Touring So Cal. OR A Million Pictures of One Sunset

Theo and I always like to drive around and see all the old places we used to live/work. This was our very first apartment; it's in Long Beach. It has changed very little since we lived there. The first floor was parking, second floor the main living space, and top floor bedrooms and bathrooms with a sliding glass doors. We paid around $945, I think, from 2001-2002.

This is my graduate school, Cal State Long Beach. I spent a lot of time right here; all the Coom Profs offices are in this tall building, and all our classes took place right next door. This turn around is where Theo picked me up two nights a week after class was over.

These are the cranes in the Long Beach harbor; we pass these on our way from our first apartment to my hometown (only a 15 minutes frive tops). This is the Port of Los Angeles.
This was our second apartment. The door at the very top of the steps. The two back upstairs windows were our living room and bedroom windows. The living room window had an ocean view. I used to leave the front door open, and have the glass screen door shut; it had the best view of the Cabrillo Beach lighthouse, and breakwater. This place is in San Pedro, the same town I was born and raised in; we paid only $750/month to live here from 2002-2003. We moved straight from this place to our townhouse in Madison, WI in 2003.

Before we headed back to my mom's house we drove around the coast in San Pedro; the sun was setting, and it was a pretty magical sight. If I could get rid of the gangs, traffic, expensive housing, trash, and general lack of safety in my hometown, I'd live here just for the ocean sunsets. I jumped out of the car and stood on the cliffs for about 10 minutes and took all of these pictures. I grew up just blocks from these cliffs. My dad used to walk down to nearly this exact spot, actually. These pictures are taken from the top of Royal Palms. Also, the place where that MTV show, Date My Mom, or whatever its called, is filmed... you know where they have that cheesey limo scene, and then they run off into the sunset... yup. When I was a kid they filmed Ocean Spray Cranberry juice commercials here, and since then hundreds of other things.
The best part, for me, about these pictures? We were married on the cliffs you see in the distance. In a glass church. Yup. Pretty cool.

These are actually in order. I was using two or three different settings on the camera, and saturation of the colors varies b/c of it.

One of my favorite shots, by far.

More to come...