New Year's at the Newport Pier

New Year’s Eve, ~2000. Newport Beach.

Todd and I were supposed to meet up with friends and Dave at an Irish pub in Newport Beach. We arrived early — both of us hoping, without much hope, to meet someone, and/or enjoy our Guinness. The others didn’t show up before midnight. We rang in the New Year without them.

I eventually took off on a walk to process the beer, ended up at the end of the Newport pier, and found a fisherman. The fisherman had chosen, out of all the possible ways to spend New Year’s Eve, to fish off the Newport pier. I found this deeply amusing and entirely correct. The man had a nice big fish swimming in a bucket. I picked up the fish and talked to it.