Travel – On Second Thought

A Life Full of Good Work

The accompanying photographs are the result of my always-moving eye to document the beauty and complexity of life.

Photography — Reporter, WFSB-TV, Hartford, Connecticut

My life partner, Sumire, often teases me that I write too much about the dark side of my life. Even my biography on this website is chock full of negativity. She tells me, “You have a long list of accomplishments. You should write more about them.” Yeah, but what fun is that? No one cares about the happy stuff. In today’s world, it’s all about drama.

But maybe, she has a point. I recently had to submit a resume (I didn’t have a bio handy) for an article that someone was writing about me being an older college student. It was the first time in a long time that I had read it, and I was taken aback by all the career work I’ve done in my life. Good work that impacted me and, hopefully, people I’ve worked alongside. I’ve traveled this country from New York to Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut, Los Angeles, California, and international cities like London, Tokyo, and Cannes, France, fulfilling my work-life dreams. So why not take a moment to be proud of all I’ve done?

For example, during my twenty-plus years at the Los Angeles-based cable network E! Entertainment, I managed, in partnership with others, the growth of E!’s Red Carpet Shows into a major brand and a pop culture icon. Those years at E! were some of the most exciting times in my life. I led a large team of producers, writers, and technical professionals to produce live Big Event television covering the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, Grammys, and Primetime Emmys, as well as movie premieres and the ultimate icon, Fashion Police. I was on the ground floor helping build the network’s live red carpet coverage from a one-camera, one-host, two-hour program into multiple cameras, multiple hosts, and ten-hour live shows. I was an Executive Producer on Fashion Police with the late Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa Rivers. In addition, I worked on international specials, including coverage of the Cannes Film Festival in France.

During my early days at E!, I supervised a team of segment producers creating short and long-form television series and specials on various entertainment subjects, including Daytime Emmys, Grammys, Country Music Awards, and Academy Awards.

Near the end of my tenure at E!, I created my own production company, Really Big Boom Productions, with E! Networks as the first client, providing Executive Producer services on the highly rated red carpet shows. Locally, we also created the Color Me Long Beach Cultural Festival.

My work life in media (radio and television) extends back to the east coast from 1972-1978, when I was a television news reporter at WFSB-TV Eyewitness News, Hartford, Connecticut, a radio and television news reporter trainee at WTOP-AM-TV, Washington, D.C., and on-air host and radio producer at WHUR-FM (Howard University’s 50-thousand watt commercial radio station) also in D.C.

Filling in some gaps in my work timeline during the late seventies and early eighties, I was a Public Information Specialist in the Office of Mayor Marion Barry (another story) in Washington, D.C. I followed that up as the Executive Director for the D.C. Cable Television Design Commission, responsible for bringing Cable Television to Washington, D.C.

In recent years, I was the Publisher and Executive Editor of Palacio Magazine, a digital multimedia platform featuring stories about Latinos and other people of color. As if I wasn’t busy enough, I was the Community Engagement Coordinator for VoiceWaves, a journalism and multimedia training program in Long Beach for youth 16-24 years old to produce media content to foster a healthier community. Between gigs, I was a Small Business Advisor at El Camino College Small Business Development Center in Hawthorne, advising emerging and established small businesses regarding website content and multimedia strategies.

When I stop and consider that I’ve been working since I was fifteen years old (selling magazine subscriptions, dry cleaners, motorcycle messenger, bartender, airport shuttle driver, Wall Street clerk) and that I am now seventy-four (and still kicking it), there is much to be proud of, including my time on the board of Directors for Leadership Long Beach and the Arts Council for Long Beach. My life partner and I co-founded the arts advocacy group, The Creativity Network, where we helped rewrite the city’s Cultural Master Plan with the Arts Council. The list of good work includes all the volunteer work on the east coast, for example publishing a book of poems by Connecticut-based Puerto Rican poets called Revista and being a part of the first incarnation of the National Latino Media Coalition (Thankfully, it went on to survive in more capable hands. Oops, there’s that negativity again) in Washington, D.C.

Trust me, the list of good work is even longer: doing community work in 1968 in the South Bronx with one of my first mentors, Evelina Antonetty, at United Bronx Parents during the New York Teacher’s strike (hey, got me arrested and I wear it like a badge of honor), guerrilla community television in Washington, D.C. in the days when people didn’t know anything about portable video, the late great National Puerto Rican advocacy organization La Causa Comun, the Booker T. Washington Foundation with a man who taught me so much, the late Charles Tate.

