There was a funky market in a California beach town. You could buy snacks, knick-knacks, a decent bottle of wine. In time they added a damn good meat market and fresh produce and odds and ends that met the vibe of people who had just stepped off the sand. In essence, this little corner establishment was a “gourmet market” thirty years before there was such a thing. Time marched on, things changed.

Not too long ago the little market that matched the little beach town closed entirely and most people probably thought, Well, that little market sucked anyway … but it wasn’t always that way. Once that little market was the beach, the essence of the beach town, the meaning of summer, the place where sandy feet slid across the floor, the place where you purchased memories, on the shelves the special ingredients needed to concoct the summer vacation.

But that was long ago and far away and the people who cared about a silly little market, the people that paid attention to details and sweated the little things, who knew that summer could be endless if there was a trippy market to go with the salt spray and cocoa butter, well, they died or moved on or sold out or got tired.

The store became an investment. Monetary gains became cultural losses. And now there is no market. Seeing the hollowed out old facade made me think … “Things were better before, in fact, I can’t think of even one example of something that’s better today than it used to be.”

It’s hard not to be nostalgic, but sentimentality aside, really, nothing’s better.

The beach isn’t better. You can’t smoke, you can’t park, you can’t ride your skateboard on the boardwalk. You can’t build a bonfire because ashes might fall on some rich fuckers property. Bathing suits are skimpier and that could be better, but men aren’t allowed to look at women anymore, so that kills that.

Football’s not better. In fact, they’re trying to eliminate the foot from football altogether. They just played the Pro Bowl without any tackling. During the course of any game, the referees are the guys that you see most often. There are a lot of one-handed catches and that’s fun but it’s only on account of all the players wearing futuristic sticky gloves. If the gloves catch the ball by themselves it’s not better.

Food’s not better, just more expensive because lots of people now think food is art. The things that used to be put on plates as a garnish are now the main course. Chefs go out and pick anything growing by the side of the road and then give it a French name and charge $27.50. Every restaurant is trying to put a new spin on old favorites … they take a pepperoni pizza and then top it with sixteen kinds of squash. People just scrape the fuckin’ zucchini off … it was better before.

Is beer better? No. The most consumed beers, and therefore the most popular beers in America are mass-produced, the ones your dad drank – and it’s not even close. Still, in California, walking into a restaurant or into most bars for that matter means being offered mostly trendy microbrews. Drinking is now a hipster pursuit, a science project. The names of those brews can often be quite creative but the taste, unfortunately, is very often a derivative of urine.

We all know music’s not better. I heard the song Nights in White Satin last night. There are no fuckin’ songs like Nights in White Satin anymore! No anthems, no songs that make you think, no songs that get better when you’re stoned. In the old millennium, there were tunes like Stairway to Heaven and Hotel California, in the new millennium all you got is Who Let the Dogs Out – Who Let the fuckin’ Dogs Out!

Baseball? Not better. TV? Not better. Church isn’t better because even though there’s wine now you have to drink it from the same cup as a bunch of old contagious people. Will things ever get better?

Of course, you can’t live in the past, but if it wasn’t for the indoor plumbing and air-conditioned vehicles, it would be worth a try.

Photo credit: Voxphoto on Visual hunt /CC BY-NC-ND