Jim Blackview is a middle-aged boomer who loves California. But he doesn't always like it much. For the past several years he's churned out short essays about California as he sees it from his home in a pretty beach town. It is a community where citizens celebrate their own enlightenment and diversity and good fortune. But that's not all that Blackview sees. He writes of lives that have been warped by the real estate bubble and the Great Recession. He writes of the invisible people who mumble by the side of the road in Paradise, and the boisterous college students who hit town every year. But mostly Blackview writes about ordinary people: trying, most of them, to get by in a sunny land where "getting by" becomes harder every year. And he remembers how things used to be, and how they changed. If you grew up in a time when things seemed better than they are now, read these insightful, observant and dryly humorous stories about people just like yourself. As they scramble for a decent life, remember where they came from, and wonder what's going to happen to them next.

Essays in this book include: THE GREEN PSYCHO: the hunter-prey relationship between hybrid cars and college-age pedestrians. THE KANDY-KOLORED MONSTER FROM THE ID: Let Carl Jung and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth put you behind the wheel of a balanced life. TELL IT TO THE MARINE (LAYER): When a heat wave strikes in a beach town with no AC, fog is your friend. Embrace the grey.THE SHOT THAT I DIDN'T GET: In the '60s he was the bodybuilding king of Venice Beach. Now he's come to rest in Santa Cruz in relative obscurity, pushing 70 and still lifting till it hurts.Is he a sad case -- or exactly where he needs to be? IN A LONELY PLACE.She used to have it all.Now she's standing in a deserted parking lot selling what little is left.To me.So she won't be evicted. OXALIS NATION. The weed with the pretty yellow flower rules the coast every spring. And maybe that's the way it ought to be. CAUTION, FLAMMABLE:When the air tankers orbit overhead and the fire trucks make a stand at the edge of town, you know there's a price to pay for living in Paradise. YESTERDAY, RIGHT LANE ONLY: I had to pay a visit to the past, so I took the back roads. In California, the back roads are where the past lives now.HAPPY LABOR DAY:A young co-worker does the happy dance when she learns that she doesn't have to work on Labor Day.Which makes a grim old Boomer remember when things were different...