#ca gothic

- "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumper-stickers are everywhere you look. You can't remember the last time you visited the area. The words echo in your mind, not as a slogan, but a prayer. Keep Tahoe Blue. Don't disturb what lurks under the water.

- The canals go on for miles, filling and draining themselves with dirty water when nobody is around to see. You've always been taught to avoid swimming in them. "There are currents under the surface, you could drown" they always say. Nobody says the real reason out loud. You pretend not to know what lies under the surface.

- It rains for the first time in months. People stare from their houses, awestruck and terrified. Neighbors stand on their porches and stare, glassy-eyed at their driveways. It's over in ten minutes, everyone goes back inside, and life goes back to normal. Nobody is entirely sure whether or not it even happened. You forget what rain is until it happens again

- There is a taquería that is almost always empty when you go,despite being in a busy area. It takes you a long time to eat, and your table feels so much quieter than everyone else's, and you're afraid to look away from your food,  but when you do, you find the other two patrons hunched over their meals, eating as quietly as they can. The employees have vanished. It is suddenly too quiet.

-Some time in the summer there are an abundance of car shows. Vintage cars appear in flocks, each more polished and pristine than the last. Nobody knows where they come from, or why they're here. A man catches you staring at his car. He smiles impossibly wide and pats the hood lovingly. When his hand touches it, gets a little thinner, his skin a little more translucent. The car shines brighter than it had before. He looks so tired, but he continues to smile as he exclaims "They just don't make 'em like this any more".

- The sun shines brightly, the heat is so intense that it’s suffocating. It’s only 9am, but it’s already unbearably hot. You all assure one another that it will cool down around dusk. “Just wait it out” they say. You have been waiting for weeks. Dusk never comes.

- There is a museum in Cannery Row that you never plan to go to, but you just end up there somehow. Their statue of John Steinbeck is a little too realistic for comfort. You think “John Steinbeck was cremated” over and over, until you can leave. You pretend to not notice it move in your peripheral vision.

- Everyone asks about In-N-Out, but nobody wants to know why you never go alone. Or why animal style fries are only described as such. What kind of animal was it? You never get a real answer, and maybe that’s for the best.