Cayucos’ lone, measly, little BLM sign

September 7, 2020

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin.

By DELL FRANKLIN

I was wandering around the neighborhood the other day and discovered a Black Lives Matter sign in the window of a small nondescript old home with a neglected front yard and two aged compact jalopies parked in the driveway, and I wondered what tiny, almost 100 percent white (Oh, we have some Indian motel owners) Cayucos is doing with this kind of harsh, brash, dangerous invasion?

The sign, of course, is probably no bigger than a grocery box and does not seem to possess the attention to detail of something manufactured by professionals. But it is black with white lettering, and I know for a fact the young guys who live in this home (demolition bait) are white and work day jobs, and do not appear to be millennial techies or surfers or the skateboard riding spawn of the entitled rich infiltrating Cayucos like a plague.

After spotting this BLM sign, I became hungry to discover another. Everybody knows that BLM participation is intense and also largely populated by young white people, even kids, and is looked upon as a malignant force by our president and his followers. I suppose these white kids are scorned by the law and order crew in the same way hippies were despised back in the anti-Vietnam war/civil rights era by Joe 6-pack and his marauders, including those National Guard troops who murdered some students at Kent State.

So, I began driving up and down every street in Cayucos, from Lucerne on the north end to Shearer on the south end, though I did not walk along the sand for several miles, and perhaps missed out on flags and signs in some of our sprawling and luxurious beach front homes.

Well, I never saw another BLM sign. I did come across a lone “STOP THE SPREAD, WEAR A MASK” sign on a corner. I stopped counting American flags at around 120. Some of these flags hung from our new mini mansions, while others were on a scattering of our remaining older, simpler homes. There were a few Trump reelection flags and signs, a couple Marine Corps flags, an Air Force flag, and at least ten homes had two American flags and a few had three.

I was disappointed in not finding another BLM sign. I thought there at least had to be a couple young white kids in their twenties or thirties who might put a sign up in a window, like a whole slew of young white people did back in the early 1970s in Manhattan Beach down south, which in those days was affordable to a lot of rebellious young folks of the working class.

We had peace signs and rainbow flags, and when I walked or rode my bike to work as a bartender along the strand early evenings, the windows sprouted such quotations as “MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR;” “IF YOU’RE NOT BAREFOOT THEN YOU’RE OVERDRESSED;” and, most prescient, Mark Twain’s, “WHENEVER YOU FIND YOURSELF ON THE SIDE OF THE MAJORITY, IT’S TIME TO PAUSE AND REFLECT.”

This was before radical gentrification turned Manhattan Beach into a place where cops helped you get home when they found you stumbling along the street or strand, to now putting you in jail so as to protect the rich folks from tainting.

Snob city

I see some young folks around town, but none of them give me any indication they are inspired or behind Black Lives Matter. I know San Luis Obispo has had some impressive gatherings for Black Lives Matter in that very white town that does have some black athletes from Cal Poly.

But, in Cayucos, why would anybody really care? We are so far detached from such mayhem, so isolated in our comfort, so entrenched in our languid contentment of lacking little if nothing, and most of us, like me, are old, and most of the old timers here like Trump and find Black Lives Matter offensive and threatening to their security and certainly deserving of firm law and order.

Cayucos has become too clean and sterile. And there’s something dirty, though vibrant about the BLM crew, kind of like those dirty hippies back in the day, with their ugly clothes and the young women growing hair under their arms — yuck!

Though many of those girls, with names like Sky and Sunshine, ended up behind white picket fences and, along with their husbands (boomers), now drive BMWs or SUVs, and complain about heavy taxation and big government and the disgusting sight of supposedly homeless ne’er-do-wells occupying areas on the seawall and parking lots.

Anyway, what I did notice was that Trump flags were stationed at two of the larger and more palatial homes in town, and sported more than one American flag, emphasizing their patriotism. And I was thinking of some of the hundred plus white BLM gatherings I’ve seen in small, mostly white towns throughout the country.

They are a scabrous lot, looking as if they’d never worn an expensive suit or quality leather shoes. Most of them are not remotely attractive or sleek. They are almost all white. They listen with quiet respect to one of the few black locals speaking.

When they speak there is little eloquence or polish in their orations. But they are trying. They are stirred and riled. They lay on the ground in silence for eight minutes and 46 seconds in reverence to George Floyd. They tote Black Lives Matter signs and flags and various quotations. The few bitterly angry militants who want to riot and loot are refrained by leaders. They are unified and purposeful and caring and involved.

They are beautiful.

And every time I pass our lone home in town with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window, I find myself involuntarily giving them the thumbs-up gesture.

Postscript: Just ran across Mrs. Adams, a 60ish firebrand whom I informed I’d so far only witnessed one BLM sign in town. She quickly informed me she’d just put her BLM sign up. Now we’re going.