Shack-a-Delic

The dude sitting next to us has green hair. Like phosphorescent seaweed.

“How many bars did we go to last night?” he asks his buddy, whose head is resting on his arms on the table.

“Three,” says his buddy, not lifting his head.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“ ‘Cause I just remember two, man.”

“Yeah, well . . . I think we know why that is.”

And then they break up laughing, cradling their heads as if they were Humpty Dumptys with cracked shells.

“Ouch. Don’t make me laugh, man,” says the dude with green hair.

“I know, I know.”

Paige and Alex roll their eyes at each other, amused by the street theater being played out all around them. We are having breakfast late in the afternoon on a Friday. On Main Street in Huntington Beach. We are sitting outside at the Sugar Shack watching the jokers and the drunks, the surfers and the strollers, cruise on by as if we were spectators at a parade.

“I love just sitting here,” Paige says.

“I know,” says Alex, her eyes widening. “It’s a circus.”

“Exactly,” says Paige. Paige is 14. Alex is a year older. We have come to Huntington Beach in search of a surfboard for Paige. With Alex as her advisor. We are looking for an 8-footer with a nose that is neither too rounded nor too pointy. A board like Alex has. So that Paige and Alex, who play on the same high school water polo team, can surf together.

But first we’ve decided to have breakfast. In the afternoon. Because, as Paige says, the best time to have breakfast is at lunchtime.

It is a cold but calm afternoon. The sky is black and there is a feeling in the air that rain may fall at any moment. Yet everyone dining at the Sugar Shack wears sunglasses. Because sunglasses are to surfers what cell phones are to real estate agents and cars are to lawyers. They are the single most important signature item that a person who spends most of his life in T-shirts and board shorts can own. They are also probably the most expensive piece of clothing or clothing accessory a surfer wears. Ever.

So while everyone mopping up hash browns with sourdough toast or spooning up chili with extra cheese and onions is dressed pretty much the same, their sunglasses are as different as fingerprints. Some are flashy. Like Mr. Green Hair’s, with frames that are strawberry red with yellow lenses. Some are sleek, like his buddy’s, with chrome frames and slant-eye lenses that wrap around the sides of his head, making him look like Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly.” But they all say, “If you are to know me, know me by my shades.”

Our waitress comes out carrying omelets and breakfast burritos, gently scattering a flock of black pigeons fighting over cold fries recently abandoned. “Shoo, now,” she says, cutting through the middle of the birds. Some of them actually move over a foot or two. The others just look at her with their red eyes, cock their heads sideways and go on pecking at the spuds.

One of the other customers--an elderly man wearing a red and yellow Hawaiian shirt and a Stetson cowboy hat--chuckles at her half-hearted effort. “Honey, you’re too nice to them birds,” he says. “Now, that other waitress, she comes out here and give these birds hell. She throws her arms all over the place and gives them a good yelling.”

“I know,” says our waitress, “but what’s the point? They just come back in 30 seconds anyway.”

Just as our waitress puts down our food, a pigeon the size of a small raccoon drops down out of the sky onto our table. “Pu-leeze,” Paige says, staring at it, and the pigeon flies away. Our waitress sighs, shaking her head with resignation. As if she were a teacher watching the schoolyard bully again push a child to the ground. “They’re so obnoxious,” she says.

As she walks away, the clock tower across the street chimes the hour. Three o’clock. Then it begins playing a strange recorded glockenspiel version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Paige and Alex are amused by this lethargic street music. But no one else pays it any attention. I suppose if you hear a glockenspiel version of an old Judy Garland classic every day, you get used to it. I wonder if they play other songs at different hours. Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy.” John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Perhaps a glockenspiel version of an old Barbra Streisand classic like “Second Hand Rose.” And where do you get a recorded glockenspiel song from “The Wizard of Oz,” anyway?

As if on purpose, the minute the glockenspiel ends, a late model Mercedes comes slowly cruising by with two slumping teenage boys in it. Their windows are rolled down so we can better appreciate their music. They too sport hip sunglasses. But they are wearing silky shirts with very wide collars, like sea-gull wings, and thick gold chains. Worst of all, they are blaring Michael Jackson at us. Old Michael Jackson. Moonwalk, white glove, “Thriller” Michael Jackson.

“What are they thinking?” Paige says to Alex.

“They’re not really listening to Michael Jackson, are they?” says Alex.

“Yes!”

“Well, maybe it’s a joke.”

“I don’t think so. Look at them. They think they’re cool.”

“How funny.”

That’s when the Tommy Hilfiger blimp, in blue, red and white, floats by. I didn’t even know Tommy Hilfiger had a blimp. The girls watch the blimp pass by without making any comment. Nobody else even bothers to look up. As if a blue, red and white blimp drifting through a dark and stormy sky were as natural as, well, a bell tower chiming “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

It is getting colder by the minute. Paige and Alex, both in sweatshirts, are shivering. Most of the other diners have left. Which means the army of pigeons is focusing more and more on our idle plates. They are particularly interested in Alex’s leftover fries. They swoop down like hawks, awkwardly trying to snatch a cold potato stick and lift it up in the air, but their efforts are mostly futile.

“Why don’t you guys go look at boards while I pay the bill?” I tell them. “I’ll meet you at Jack’s.” I go inside the Sugar Shack and sit on a stool while the waitress totals up our meal.

“Did they scare you off?” the waitress asks.

“Who?”

“The pigeons.”

“Naw.”

There must be 10 or 15 birds out at our table, picking at our remains. The waitress stares at them as she gives me my change. “Most people hate them, but I just feel sorry for them, ya know?”

“Sure.”

I go back to the table to leave a tip. I say shoo and the birds scatter, lift off into the dark sky and circle like racehorses over Main Street. Before I have even crossed the street, they have returned. The waitress, watching me from inside the restaurant, sees me shake my head. She smiles at me and gives me a little wave before turning her back and going back to filling up the salt shakers. A few minutes later, it begins to rain.

David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.