Freedom Reins

Tomorrow is the 4th of July.

I’ll wake at dawn and throw on shorts and a sweatshirt with nothing underneath.

This is the proper attire for the morning. It’s about 70 on the east side, but will be five degrees cooler by the ocean — and 15 degrees hotter within the next two hours. So an outfit as confused as the weather is appropriate.

I’ll head to Manhattan Beach — a beautiful little piece of the California coast that’s easy to get to. I’ll walk past the historical sign that tells the story of that stretch of coastline — how it once belonged to Charles and Willa Bruce, a Black family who purchased the land in 1912 and built a resort, bathhouse, café, and dance hall, creating one of the few places where Black families could enjoy the beach without harassment during segregation. The sign explains how, in 1924, the city stole the land from the family under the guise of building a park — but it sat undeveloped for decades. After about 15 years of campaigning, the city returned the land to the Bruce family’s descendants. And now we’ve got this cool little sign near the sand to remind the whites jogging by in their athleisure that their ancestors were kind of awful.

I’ll come home to Adriana making breakfast, as she usually does on weekends. She’ll be cooking eggs we get from the farmers market every Sunday. We’ve been grateful that all the vendors have been brave enough to show up these past few weekends, given the widespread fear in the Latin community here. I’ll eat my eggs and think about the words “farm to table” — how they usually appear on menus at places named things like Stone and Flour, which doesn’t actually mean anything at all. And those menus are usually handed to you by someone who’s never been to a farm. I’ll eat my eggs and hope the farmers are still brave enough to show up next weekend.

In the afternoon we’ll head to our friends’ for a barbecue. If I’m tired, I might grab a coffee at the makeshift stand my friends’ neighbor sets up in his driveway — a plan B that turned into plan A when he went on disability during Covid. The coffee is better than any cup I’ve had in the city.

We’ll talk with friends and drink in the sun until we’re tired, aiming to get home in time to comfort the dogs through the chorus of M-80s that usually starts around dusk in our neighborhood. No one lights anything off to look at it. It’s just big, dumb explosions.

On the way home, we’ll stop at the Mexican bakery. We’ll pick out conchas and sweet breads, probably grab tamales for dinner — and the whole thing will cost less than the cup of coffee from earlier. Adriana will talk with the owner in Spanish, and I’ll be jealous because I can only understand half of it. But that’s the thing about being a white boy in America: you only get to access 50% of this place. You’ve got to link up with someone with some color in their blood if you want to see the real America.

Happy Fourth of July.

"Follow your heart, kid, and you'll never go wrong."