I’m writing about this not to inflate my ego but to recognize that despite all the misadventures in my life, I’ve done more good than bad. Life is full of ups and downs, but we can survive the heartaches if we just put our heads down and move forward with good people around us.

As I prepare to head into the last year of my eight-year college journey to a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Long Beach, I take pride that at my age, I’m still kicking and wanting more from an already full life of good work. I will be seventy-five years old when I graduate, and I intend to go for a post-graduate degree because I haven’t been able to come up with a good reason why not. I plan to keep pushing because it’s who I am. As I often say, “Eat Life like you’re starving. You may feel full at the end of the day, but damn, it tasted good.”

Sand Water Sky

The sand fills my shoes (I hate when that happens)
The water soaks my socks (The squish squish squish unnerves me)
The sky fills my field of vision (Overwhelming me always)
sun rays bouncing off the atmosphere
onto the water sparkling little stars jumping with each wake
the sun rays pouring over me reminding me that there
are some things in life you cannot control.

Warming my face
sitting at the edge of the sand my feet propped up
on the low wall as I try my darndest to stay dry
and free of the sand wanting it all at the same time.
Sand  Water  Sky.

I don’t swim (you’ll never catch me surfing)
maybe you’ll find me on a small boat (I remember that time
I ended up in the Potomac trying to learn how to sail)
or a cruise ship (like the time through the Caribbean in ‘83
eating my way through the islands while savoring a dying 
relationship).

People the brave ones who don’t mind a little sand in their shoes
a wet sock a cold dash of water rubbing against their skin as they 
ride the waves playing with dolphins and sharks and jellyfish.
I like being the bystander cheering them on
enthralled by the California myth where everyone lives 
dreaming of a house on the beach and
the water and sky paint your dream with peace and 
love.

I don’t swim or ride the waves on a surfboard
I don’t lay out a blanket on the sand 
avoiding sand in my shoes 
or the ocean filling my socks with excuses
of why it wants me to trust it 
that it’s been there for millions of years since the beginning of time along 
with the sand and its other friend the sky.

I sit at the edge of America scanning the horizon for
what’s on the other side of this vision 
a thought a dream
a moment in time spent wondering how I got so lucky
to be here 
to join the armies of beach huggers who 
arrive every day to dig in the sand 
poke their toes into the water and let the sun warm them over with peace and love.

I love sitting on the edge of America knowing that this is where
I will be forever because I was born to be here in peace and love.
This is where I need to be to live the La La myth 
the lifestyle of Hawaiian shirts shorts and sandals and 
beach bum hats
and free spirits relaxing taking it all in 
and turning my face to the sky my arms and hands extended welcoming the 
life force that confirms that I am alive at peace and in love
with Sand Water Sky.

Spring Break

Partying in Palm Springs. Galivanting through Cabo. Rolling the waves off Waikiki. Yep, that’s me on Spring Break…yeah, that’s not happening. I’ve always been intrigued by the college ritual of Spring Break. Any excuse for falling down drunk, orgies, drug-tainted nights where you surrender yourself to whatever whim and desire you wish with the promise you will not remember a bit of it the following day or the next week, so there will be no guilt that you acted wildly out of character and hopefully anonymously. The fear of exposure makes you pucker up your brain and shrink away into a corner to hide.

I remember days like that so long ago, and I wasn’t attending college. It was more than a lifestyle. It was a mission to see how many party days I could fit into one day, to hell, one weekend. I proved that one could fit more hours into twenty-four hours, squeezing minutes into seconds, hours into minutes, and days into hours. Time was stretched and compressed so much that you lost the rhythm of the space-time continuum. Back then, there was no point in a watch. What would be the point? The watch could not measure the stream of lies you told yourself that this would be the last time you got this high and this drunk, the last party you would attend and then forget about it as soon as you left (Who are all these people? How did I get here?).

In 1980, driving a friend’s Volvo (What a great car) back from Miami to Washington, D.C., we stopped in Daytona Beach to catch our breath. Who remembered that it was Easter weekend and Spring Break? Well, we sure didn’t as we traveled up and down A1A looking for an empty room and finding laughter from the motel clerks instead. What do they say about perseverance and patience? Hey, it was a bed in a room with a shower and the sounds of drunkenness and sex and a party next door until they broke night, and you realize that there’s not going to be any sleep in this room.

