Disturbing.
Southern California, for those who have never been, is one vast uninterrupted urban sprawl that extends from Santa Clarita, or thereabouts, 100 some such miles down to San Clemente. The untrained eye may only see textureless roads, buildings, small parks etc. but aficionado knows that each community, each neighborhood, is distinct.
Let us take Manhattan Beach, for example, perched on the Ocean Pacific between El Segundo to the north, Hermosa to the south and Lawndale to the east. It is a town of roughly 35,000 with many notable celebrity residents including the World Surf League’s CEO Erik Logan. It was also in the news, this past year, as a stretch of park known as Bruce’s Beach, was set to be returned to a black family it was illegally seized from decades ago.
It is atypically sleepy. Surfers sometimes attempt to milk seconds from waist high closeouts at the pier before catching lunch at Fishing with Dynamite. Other surfers, including the aforementioned Logan, try their hand, or paddle, at El Porto, a handful of blocks away, before catching lunch at Nick’s. Manhattan Beach folk like to go to bed early and spend the day thinking about exotic ice cream flavors and and so you can imagine the shock when a gaggle of men wearing balaclavas stormed the street, near sundown, smashed the window of a jewelry store and proceeded to stuff gold, diamonds, other precious stones and metals into bags and fleeing to waiting cars.
The Manhattan Beach Police Department says the suspects used hammers to smash display cases before stuffing merchandise in their bags … and cops say at least 3 suspects were armed with what appeared to be handguns, though no shots were fired.
Manhattan Beach Mayor Steve Napolitano called it a crime against his entire community … and he says the police force is going to do everything possible to track down the suspects, prosecute them and throw them in jail. He also says the town will beef up security outside businesses and MB’s expensive neighborhoods.
Disturbing.
Also, did you, at some point in your life, pronounce balaclava the same way you pronounced the Greek dessert baklava?
Do you still?
Be honest.