i've always had a fascination w/islands. i suppose it's because they're surrounded by water & water was my element for many years. i remember very clearly as a 6yo insisting to deeply skeptical friends that pensacola was an island. i argued that there were enough bayous & small rivers criss-crossing the p'cola geography to surround the town & separate it from the "mainland." i consulted maps. no one else(not even bill thorton)got caught up in the romance of my p'cola island idea. it just fizzled away, replaced by thorton's tunnels or the neighborhood pine cone wars.
still, islands remained in my life. there was key west & anna maria island(in sarasota). there's st.george island in florida south of tallahassee. i spent a large chunk of my life on santa rosa island, in my teens & then, back again post-college, at the outrigger. now, it's alameda island, sitting out here in san francisco bay, west of oakland.
other than the water, i think what i find attractive is the island mentality. there's a small town atmosphere on islands. everything is in walking distance. it's mostly quiet & there's very little crime. i once picked up a local paper & read through it's "crime report" section: oddly enough, there seems to be a lot of people out here bitten by various animals. no armed robberies but a whole lot of dog biting going on. who knew?
anyway, this weekend's unseasonably hot weather that wilted the cats & me brought out more people to our end of the island than i've ever seen. at 4pm in the afternoon folks were still heading out in groups to sun bathe on the beach. i thought there must be some kind of event or that someone was giving away money down there. when i went to check it out, all i saw were regular folks just having a weekend day in the sun on the beach. several thousand stretching all the way down the beach strip that runs along shoreline dr out here for several miles. all perfectly normal & mundane, those beach umbrellas & crowds gladdened the heart. i nearly forgot about the heat.
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