I had to put in a few extra hours on an editing job, so I got permission to work remotely, and on the weekend. Lucky! I decided to try out the new Santa Monica Library Pico Branch, behind the Saturday Farmers Market. Very nice, clean, new, with just a few too many noisy families in the children’s section. Still, lovely library.
So I decided to switch up and move to the Main Library, on Santa Monica Blvd and Fifth St. This is a very well-stocked library – Ellen uses it all the time – and I booked a study room.
Much quieter – wherever the children’s section is, it’s not around here, which is great. On the other hand, there is a definite funk…. the kind of smell, worse than an odor, not as bad as a miasma, which is common around those of no fixed abode. Men with bushy, yet non-ironic, beards, women with a fierce look and a number of bags, people who need a safe clean place to go.
I get that, and if the smell isn’t too bad, I don’t mind. I do kind of draw a line at personal grooming in the stacks. Someone applying spray sunblock, for instance, behind a wall of books.
One more thing – every few minutes there is a brief, 7 second, sound of a stream of liquid hitting a metal plate. No idea what it is… I thought at first what you’re thinking, but I don’t think it is someone peeing. For starters, it’s too regularly spaced and timed. For another, it’s audible everywhere, as if it is happening in the air ducts. I expect it is some kind of unexpected side-effect of HVAC.
Who knows.
All I can say is I’m grateful to be a member of the libraries of Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Beverly Hills, and Pasadena/Glendale. Not to mention, of course, New York, the last vestige of my being a New Yorker.
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