Personal Solace

We all have those special places, depending on your personality, where either "everybody knows your name" or where you can just disappear in the crowd.   I seen these places all over the world.  From the cafes in Paris to the backroom, smoke filled backgammon rooms in Turkey.  The concept first came to me when I was in college after overhearing the commentary from the film "You Got Mail" in which Nora Ephron coined such places.  The name that Epohron gives these places eludes me, but the concept stuck.

I look for these places from time to time, and I love to look at the people sitting there, in their own world.  Yeah, it's a pretty odd thing to do.  To make it more odd,  sometimes I have my notebook and I'll scratch down the name of the place.  From a "three foot, bricked garden wall" in Union Square in New York to that bench at the end of Midway that overlooks two really good reefs, there everywhere a person can sit.  For us surfers, our solace is the sea and our bench is our boards.  I never really found a spot in NorCal because I was either dodging big 'ol nuggets at Ocean Beach or I was being hounded by a grumpy local at The Hook.  To be honest, the place I found that odd concept of "solace" was at Linda Mar, with a bunch of stoked out newcomers, where flashy waves and localism are almost nonexistent.  But here in San Diego, specifically La Jolla, I found that spot at Scripps.  I tried to recreate that entire concept in the picture below.  I'm in my spot and on my bench.  Solace.