Everyone outside has to be at least twenty-one or two or eighteen or even seventeen, not that it mattered as you walked the beach sands. You could swear there was a rule somewhere that driving your car in wet sand was not a good idea or even legal. Still, there they were, racing north and south through a gauntlet of screaming, hysterical, barely standing, barfing college students (I just assumed they were all college students, but something told me that this was also Spring Break for high school students too). We stood at the water’s edge and wondered why we felt so old in our early thirties, and partying like this was a strange occurrence. The only difference between them and us was that we were drunk in a two-story row house or the Hawk N Dove and not on an Atlantic Ocean beach. We also didn’t drive a convertible up and down Rhode Island Avenue half-naked, drunk, stoned screaming. No, we were a little more circumspect and cautious that we didn’t perform gratuitously in front of the police (Funny, I don’t remember ever seeing any Daytona Beach police). There was no sleep to be gotten that night. Not with hard-core partying on either side of our room (what was that rhythmic stomping coming from both rooms?). That was one of those nights that you knew you would write about one day.

This week, I’m content with hanging at Seal Beach and Sunset Beach and taking photos of the sky, ocean, and beach. Sitting at the sand’s end and closing my eyes and listening, a quiet close listening, for the sounds of the enormous container ships as they ride the still waters to their final destination. The screeching seagulls ride the waves of air, showing off their wide wingspans, teasing us to look up so they could aim for your head. Yuck. The sand was wet from last night’s storm. But there are the brave folks who, on an early weekday morning, are either walking across the sand or are firmly ensconced in a beach chair smoking a joint with only Catalina Island in front of them the twenty-eight miles from shore, the wealthy million-dollar homes lining the beach behind them. I’m cool with the peacefulness as I pump my meditation music into my earphones, allowing it to flow into my head and my body down to my toes. Spring Break. It’s just another excuse to search for and find those rare quiet moments when you can flush the bullshit out of your life, breathe easily, lazily, comforted by the inner voices that speak to you in many tongues, and you hear them say, it’s all cool. Daytona Beach is a million miles away and a thousand years ago, and that Spring Break is not this Spring Break.

With four or five weeks left in the semester, I am trying to get ahead in my studying, so I will use some of my driving and beach time to catch up on some reading and writing. It doesn’t mean I can’t mix chilling into the life I always dream about. The one where I’m done with twenty-four-hour parties and being reckless in Sodom and Gomorrah and trying to prove some dumb point which I forgot what it was a long time ago. No, I’m good with this life—this Spring Break.

The Ocean
	i look at it
	never setting my feet
	in it…not even the sand
	touches me.
	on the edge
	scanning the horizon
	searching for what’s 
	out there
	the surfers in their black suits
	sailboats dodging 
        the container ships	
	that dwarf them
	your cars, furniture, 
        spring clothes
	deep in their bays
	passing me and don’t have a
	care in the world
	because it’s the ocean i wish upon
	the majesty of its vastness
	the deepness of its body
	the hope of its promise
	waiting for me
	to stand at its edge 
	and pray (not in that way)
	pray that it will always 
        welcome me.

Baghdad by the Bay…A Love Letter…Sort Of

Newspaper columnist Herb Caen coined “Baghdad by the Bay” to describe San Francisco.

You can never really know a city until you live there. That’s how it is for me when I think about San Francisco. No matter how many times I’ve visited in the last thirty-eight years, I’m still a tourist. Even if I’ve been there twenty or more times since moving to California. The longest I’ve stayed in the city has been a week, and I am usually settled into one of the hotels where you’re bound to find the tourists. Union Square. Embarcadero. Financial District. SOMA (South of Market). One time during my first trip, I bravely checked into a motel on the edge of the Tenderloin District. That cost me my hotel choosing privileges. After that fiasco, only three-star or more hotels for us. How bougie of me.

“Legendary newspaper columnist Herb Caen loved San Francisco so much he gave it a new name. Two of his early books about San Francisco were Baghdad by the Bay (1949) and Baghdad: 1951 (1950). The moniker appeared often in his columns in the 1950s.”
https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2019/06/baghdad-by-the-bay/

Call me naive or blinded by rose-colored glasses, but I love the views of San Francisco Bay, the hills, riding BART and the Muni, the cable cars, the Ferry Building, and Lombard Street “On a 27-degree angle, this famously crooked street features eight hairpin turns & landscaped flowerbeds” (Described by Google Maps). North Beach and Sotto Mare with its great Crab Cioppino, Columbus Avenue and the famous City Lights Bookstore. Chinatown, Mission District (the famously painted Women’s Building), Haight, Richmond District and the Burma Superstar Restaurant, Hayes Valley and our favorite place, Zuni Café. From the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and north to wine country to the Bay Bridge to Oakland and Berkley, it all seems like a grand voyage through picture-perfect postcard scenes of cultures, class, race, and ethnic havens.

