By Michael Ray
I’m on vacation in Italy. I left Laguna on July 5 after watching this year’s July 4 celebration with drones. The show lasted seven minutes and featured lame images of dolphins, a Laguna lifeguard station and so on. It didn’t end with a bang; it just ended. The whole thing was beyond boring and expensive. It cost some $74,000, or roughly $10,500 per minute, twice as expensive as fireworks, and one-fifth as long.
Whoopee.
In Italy, the United States seems far away, randomly violent, unpredictable and populated by warring tribes-not the America they thought they knew.
My long-time partner, Kim Bowen, and I spent our first week here on a secret island recommended by a Laguna Cove Italian friend, Valentina, who told us how to get there. I won’t tell you the island’s name for the same reason I won’t tell the name of my secret Laguna Cove: to keep it secluded. The island is tiny, summer population maybe 3,000, and composed mostly of steep granite cliffs emerging from the sea, blessedly unbuildable. The one town is also the port, man-made and probably 3,000 years old. It is about five blocks long, linear along the harbor, and full of restaurants, bars, and children darting among the adults, screaming with pleasure.
The harbor houses maybe 300 small boats, mostly for fishing, and although we had a car, we didn’t need it. There is only one road on the island, and the local taxis are vans and ubiquitous. The house we rented was a 10-minute walk from town and a five-minute walk to a great beach, which featured the usual European chaise lounges with food and beverage service and an American-style beach, like in Laguna. We went there almost every day. The water temperature was in the mid-70s and the sea was calm. There are few places to anchor a yacht, and that cove was the biggest, although not big enough for the huge superyachts populated by celebrities.
Not where the beautiful people go, thank God.
We loved it and are returning next year, three weeks next time.
Now we are in an old villa near the tiny Tuscan town of Lari, which is on a hill and was first built about 1500 B.C. At its center is a castle that was used as a cistern, torture chamber (really), prison, and garrison. Next to it is the town square, smaller than Laguna’s promenade. Down one street is the usual Catholic church where we saw the end of a Christening. The attendees dressed in their finery and sang as they left for a drink at the one restaurant in the square.
Joining us are Kim’s London friends, mostly from her fashion world. Kim is a well-known fashion stylist who has created costumes for people like George Michael and Janet Jackson, and for the last seven years, she has conceived pretty much everything the singer Pink has worn. As they talk “fashion,” I tune out, except when they discuss celebrities acting badly. That’s great fun, but never Pink. I’ve met her, and she is as down-to-earth and funny as your best friend.
So it goes. After Tuscany, I am going to Milan while Kim visits a friend in Sicily. Neither of us is anxious to return, and I am thinking of renewing my Italian ancestry. My grandmother’s maiden name was Stozz, shortened from Strozzi when her family landed on Ellis Island in the 1870s. They were from Florence, which today houses the Strozzi Palace; I can almost feel it beckoning for the return of one of its lost sons.
Michael co-founded Orange County School of the Arts, The Discovery Cube, Sage Hill School, Art Spaces Irvine and several other area nonprofit organizations. He is a business partner with Sanderson-J. Ray Development and has lived in Laguna Beach since the early 1980s.
