All Bets Are Off

Saturday morning

If I were a betting woman, I would have lost a big one this weekend. I never thought the City of Long Beach would actually pull off the re-opening of the National Blvd.beach restrooms right on schedule, in time for the Fourth of July weekend, as promised. Rarely have I been so glad to be wrong. What for years was an unsanitary cinder block necessity of last resort has morphed into a tiled mecca with 15 stalls, 4 sinks WITH SOAP, and 2 super-duper hot air hand driers. Yippee!

Our group, men and women alike, was giddy with delight. We kept trekking up the beach to revisit the new haven. Dermot declared that he would be packing a toothbrush the next day.

Sunday afternoon

Alas, no good deed goes unpunished. By this afternoon, our precious new refuge was displaying an ominous resemblance to its filthy forebear. An outsized roll of toilet paper, pilfered from a stall, was laying sodden on the edge of a sink. A wad of tissue was balled up on the floor underneath. A mother was washing her infant in one of the handsinks, and she gifted us her used bathroom tissue next to the faucet when she finished.

As a I stood surveying the scene in frank disbelief, I was momentarily gladdened to see an attendant with a broom and dustpan enter. In fact, I spoke to her to commiserate about the rapid state of disrepair unfolding before our eyes. But alas, after a few half-hearted swipes at some sand accumulated on the floor, she turned and left, leaving the restroom virtually untouched and unchanged by her presence.

I followed her outside to the maintenance truck and asked if she had seen the refuse in the room she had just departed, the one in which she had stood just seconds earlier, the one that she is employed to clean and maintain. Her answer was no. But she assured me that she'd be back later to clean it up. That was at 3:30. At 5:45, I stopped in on my way home to check. No surprises there - nothing had changed.

And I guess that's the bottom line. It's business as usual in Long Beach. It took an outside force (the upcoming Quiksilver Surf Competition) to deliver what the taxpayers had been asking for for years and years -- the simple dignity of a restroom fit for human occupation. And now that we have it, it looks like we may have to wait for Quiksilver to actually arrive in Long Beach to get the simple maintenance we need to keep the restroom in proper sanitary condition.

Or maybe we'll get lucky and I'll turn out to be wrong again. Lightening could strike twice, couldn't it?