Beach in the Bottom?

Car horns. Squealing tires. Trunk shaking bass. Echoing voices in the street. The roar of a train barreling down the track with its ear rattling horn. It’s a hot Friday in early September and I am sitting on the outdoor patio at Bottom’s Up Pizza. And, in a rare moment of silence, I feel like I am dining on an oceanside deck. Strange? Sure. Maybe it’s just the rustic deck. Maybe it’s the smell of citronella. Maybe it’s just the heat. But I say if the lighting wasn’t just right, I wouldn’t be having this beachside dream.

The smell of...citronella

Yes, the metal tables and deck and heat…but to me, it was the lights . Those harsh metal pendants hanging down from the deck overhead - those lights scream fisherman. There truly was a moment when I could close my eyes, smell salt water and hear the waves crashing.

Those lights...

Look a little further and you will see blue lights mounted to the steel railroad trusses. The ocean it is not, but the reflected color helped create some sort of mirage, created that ocean feeling. And the multi-colored Christmas lights strung on the roof overhang only added to the ambiance. I felt like they were a beacon signaling to the boats passing by.

Anywhere else this lighting probably wouldn’t work. And maybe for anyone else, this lighting wouldn’t take them where it happened to take me. But for a few minutes, I wasn’t sitting in Richmond, Virginia on a wooden patio under train tracks looking at old warehouses, dirt and gravel. I was at the beach.