The beach was a beach we shall not name, because his private house
was there, but it was a small sandy stretch somewhere along the hundreds
of miles of coastline that runs west from Los Angeles, which is
described in the new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
in one entry as "junky, wunky, lunky, stunky, and what's that other
word, and all kinds of bad stuff, woo," and in another, written only
hours later as "being like several thousand square miles of American
Express junk mail, but without the same sense of moral depth. Plus the
air is, for some reason, yellow."
The coastline runs west, and then turns north up to the misty bay of
San Francisco, which the Guide describes as a "good place to go. It's
very easy to believe that everyone you meet there is also a space
traveler. Starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying
'hi.' Until you've settled in and get the hang of the place it is best
to say 'no' to three questions out of any given four that anyone may ask
you, because there are some very strange things going on there, some of
which an unsuspecting alien could die of." The hundreds of curling miles
of cliffs and sand, palm trees, breakers and sunsets are described in
the Guide as "boffo. A good one."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
