Brad and Genoa
Brad Dickson 31 “Sometimes people cancell reservatioons with wild excuses. ‘I can’t find my cat. He ran away.'”
Genoa Dickson 27 “It doesn’t matter if you wait or not, sex gets boring eventually. Make sure you really love the person you’re with.”
Native San Diegans, both, Brad and Genoa married last August, after four years a’courtin’. They met on the sandy beach in front of the hotel they bought as a fixer upper a few years later. They run the hotel together and live down the street.
The Ocean Beach Motel looks out onto the San Diego peir, and brown waves are crashing into the pilings out there, the water stirred up and dirty from this swirling storm front that hangs just off the coast. More rain than anyone can remember, but I’m a few blocks away, nice and dry on the second floor of Brad and Genoa’s, with a warm fire burning and two plates of fancy italian style hors de voures to snack on. We are drinking red wine from giant glasses that get my whole nose down in and we step out onto the balcony. Brad and Genoa are not artists. They are hard working and business minded, on the whole.
Genoa tells me, “Sometimes my husband and I talk abou the meaning of life, why we are working so hard. I’m 27, haven’t hit a bar in years, why aren’t we artists, out having fun?”
She talks about her younger brother being the artist, always taking off on a trip, not preparing for his future, which worries her. “I’m the business side, a math major, which is rare for a girl. I was like, one of two women in my classes.”
I am on my second glass of wine, so we are talking pretty philosophically all of a sudden. I begin a soliloquy.
“That’s the sad thing about our culture: we tell people to pursue their specialty, instead of trying to find a balance, or explore their weaknesses.” I may have a buzz, but that’s the truth. I was a business major, and worked in the corporate world. There was not a lot of encouragement in those worlds for “art”. One of the biggest unspoken divides is between art and business. We tend to start lining up at an early age, with future econmists looking down on artists as crazy and frivilous, while artists look at the business world sadly, wishing they could have a little money to buy some dinner and a new paintbrush.
Genoa was definitly a little hesitant about this whole process, she told me. It is Brad who called, when she gave him the Crate and Barrel catalogue to look through. It was part of their Wedding Registry! He was the 32nd person to call me, actually. I like that there is some resistance to this project. Not everyone understands what conceptual art is, and a lot of people who do understand it still think it is stupid. I really hope this changes Genoas mind about what art is, because I obviously think it is very important that people have a chance to release their wild ideas.
If joseph Buoys was right about everyone being an artist, then it is only a few who get paid for it. Wouldn’t it be nice if she could look at the work she has done on the hotel and see it as art? She hand picked all the mirrors in the bathrooms. That is an artistic statement. When she can be a bit of an artist, that allows her brother to become a bit of a business man. When people understand where the other is coming from, they are closer.
You might think I am still feeling the philosophical effects of red wine, with all that talk. So let’s get down to dinner. Brad was a cook for a lot of years before buying the Ocean Beach Hotel. He had a panini sandwhich maker, which is basically a waffle-iron type of machine that heats up a sandwhich and puts fun little corn rows across the bread. Here’s how he got started.
“I sear the chicken breasts, then bake it at 350 in a pan with olive oil, garlic, and salt and pepper. If the crowd gets talking like we did, hold it at 200 degrees. It won’t do anything at that temp. I sliced vedallia onions paper thin, dipped them in flour and fried em. Get these together with your chicken, then cut a foccachia loaf across, so it is in two thin pieces like a pan. Coat the insides with olive oil, then lay your ingredients on the already cooked side, so the grill can cook the soft centers that are on the outside now. Oh, don’t forget to add a little provalone and roasted red peppers, hand torn basil, endives… then you let the grill do the rest.”
They were delicious, and the foccachia has such a great texture in your mouth, with the toasted ridges from the grill. A green salad with pecans and golden raisons almost left no room for the cappachino mousse for desert. By then it was midnight, and we parted ways, agreeing to meet Brad in the afternoon for a tour of the Ocean Beach Hotel and a ride in his 1949 DeSoto down the strip.
Filed under 002 National Dinner Tour, intss blog by on Feb 22nd, 2005.
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