Where Is The Weird?


If there's weirdness in Granada Hills, it's under deep cover.

I used to see occasional flashes of very mild weirdness here, but they seem to have disappeared. It's been a couple of years since I saw that duo of cyclists who regularly rode around on a penny-farthing and a unicycle together, and the lady who rode through the neighborhood on a chariot pulled by her Great Dane seems to have desisted as well. A family in my neighborhood has a school bus mounted on monster truck tires, but they never seem to parade it around as much as they rightfully should.

I think there's two major types of weirdness in the world: what I term "Type A" weird, the type that some wear on their sleeve (Look at how very weird I am: I drive an art car!), and then "Type B" weird, which is type that you have to scratch the surface to get to (I wear polos and Dockers but I've published 17 books on UFO's).

I respect both types of weirdos, but obviously, the A's are a lot easier to locate than the B's.

There's got to be weirdness in a town as old as Granada Hills. There's just got to. So why has it been forced into hiding?

I recently spent a weekend in Ventura, and the abundance of colorful oddballs there stood out to me as a stark contrast to Granada Hills' almost total lack of street characters. Sure, we've got homeless people just like everybody else, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about local color. Currently, we seem to have far less than our fair share.

I'm no different than anyone else -- weird people often make me feel uncomfortable. But I realize that I need that. A good dose of discomfort, something that shakes me out of my routine field of vision is healthy. It keeps me awake.

Are you weird? It's okay. Please, quit hiding. And quit thinking about leaving Granada Hills for Venice Beach. Because we need you. We really, really need you.

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