You tell people you're a struggling artist, and they suggest getting a booth at the Fiesta Hermosa or Old Hometown Fair.

Some of the best artwork you've ever seen on display near your home is surfboards or artwork painted onto surfboards.

You've never sold anything to anyone who lives in the same ZIP code as you.

You're one of the lucky people to have met both Jerome Block and Paul Orvalla.

Your parents encourage you to follow your art, but not if that means making anything that won't sell.

Your conversations with Westside gallery owners always seem to end when you tell them where you live.

You have convinced yourself, and subsequently talked yourself out of, opening a gallery on Seventh Street in San Pedro more than three times.

Your best credit as a writer is taking third place in the Easy Reader's annual fiction contest.

A strange force compels you to paint that lighthouse in Palos Verdes.

Someone tells you that their friend, who makes those "To the Beach" signs, is also an artist.

When you try to sell some photographs of lifeguard towers, and some other person accosts you saying that they "own" lifeguard towers.

Your friends ask if it's safe to go to San Pedro.

Your role model – the most successful artist ever to emerge from the South Bay – is practically unknown there except among aging punk rockers.

You sometimes wish things weren't so nice.

Your resume features more than three coffeehouse exhibitions.

The closest thing to an arts writer at your daily newspaper is a two-bit society columnist who prefers to write about big-haired ladies from Palos Verdes drinking tea.

Places that sell picture frames can call themselves art galleries without making anyone laugh.

You know more people who are writing scripts than are writing novels.

You keep running into the models from your life drawing class around town.

Only surfers seem to "get" you.

You long ago learned to keep your best work stored in your van.

You've had to move your studio more than once because the landlord was putting in a Starbucks.

You're just as good a volleyball player as a painter.

You know exactly how much a large coffee costs at Sacred Grounds.

(October 13, 2003)

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