“The first edition of Caen’s post-World War II collection of stories about San Francisco. The collection describes the city as it was then, with its covenants against Chinese living outside of Chinatown, the former soldiers and sailors trying to hold down jobs and find a place to live, and the drinking culture that has been a constant in the city for over 150 years.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2969519-baghdad-by-the-bay

Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz

The tall buildings, both commercial and luxury, and the renovated old structures that gleam new cannot hide the other San Francisco where gentrification is more than a slogan for urban removal; it is a reality that affects every residential section of the city.

“Ongoing and advanced gentrification is most prevalent in San Francisco (18.5% of all tracts) and Alameda (11.1% of tracts) counties.”
https://www.urbandisplacement.org/maps/sf-bay-area-gentrification-and-displacement/

According to a Realtor.com report, the median rent for the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area rose by 12.1% year-over-year.

“The overall median rent (which includes all sizes of residential rental properties) rose to $2,970 in February 2022.”
https://www.bpfund.com/rent-prices-still-rising-2022/

But good news if you want to buy a house. Sort of.

“Redfin said the San Francisco median price is $1.488 million, a decline of more than 5% from November to December.”
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/median-san-francisco-home-price-down-recently-but-up-compared-to-last-year/

However, according to real estate analyst firm Redfin, the median price is up this year compared to last year.

I’m not going to dampen my mood about Baghdad by the Bay more than it already is by throwing out numbers about crime rates. You can research it yourself HERE.

Or the income gap. You can also research that yourself HERE.

Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz

Yes, I know that San Francisco is more than tourist landmarks. I would love to spend more time in San Francisco to see and learn more about what’s below the city’s surface, which gives me a special feeling every time I visit. We ride public transit as much as possible. It’s a great way to get another perspective on the city and its people. We walk a very walkable city. We ask the folks who live and work there about places to visit and eat at restaurants where the non-tourists eat. We’ve been to the Museum of Modern Art and de Young Museum. The Museum of the African Diaspora is on our agenda for our upcoming September trip. I have a long list of other places I want to visit. Castro. Ocean Beach (I ran a half-marathon through there once). Sunset District. Spend more time in the Mission District.

No matter how often I go to San Francisco, I know that it will be impossible to know and feel what a resident, especially a long-time one, feels and thinks about their city. They can show you around. Discuss the daily challenges of living in the city. Share the reasons why they stay and, for some, why they want to leave. It’s never going to be the same as living there yourself for more than a week. When I moved to southern California, I thought I knew a lot about Los Angeles and the state from watching television shows all those years I lived on the east coast. Damn, I was reality smacked when I arrived and discovered a difference between the tourist and resident versions.

Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz
Photo by Antonio Ruiz

I have also learned that if you visit a city enough times, you can almost feel what it’s like to be more than a casual visitor. The city becomes familiar in a way that makes you understand, respect it more, and treat the city and its residents as more than just a tourist destination. Take the time to see and feel the city below the surface. Read a local newspaper or media site. Watch the local TV news. Talk to people. You might be surprised at how much they want to share with you the city where they live, work, and love.

Texas

Hot. Temperatures over a hundred. For the entire week, I was in Texas. This is what I remember most from my recent week-long visit with my son, Antonio Nelson Ruiz, and his wife, Crystal, and their daughter, my granddaughter, Anabella, in Arlington, Texas. But while the heat was a daily reminder of where I was, there was more to my visit.

This was the longest I’ve ever stayed in the Lone Star state, and I came back home with some stereotypes shattered and others strengthened. Texas is more than the image of my youth, cowboys and injuns (No disrespect meant but I can’t count the number of times I heard this word). It’s the second-largest state, 268,596 square miles. 29.1 million residents. I traveled from Dallas to Arlington, between Fort Worth and Dallas and considered a suburb of both. I visited Fort Worth, traveled two hundred miles to Austin and back, and came home from Dallas Love Field. Easily six hundred miles. This is what I saw.

