Pismo, California is a dot on the map that manages to draw people from all across the world. It is small. It is made up of 8,000 people or rather 8,000 people like to think they live there. It shouldn’t be confused with other nearby places like Grover Beach or Shell Beach or that little strip of beach nearby that is good for camping and butterflies and driving your family around on the weekends. It is not these places. It is Pismo. And Pismo is small and good.

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The beach makes up the whole of it the heart the soul the essence of the place. Pismo is a beach at heart not a city not a town but a beach. The people there are beach people Pismo people and they act like beach people. There are surfer people who like beach mornings and dog people who bring their dogs to the beach to enjoy the beach and old people with history and families that live far away and wish they were in Pismo who paint watercolor and draw bird faces on halved clam shells and give them away. There are also people not like Pismo people but who would like to be Pismo people.

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These outside people are not Pismo people. They are seasonal and louder and do not act like Pismo beach people. They come in minivans big trucks convertibles and park in metered parking spaces and buy tickets for their parking because they are not Pismo people. Pismo people park under the overpass of the 101 and walk the three blocks to the beach because there they can stop by Papi’s taco shack and this is essential because Papi’s has the best tacos. He’s authentic original unique traditional. His son’s name is Matteo and he and his son feed all the locals tacos because Papi’s is a Pismo place and Pismo is a good place to be a local a Pismo person.

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If you know the cinnamon roll place by the one laundromat in Pismo across the street from the Presbyterian church and the hotel with the dolphin mural then you know this is where tourists go not Pismo people. They go very early and ruin their morning clock their sleep their rest and ask for a box of cinnamon rolls to feed ten pigs and they take it home and feel proud of themselves at eight in the morning on a Saturday. It is a famous place and people travel to go there to eat the pastries to drink the cheap coffee. This is not what Pismo people do. Pismo people do not travel because Pismo is the place to be. They do not need a famous cinnamon roll and they do not ruin their sleep or their Saturdays. If they wake up early it is not to travel it is to see the sunrise to know the weather for the day and if the weather will be good or less good for that day. There is no bad weather in Pismo.

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Pismo people do not base their directions on sign posts street signs labels intersections or speed limits. They are foot traffic people and know their way by the direction of the sun the sound of the ocean the waves. I am a Pismo person. I do not know the street names. I know there is one street in Pismo with things on it and other streets that only lead to houses to the beach and all streets lead back to the beach. Pismo people are never lost because they always find a way back to the beach. I know this is true because I am never lost. 

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The lifestyle the essence the heart of Pismo is the heart of Pismo people. 

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It is a small heart with room enough only for small things small day things that happen day to day and happen every day. 

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Every year there are new hotels more parking new restaurants less free parking less room to sit on benches and listen to the ocean and the world. How frustrating to be a Pismo person when there are no room for Pismo people in Pismo. No room. No room on the benches on the beaches. No room on holidays for Pismo people. No room for the essential Pismo things. Some days there is no room for the beach. The people take over the beach the not Pismo people and they buy greasy food and sit in the sand and bring the sand onto the sidewalks and leave it there and their not Pismo children throw sand everywhere and all of Pismo is covered with sand but it’s dirty.

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Every year there is less room. The timing it’s all backwards. Pismo isn’t a place of old people old souls anymore it’s a place of young people and young people things concerns ideas and these are not Pismo ideas. They’re outside ideas. They think bigger than Pismo but in Pismo there is all that is good and now it’s being turned inside out and all the good is falling into the beach. Even the beach is sometimes ruined by a tourist a not Pismo person who woke up on the wrong side of their hotel bed and ruined their morning at sunrise because they never bothered to look at the sunrise they were looking days weeks months years lifetimes ahead of where their feet would take them that day in Pismo. 

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So they ruin their morning. They don’t smile. They leave Pismo and then they come back with the next season when they want something from Pismo again but don’t ever get it because they never really get there they’re never really there.

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