ODE TO AN END
ISLA VISTA, CALIFORNIA Teenage students and some barely in their 20’s have taken over this town for the past 50 years. It is a one-mile-square teeming ghetto paradise, where million dollar mansion slums perch precariously over crumbling sea bluffs. Children or adults are odd apparitions here, even the government mailmen are young. Trampolines and beer pong tables litter most yards and kegs unknowingly funded by parents are rolled home triumphantly on skateboards. This land is a microcosm of mayhem, trial and error, and zealous seeking. Every morning salty sea breezes clear wafts of sickingly sweet beer spills. Surfing, sunbathing, and attempts at studying daily dot Isla Vista’s coast. - In the evenings, cops patrol on horseback and bicycle. - There are mythological beasts (an albino racoon) , venerated rites (public couch bonfires) , and a bustling shrine (a 25 ft. tower of shelved liquor at the local mart) - a thriving music scene and flourishing vegetable gardens - Corrupt landlords! Bums that sleep in blackberry patches! Burrito joints with 3am rush hours! Teepee villages! Each year a quarter of the population is replaced with fresh ferocity and creates a cycle that has converged into timeless themes, or dichotomies, which are the stuff of true stories…peace & chaos, activism & apathy, energy & atrophy. Isla Vista is a glorious mess of potential and pollution, treasure in trash. The land is idyllic, with rough silvery coastal cliffs, golden sea grass, soft dirt foot paths, and an abundance of fruit trees. This is the setting for squalor and squander, somehow anchored by honest searching. College marks the definitive end of teenageer-hood. Here is a physical place where themes of loss and luxury, desire and delusion are constantly exploited. I am completely allured by this process of identity seeking and eventual transformation. I want to interview ISLA VISTA’s inhabitants on their outrageous and impacting experiences in this town. Listen to their fears, their convictions, and expectations. Above are visual fragments I have taken so far..
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