Park It Anywhere

This past Saturday, I went with a friend up to Manhattan Beach, California to check out the 2010 International Surf Festival. We got there right before 8:30 in the morning. Needless to say, we got there when you could find plenty of parking spots. Later in the day, even finding a parking spot for your bike was quite the challenge.

For this annual event, it drew around an estimated 60,000 beach-goers. So many folks who live near this area rode their bikes, probably figuring it would be much easier to park a bike, instead of having to wake up hours earlier to park their car and pay the parking fees. As you can see, there was additional parking set aside for the bikes. You can barely make out the bike racks in the photo. After a while, it seems the "park it anywhere you could" philosophy set in. You can see bikes atop of other parked bikes in this photo.

For composing this photo, I wanted the utter confusion and sense of clutter. Not really hard to do, in this case. But, I also decided to leave a bit of open sand and also let the end of Manhattan Beach pier poke through, to just give a hint and sense of where you were at. People who are familiar will recognize the aquarium and cafe structure that is at the end of the pier and is shown in this photo. Finally, yes! There is a beach under all these bikes.