The Many Meanings of "Ocean View"

This blog is about pop-culture and/or the Southland, and like an earlier post about some of our finer highways down here, this one highlights one of the other, less thought upon phenomena.

There's seventy miles of coastline in Los Angeles County and another forty in Orange County. A-hundred-ten miles of coastline sounds like a lot, but there are more than a dozen-million people living in the five counties that make up the "Southland", and yet...

...Not all views of the ocean are equal.

Here's a shot from the hills in San Pedro, an erstwhile independent community that was annexed by Los Angeles (and everybody around here insists on pronouncing it San Peedro):

This is the western edge of the breaker system fencing in the ocean around the south-eastern side of the RPV peninsula and encircling our little breezy berg in Long Beach .

From this vantage, residents can watch as the sheer tonnage comes and go every day if they wanted, but I imagine few do. At least this view is better than this next, only off to the left of this point:

Not all are "Ocean Views" are equal. This hazy look back at towards the ports would be showing off Terminal Island and Long Beach's skyline, if the visibility was a little more forgiving.

Sometimes the views you get around these parts in no way jive with the romantic views most of this country ascribe it.