The Long Day

It's morning in Santa Barbara and activity is already picking up along the beach. There are businessmen in ties talking on cell phones, hotel people tidying up, serving breakfast, checking people out, and there are the legions of homeless. Last night, they were set up in their sleeping bags at the veteran's memorial center, in alley ways, in various niches. But come morning, those areas are hosed out, and the homeless already have their possessions assembled, their sleeping bags rolled up, and they're on the move.

If you're going to have paradise, with twenty days of rain a year and temperatures that rise into the low seventies on a daily basis, you're also going to attract anyone who must live outdoors all year. It's a closed society in most senses, but a society nonetheless. They know one another, and even have outcasts among the outcast.