If Everybody Had an Ocean

Well, hello there! I’m Rebecca from The Reluctant Floridian. Despite the name of my blog, I actually call California home now, which puts me closer to one of my dreams: learning to surf. (Yes, I could have learned to surf in Florida, but the consensus is that Florida waves suck.) I may have grown up in the most landlocked of states (Kansas!), but I know that deep inside me, there is a surfer girl who longs to get out. I love songs about surfing, surf documentaries, and, unsurprisingly, surf photography. Which brings us to another one of my dreams: owning a LeRoy Grannis—the godfather of surf photography—original. Like this, say:

Waimea Bay (No. 58), 1973 (M+B Gallery)

Or this:

Duke Contest Finalists, Sunset Beach, 1968 (M+B Gallery)

Additionally, I’ve always wanted a giant surfing photo mural in my house. Molly Luetkemeyer designed this bathroom with me in mind:

M. Design Interiors

On her blog, Luetkemeyer explains that she finagled the photo from Surfer Magazine, and had it made into wallpaper. (Can non-designer folk do this? If so, I want in.)

True story: I have subscribed to the Mollusk Surf Shop newsletter for ages and ages and always (incorrectly) assumed they were solely in San Francisco. But there’s also one down the block (give or take a few miles) in Venice! Huzzah. In addition to stocking the requisite boards and clothes, Mollusk collaborates with a sweet stable of artists, like Andy Davis, whose work puts a smile on my face.

Andy Davis

I kind of want to hang out in his studio:

Andy Davis

You know how sometimes you walk into a store and your heart races a little bit, and you can, perhaps, hear angels singing? For some, this is Anthropologie. For me, this is Surfing Cowboys, another spot in Venice. The people behind this place have got my number. Old surfboards? Want.

Surfing Cowboys

Old furniture? Need.

Surfing Cowboys

They even have a house line of clothing printed with vintage-inspired graphics. And, they have a blog, where they offer this sage advice:

We see surfing as a metaphor for life.  Bringing a surfboard inside is like bringing the sun, the sand and the surf into your living room.  You can almost smell our Mother Ocean and ride mind waves.

I’m considering this permission to buy a surfboard even if I never learn to use it. (Don’t judge. I’m riding mind waves.)

Roomba: It's Fun To Say But Will It Kill Me In My Sleep?

My handsomer half bought a Roomba, and while he is obsessed -- applauding its every move like a proud parent (wow! look how it sucked that cheerio up from under the couch!) -- I feel like its mother in law. Every morning when we wake up I do an inspection lap, noticing all the stuck on crumbs left behind. Maybe I'm jealous, a little wary that I may somehow be replaced by a stupid robot. Maybe I'm a little concerned about what a freaking cyborg is doing unsupervised in our living room while our soft, vulnerable bodies sleep just a room away. Or maybe I'm just unconvinced a hockey puck that can barely run for 25 minutes without lazily returning home to charge will be any match for a toddler and the drifts of smashed up snacks left in his wake every night. Due to caked on milkyogurtcerealbarfrenchfryturkeyspit, we are probably going to have to burn our current rug. It's disgusting. Perhaps we should replace it with one of these:

Fork Carpet

Army Carpet

Forest Carpet

Band aid Carpet

Pasta Carpet

I feel like this is such a winning idea. I mean, the Roomba will never be able to navigate all these little pieces -- it cries at the thought of schlepping over fringe. Plus, I think these are so practical. I can easily make the forest rug from all the leaves tracked in by our velcro kitty. If we get hungry, I can use the fork rug to eat the pasta rug. The band aid rug will be easy to sponge clean. And the army rug will shoot the Roomba if it tries to kill us.

Problem solved.

Read about creative collective We Make Carpets here.

Cold War Chic

Remember the Cold War? There was a space race and lots of rockets and other technology stuff, and alzheimery Reagan and unfortunately birthmarked Gorbechev were frenemies, and everyone was a uber paranoid double crossing secret agent, and there was that Land Of Confusion song by Phil Collins (who I dislike intensely, but the puppets were kind of cool). All in all, I have always felt the Cold War rates a solid BORING on Erin's Entertaining War Scale, with the Civil War topping the scale as SLIGHTLY LESS BORING.

And then I saw these pictures of the now demolished Palast der Republik in Berlin, where cold warriors hid behind their angry wall and secretly plotted death to America, or something like that. All that plotting makes me nervous, but the Palast makes me feel vaguely traitorous -- like switching sides. Or maybe just like becoming a secret spy and committing a little espionage.

Because those bastards were plotting in style.

Built in the mid 70s, the Palast didn't just house a bureaucratic freedom hating government, it "contained 13 restaurants, lounges, and beer and wine bars, a bowling alley and even a discotheque."

Huh. You know what I love even more than freedom? Beer. Wine. Bars. And gorgeous lighting.

Those fancy bureaucrats even got to see concerts by awesome acts like Harry Belafonte and Carlos Santana for free. Yep, they were treated to the very best of America. The cream of the crop.

But it wasn't all fun and games at the Palast. There was a lot of work to do, what with all the cold and the war going on.

Ok, yeah, mostly it was all fun and games.

Sadly this little gem of a time capsule was demolished due to an overabundance of asbestos. Oops! Payback is a bitch. Just kidding, because my grandma died of cancer from asbestos and that really sucked. I hope those freedom haters didn't get all cancery. I am magnanimous like that.

And also I hate to think of this beautiful building as a disease infested death trap. And just maybe I would like to buy those lights off Ebay (I swear I've seen them), and I would prefer that they not be smeared with cold war cancer dust.

Call me paranoid.

Gorgeous photos by Thorsten Klapsch are available in book form for purchase here.