Playing Hooky : It’s Autumn--but the Beach Isn’t Out of Reach

I was meandering along Ocean Front Walk in Venice on Thursday, trying to figure out how some people steal a midweek day at the beach--especially a hot, autumn, cliche-of-a-Southern-California day.

Then, on the walkway near where Venice Boulevard dead-ends into the Pacific, I spied four teen-age girls from North Hollywood.

Hey, what about school?

“I’m the bad one,” said a 16-year-old from North Hollywood High School. “I was the one who first said, ‘C’mon, let’s ditch.’ ”

It was late October, she explained, the sky was baby blue, and temperatures were 90-plus. The weather is expected to stay warm through the weekend. But the beach-going foursome couldn’t wait for the weekend.

I approached Todd Pulvino, 28, an engineer from Culver City who said he was taking a day off from his job. He worked that out, he said, by telling a supervisor the night before that he wanted to relax a bit after coming home late from a business trip to Boston.

“The nice weather doesn’t hurt, either,” he said as he unloaded his 1-year-old daughter, Christa, from the back seat of his bicycle. He was with his mother, Carol Pulvino. The 53-year-old schoolteacher, visiting from Madison, Wis., marveled at the opportunity to wear short pants in the late fall.

Not everybody in Pulvino’s family made it to the beach.

“My wife is a financial analyst,” he said. “She had to go to the office at about (6:45 a.m.). I think she was calling me a lazy bum when she left.”

Then there were others snatching just an hour on the beach.

Barry Geier and co-worker James J. Burke, in shirts and ties, sat on the basketball court bleachers on Ocean Front Walk eating hot-link sandwiches.

“Being inside felt like being in a cave,” said Burke, a contracts specialist at a Culver City electronics company. “The weather and the cramped feeling made me want to get outside.”

Geier, whose tie remained snug around his collar, said: “I’ve been working in Culver City for about six years.

“This is the first time I’ve actually gone out and had lunch at the beach.”

Then there was Mike Blumenthal, a wholesale candy and tobacco distributor who didn’t have time to take lunch. Armed with a clipboard binder, stuffed with yellow invoice forms and accompanying carbon copies, he said he had a dozen stops to make at shops along the walkway.

His determined stride relaxed a bit when I asked if he ever took time off from his rounds to enjoy a balmy day.

“Well, I don’t think that I work any less if the weather is good,” he said, implying that he was no slacker. “Let’s just put it this way: If the day is nice, I walk a little slower.”

OK, OK, I thought, knowing that my time at the beach was just about up. Even though I knew I had to go back to the office, I walked a little slower too.