Murder at the Arroyo Villas?

Trouble in paradise? On our way to the pool we saw four police cars and a building taped like we see on films. Where we live is the quietest place in the suburbs of Newbury Park, surrounded by palm trees, the most serious crime I can imagine in this white clean gated community is a burglary. Even so, the wardens make eye contact with everyone and would spot anyone unusual.  

It is Sunday afternoon and families are in the pool, kids are shouting, the usual. It is just strange to see on the other side of the fence police officers coming and going.  After my lengths I decide to go home and here is a police officer asking me to go back a different way as he is also taping my path. "What happened?" I dare ask. Well, you should have seen his face...He seemed offended that I even ask anything. He should realise that in a place so quiet, and with the box feeding us hundreds of "Law and Order" episodes we are all craving some action. "I can't tell you anything" he said with a disapproving tone.

Miffed as I was I walk home the long way around. A minute later a lady asks me what the policeman had told me. She delighted in informing me of the "rumour" that had been going around the Arroyo Villas since the morning, that the lady from the office "got killed". I thought she too must be watching "Law and Order". I didn't know how to end the conversation other than uttering some patronising sentence about "We should all be careful..."

As I was walking away I was imagining some angry resident coming back to the management office with a weapon. A bit surreal. What could it be? Issues about garages, neighbours, leaf blowers?

The following day I went on the site of my favourite local paper the Ventura County Star and the content of the article, I am afraid, was quite gruesome, Man arrested in relation to death of his mother.

Stephen had reminded me that most murders are committed by someone known to the victim.

San Diego

A brief week end heading South to San Diego. Beautiful boats, including the Star of India which circumnavigated the globe twenty-one times, the Gas Lamp Quarter, with gambling halls, brothels and liquor dens where sailors would come and spend their meagre earnings.

We also spent a day at the zoo which is the home of cute pandas, and travelled back on the Pacific Coast Highway through Orange County, San Clemente, Huntington Beach. 

Cactus Rock

Who dared fencing off our walk to Cactus Rock?

I prefer not to think that the sprawl of suburbia is threatening Hill Canyon...

New York

As I am preparing to go back to Europe I still can't believe how lucky we were to be able to go to New-York last month. And how likely were we to be there at the same time as Emily, and as Janet's gallery opening and also to be able to stay with Paul and Morag in the Lower East Side? 

Morag has a particular liking for the F-Train, she jokes "It is so sassy!". It took us from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn where we met up with Emily for her birthday/PhD celebration brunch, then walked to Brooklyn Bridge Park in the rain. Looking across to Manhattan and drinking hot chocolates to warm up and back to the Lower East Side. 

The Lower East Side is quite "Brick Lane-esque", full of History and trendy restaurants and edgy fashion boutiques and on 248 Broome Street, Baby Cakes NYC, the wheat-free, dairy-free place to ha

ve breakfast. The Lower East Side is the place where all the immigrants arrived from Italy, Easter Europe to  start there lives in the New World (check the Tenement Museum Website on Orchard Street).  The Lower East Side is also the home of the incredible Katz's Delicatessen of Houston St, open since 1888, where all things are smoked, pickled or cured, the deli where the waiters are fierce, you have to be ready to fend for what you want, and where was filmed the fake orgasm scene from When Harry met Sally( 1989). 

From there we hopped on the F-train again to Greenwich Village for a walk from Washinton Square, Henry James on one side and New York City University on the other; to Union squar

e, via the Village, the Cherry orchard theatre, Grove Street full of Old-World charm, Bleecker Street, with the cute trendy boutiques. We loved the Village. And we just had to go to Strand,  biggest second-hand bookshop I have ever seen. The following day another trip on the F-train, to Midtown where the Museum of Modern Art is. As we experienced MOMA is closed on Tuesdays!

We did change though to Uptown and spent time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, outstanding art collection! The Guggenheim Museum was under a huge scaffolding but we went in to look at the staircase. We got soaked again in Central Park, I hadn't quite worked out that my plimsoles and jacket weren't waterproof!!! I never thought New York in May would be so wet. It added a certain charm, walking under the umbrella " un petit coin de parapluie contre un coin de paradis" in Central Park.

How lucky we were too to be shown around Little Italy and Chinatown by someone who has lived here and loves the area so much. Chinatown in the rain looks a bit like Blade Runner

 (1982) with little merchants, shoe repairers in the streets. In China Town we went to the most amazing Chinese restaurant, in a big empty room we come in and three old men sit at the back playing Majong; there is no menu, and we are the only customers and Paul orders dimsungs for all of us warning us that pork is the local vegetable! The shop feels like it would have been in the fifties, old New York with the original tin ceiling in case of fire, grim yellow walls. For an amazing $8 we had lunch for three! I wonder what was in those dumplings hidden under the hoisin sauce...

We crossed Canal Street and were in Little Italy, Italian flags everywhere, with restaurants called Benito, how strange! Apparently some immigrants came here during the 30's and were loyalists... Some bars were used as a set for the television series the Sopranos and very proud of it. Paul also knew the stories of shootings between gang members in the 70's...

On our last day we went to the Upper East Side to Janet Amiri's opening, East West Dialogues, Mysticism, Satire and the Legendary Past. The fifty artists exhibited had lived or worked in Iran and show their vision of the Persian identity, including the film maker/artist Abbas Kiarostami.

Best walk: from the Lower east side to the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

Best free ride with a view of the Statue of Liberty: Staten Island Ferry

Most stylish dinner: Café Daniel Boulud on 76th Street

Five days was far too short. I hope I'll be back some day.