We have everything on the Central Coast, its too much

April 21, 2025

By DELL FRANKLIN

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. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

A few weeks ago, my friend Ethan and I wandered down to Los Osos on a Saturday morning after tennis in Morro Bay and found ourselves waiting in an excruciatingly long line for bread at a bakery that wafted aromas irresistible enough to cost at least twice as much as bread in local markets.

Later, sitting at one of the rare tables, drinking coffee and observing those in an even longer line, I told Ethan, “These people don’t resemble the Los Osos people of the old days. There were a lot of bikers and speed freaks and coke heads and blue-collar working stiffs who liked to get in fights. This lot looks to have it too good. Half of ’em look like college professors, and the rest look like techie geeks and retired techie geeks. What happened to all the criminals who used to live here?”

“They’re long gone,” Ethan explained. “These days, they’re drinking Chai tea and Chai lattes and green tea.”

“What does Chai tea taste like?”

“You won’t like it.”

“Why are people drinking it?”

“To live longer. All this stuff is expensive, but these days, if you have the money, you can prolong your life. Chai’s just the tip of the iceberg. Acai bowls with chia, flax seed…it goes on and on.”

“And what’s Boba?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

I look around Cayucos and Morro Bay and Cambria and Los Osos and Baywood and San Luis Obispo and see an inordinate number of coffee house/bakeries serving all kinds of these new tantalizing goodies. The old bacon and eggs and simple java diners are dwindling.

I also see a lot of really well-conditioned and well-preserved specimens of the so-called Boomer generation whom, I feel, probably worked hard to achieve the affluence enabling them to live on the magnificent gold coast and savor all the health rewards: Elixirs, nostrums, herbal remedies, organic food, fat reducers, energy inducers, body enhancers, Viagra, new age vitamins, and all this shit advertised on TV for Boomers that will allow them to lunge about on pickleball courts or romp around in parks with their dogs without pain or exhaustion–unless they have high blood pressure and the myriad of old age maladies which might kill them if this shit is ingested.

These goddam boomers got it too good. All this fine dining and $100 bottle wine tasting is bad for the conscience, especially if you’re a woke liberal democrat hating Trump and owning a vacation home in Palm Springs or a skiing resort.

It looks bad. Eric Hoffer (my personal philosopher favorite) would be displeased if he was alive. You need to haul your asses down to the nearest bar or pub and tie one on with a bucket of good vodka or Irish whiskey, commingle with friendly bar flies and regurgitate whatever troubles your subconscious mind. It’ll clean you out after the hangover is gone, if it doesn’t kill or cause you to show up at the ER with blood pressure of 198 over 128.

I see you old buzzards all around—on your motorized bikes that help you and your pot bellies go up tiny climbs, on your $10,000 10 speeds (decked out like you’re training for the Tour de France), in your electric golf carts  (playing that awful corny music), or hiking up a trail smothered in heavy duty Patagonia jackets when the sun’s out and bright.

Get a fucking life!

It’s soul shredding to have too much.

And another thing—you don’t need retreats. No. Okay, yoga is good. Yoga is wonderful. But, a yoga retreat where you have to consume bird seed and remain silent and meditate in a squatting position for hours and no sports on TV? Uh-uh.

My friend Ethan and his wife are guilty of attending yoga retreats and they have paid for it with my most vociferous company.

Other retreats I’ve heard about from excited and supposedly physically recharged and mentally rejuvenated Boomers and their progeny are: Soul Retrieval, Soul Coaching, Energy Healing, and Emotional Clarity, which once nearly drove my old basketball sidekick and coach, Jersey Mike, insane when his wife, a school teacher, went from attending retreats to leading retreats to conducting seminars and eventually trying to write a book about it with fellow crazed emotional clarity peers, all successful professional women who could not cook and still suffered from marriages to men who resented their independence and behaved badly.

Poor Jersey Mike had to beg her to cease trying to cook when she nearly poisoned him. “Just stay great in bed, honey, that’s all I ask!” he pleaded desperately.

These poor boomers, who were bequeathed a world where every advantage and opportunity was placed upon a silver platter by the greatest generation, would mostly be in wheelchairs if modern medical care and Medicare didn’t provide them with new hips, knees and shoulders. They have too many toys, too much leisure, too many gluttonous, fattening cruises, it’s a damn shame and an eyesore observing them…

Though, that bread sure was elite, as good as it gets. I fried it in olive oil and butter until it had a firm crust, savored every bite out of every hacked-up slice, but I won’t go back. I don’t want to be seen with these people.