HERE TO STAY

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IMPERMANENCE IS GENERALLY THE ONLY PERMANENCE HUMANS KNOW, with the world collapsing inward and rolling back upward like kneaded bread dough. No sooner does one of this world’s societal textures surface but it gets folded under and turned out of sight. And within that “general” pattern there is an even more insistent rhythm of change that is uniquely American. We Yanks feverishly worship the new and doggedly discount the old, tearing down just as speedily as we built up. Having reverence for age, experience or context is often too tall an order for us. And so, in America, the demolition crews and the construction gangs are in a continuous tag-team flow.

And if this is generally true in American cities in general, it is even more so in places designed for high turnover, like resort spots or beach towns, where a dizzying worship of the novel confers a kind of gypsy status on most local businesses. That’s why, as a photographer, I am not only impressed but amazed to find places that have lasted and even thrived for more than six months straight. As one example, my new hometown of Ventura, California, a beach town’s beach town, has been in the heart of a major regentrification boom for the past decade or so. Lots of that new energy naturally flowed from the business district’s forced improvs in the wake of the pandemic, when everything in town adopted a change-or-die mentality. After the smoke cleared, it was easy to see which local joints had the best staying power, because, well, they stayed.

I will always slow my roll (and break out my camera) for any place sporting an “in business since (year)” sign, and so I absolutely had to check out both the street face and the bill of fare at Tony’s Pizzaria, just three blocks off the Pacific, and, as it says up front, “est. 1959”. I always shoot the entrances of such places head on, as if they are sets in a stage play, and I always hope to convey their true atmosphere by catching some customers In The Act Of. And in case you’re wondering, why, yes, I did try the pizza, and other than losing the top-half of a molar crown that was already on its last legs (roots?), I rate it a wondrous experience. I’d like to think that someone could drive past Tony’s in 2059 and marvel, as I did, that some things, even inside a centrifuge, can last.