When I come home from work each day, I travel to the south end of the 110 freeway and cross the giant green behemoth that is the Vincent Thomas Bridge. That bridge, where I imagine my death happening on a daily basis*, ultimately connects me to Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, a hop, skip and a jump away from my apartment. This area is called the Port of Los Angeles; its title is kind of ironic considering that this mish-mashed area of Long Beach/San Pedro/Palos Verdes is not Los Angeles. Its part of Los Angeles County, but really? It's not LA. Speaking of Los Angeles County, what other county in this country is named after the major city in it? New York City is not in New York County, Indianapolis is not in Indianapolis County, Seattle is not in Seattle County. And Miami doesn't count because it's Miami-Dade County. The Dade part disqualifies it.
Speaking of these misnomers, why do people refer to Los Angeles as the West Coast? The West Coast spans from southern California all the way through northern Washington, but no one refers to Bend, Oregon as the West Coast. You say "I have to fly to the West Coast" and you're talking about LA. Or "the Left Coast" if you're trying to be witty but I beg you to not be. Same thing with the East Coast. Apparently the entire East Coast is comprised of New York City. THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE, PEOPLE. But I digress.
Anyways, I was talking about the Port of Los Angeles. Even though I nearly lose my head every time I drive over that damn bridge*, I love seeing the port every day. It's insane. Each direction you look, there are shipping containers as far as the eye can see. Hundreds. More than hundreds. Thousands. Many many thousands. There are these red and green and blue and orange shipping containers stacked everywhere, spanning these huge expanses of concrete, that arrived through the port from China and Japan and bunches of other places, waiting to be slapped on to the back of an 18 wheeler and hauled somewhere up the 710 freeway and out into the country. My favorite thing to see, though, are the huge cargo ships scattered through the port that are being loaded and unloaded with those technicolor containers. Two things go through my head when I see these, 1) Where did it come from and where is it going? and 2) How the fuck is that thing floating and not sunk somewhere in the middle of the Pacific? I'm no science major, but it just seems like ships that huge with that much weight on top of them would not be able to stay above water. And about that port of origin thing, I saw one the other day that said 'Italia' on the side. How the hell did an Italian ship end up over here? Wouldn't it have been a lot cheaper to just go to the East Coast New York? Did you get to see the penguins down there by Antarctica? Because I hear they're really cool and that the Daddy penguins do all of the work so that the Mommies can go about their business instead of getting all fat and hormonal. I think we humans could learn a lot from our little web-footed friends.
The geography of the port amazes me. The south side of the Ocean Blvd/Seaside Ave/VT Bridge is the ocean side; the north side of it looks like solid land. But the land on the north side, it appears to be full of parking lots and holding areas for the shipping containers, but today, I saw a huge cargo carrier over there. I could not see any water whatsoever. But there it was, just sitting there, la di dah, AS IF IT APPEARED OUT OF THIN AIR. How is this possible? I kept craning my neck to try to see how in the world it got there, but I almost simultaneously hit a concrete barrier and a slow moving Honda Odessey, so my mission was aborted. Some one, tell me, WHAT IS THIS WITCHCRAFT?
Scattered everywhere throughout the port are these giant forklifts that are used to lift the shipping containers off of the cargo ships and to move them on to solid land, and vice versa. Think Tom Cruise's job in War of the Worlds. They are EVERYWHERE. And the only thing I can think when I see them is that, damn, if that first scene in the Transformers 2 movie could actually happen in real life, and it happened during either morning or evening rush hour, I would totally have front row seats. THANK YOU, JERRY BRUCKHEIMER.
*Every time I cross that bridge, I see imminent death coming my way. There are these joints in the concrete where the pieces of the bridge are connected, and everytime I go over them, all of my pelvic muscles involuntarily contract. Like when you take that first drop on a roller coaster. Because I'm so totally fearful that the bridge will drop out from under me and that I will pee on myself all the way down. The same thing happens with those grates that are in sidewalks over sewer lines. I know, I'm crazy. Book my padded cell right now.
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