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sunshine jen: The Rain
At the end of last week, I started hearing rumors that a major rain storm was on its way to Los Angeles. It was going to be an epic storm, The Rain Storm of the Year even though it was only January, and one for the record books. According to Weather People, we would be talking about this storm in 2010. Yes, The Rain had hype.
I was bummed about The Rain because I had planned to do a major hike on saturday. I was hoping to do a solid ten miles and sweat out the last of the holiday food while moving through the natural world. So the hike was scrapped, but I knew I had many more hikes in me.
On Friday, the prerequisite grey clouds came followed by The Rain. It started mistily and then moved into full-on droppage. By East Coast and Midwest standards, it was pretty wimpy rain. I didn’t need more than a cotton hoodie sweatshirt to deal with it.
With the rain came cold temperatures, so as the droppage became downpour, I decided to stay at home on Friday night and knit winter sweaters. A lot of Los Angeles people I have talked to since have admitted that they pretty much did the same thing. Rain, eek!
Saturday was the day when we were supposed to get a lot of rain. All day, low hanging grey clouds threatened. They seemed to say, ‘I’m gonna rain on you, muthafucka.’ But they never delivered. They just sat there low, grey, and full of empty curses. They reminded me a lot of the clouds over Cleveland from October through April.
On Sunday, the sky continued to curse but not deliver. I took a walk around the neighborhood, and sure enough, when I was far away from home, The Rain came. At first it was just misty water-colored stuff, then it became real rain. I ducked into a coffee shop and sat it out for an hour as I listened to some coffee shop musicians plan a compilation CD. Then, I couldn’t stand the coffee shop scene any longer so I went for it. I put my hoodie hood over my head, ran across the street, almost got run over by a Honda, and walked home under the trees which didn’t protect me from the rain.
But wait, there’s more.
Last night, I met two people from New York who had just gotten off the plane. When I told them they had missed the Big Rain, they told me that they were just happy to not be in nineteen degrees with wind. We talked some more, and I learned that one of the New Yorkers lived on 84th and 3rd.
I use to work at a video store there. Video Room? I asked the guy.
Oh yeah, that’s closed. It’s a Dwayne Reade now. The guy told me.
Sure, I hadn’t worked at Video Room in over ten years, but there was something sad about it being gone and replaced by a Dwayne Reade. Video Room used to have a delivery service and customers would call up and want to know the new releases. Sometimes, someone would want to know the porn new releases, and I would tell the less sexy titles over the phone. Good times those were.
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