morro Bay, is a bit of coastline in paradise that I was hoping to retire back to someday, because it&#8217;s where my dad&#8217;s side of the family is from and I was born in California. But it&#8217;s been &#8220;discovered&#8221; and if you have to ask what it costs of buy a house there you should be looking at Bakersfield instead. Which I won&#8217;t. The term &#8220;valley people&#8221; has a different meaning where my brother lives.<\/p>\n<p>So best I can do now is visit my brother and the family there every now and then.<\/p>\n<p>As I leave for my walk back to my brother&#8217;s house, I see the old folk getting back into their &#8220;Rolls&#8221;, and I can&#8217;t help but think <em>You could have bought a Bentley for that money&#8230;<\/em> Oh well&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>#IHangOutAtTheBarForLocalGossip<br \/>\n#ItsNOTaRolls!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m hanging out at the bar at Old Juan&#8217;s, a favorite place for good Mexican food and margaritas. It&#8217;s a short walk from my brother&#8217;s house and by now some of the bartenders there recognise me and know what I&#8217;m likely to order. As I&#8217;m savoring my margarita I happen to glance out the window [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[227,55],"class_list":["post-13435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-california-dreaming","tag-this-and-that"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13435"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13451,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13435\/revisions\/13451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}