Highways for miles. The 20, 30, 187, 35, 287. Open spaces that were often interrupted by towns and cities. Truck stops and visitor centers. The southern cooking of The Breakfast Brothers (I loved their Catfish and Grits). Kroger’s. Terry Black’s BBQ in Austin (I did the Dallas one a few months ago). Buc-ee’s, described as a country store and gas station (warehouse-size huge). Austin is a city where it seemed you had to be under forty to live there (It’s a college, music, and tech town). You drive past billboards full of anti-Biden rhetoric and anti-abortion messages. Traffic jams of eighteen-wheelers and cars which, when set free, drive with no care eighty, ninety miles an hour (apparently, the speed limit is a suggestion in Texas). Kolaches in West, Texas. Kolaches are described as “Gooey fruit centers. Doughy, soft rolls.” According to thedaytripper.com, the town of West is the “kolache-kingdom of Texas — and it was officially dubbed Home of the Official Kolache by the Texas Legislature.” Damn, they are good.

$Texas$
Big Tex at the Texas State Fair (Photo by Ralph De La Cruz)
As the self-described “Live Music Capital of the World,” Austin reveres its musical icons and has statues of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan (above) and Willie Nelson (Photo by Ralph De La Cruz)
Hike and Bike trail along Lady Bird Johnson Lake with downtown Austin in the background (Photo by Ralph De La Cruz)
Lake Travis in Central Texas is one of six “Highland Lakes” formed by six dams on the Colorado River (Photo by Ralph De La Cruz)
South Padre Island “Starbase” (Photo by Ralph De La Cruz)
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to numerous world-class museums, such as the Nasher Sculpture Center (Photo by Ralph De La Cruz)

But one of the most exciting discoveries was Sascee’s Southern Style Eatery in Waco, Texas. I found it by accident in a neighborhood fully primed for gentrification. Their fried chicken was the bomb. But, their days may be numbered. Go two blocks, and you see the encroachment coming. If you’re in Waco, check them out. They were folk who welcomed you into their restaurant and treated you not as a stranger but as a long-lost friend—rushing to remind you that food is more than food. It is a greeting; a hand extended in friendship—a welcome home hug.

Buc-ee’s is a chain of country stores and gas stations (Photo by Antonio Ruiz)
A man walking his cattle- Fort Worth (Photo by Antonio Ruiz)
Stoking the fires at Terry Black’s Barbecue- Dallas (Photo by Antonio Ruiz)
Terry Black’s Barbecue- Austin (Photo by Antonio Nelson Ruiz

The whole point of my Texas travel was to spend time with my first born, Antonio, and his family, especially that granddaughter, Anabella, who has a very forceful personality for a five-year-old. They live in a middle-class neighborhood near the Arlington-Mansfield line with a wooded area and bike path two blocks away. It was a beautiful walk along the wooded trail in the morning and the evening with their two dogs. You got a sense of serenity with the only sounds that of birds and the occasional unrecognized animal sound (maybe coyotes). Yes, the traffic of the main drag, Matlock Road, was not far off, but for a moment, it reminded me of my quiet early morning walks in east Long Beach. There were the occasional co-walkers along the trail with their walking sticks and purpose. Even saw a bike rider now and then. These were folks just being, just like I saw in Dallas and Fort Worth and Waco and Austin.

The headlines coming out of Texas can sway a mind that everyone has lost their damn minds. But what I saw and heard on this trip and the one back in April were people going about their business. People who shared their hospitality like my son and his wife in Arlington and Maria and Ralph De La Cruz in Austin.

Grandpa with Anabella- Fort Worth (Photo by Antonio Nelson Ruiz)
Father and Son with Buc-ee, the mascot at Buc-ee’s (Photo by Antonio Ruiz)
Clockwise: Antonio Ruiz, Crystal Ruiz, Anabella Ruiz, Antonio Nelson Ruiz (Selfie by Antonio Nelson Ruiz)

The serenity of those open fields and the busyness of the highways and big cities showed me that Texas (at least the parts I experienced) is no different from any other state. It’s more diverse than you might think, in every sense of the word. Not everyone is a flaming redneck stereotype and MAGA cultist. People are trying to get through the day and night like everyone else. People remind you that the past is never really past, and the future is built on both the past and present. Trust me, they know the history of Texas, the bad and the good, and they are determined to build a future that recognizes that Texas belongs to more than the headlines that make them look like a bunch of secessionists. There is more good below the surface of those headlines. Despite the bravado of the slogan Don’t Mess with Texas, I met many more people who believed in Hug a Texan for a Good Time.

I’ll be back. There was so much I missed. From museums to national parks, Texas has plenty of surprises. I want some catfish and grits, fried chicken, and those Kolaches. But, let’s try it when the temperatures are not ninety plus. Please.

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