San Pedro's Sunken City: an epic adventure

Sunday felt just like Summer, and I mean that in the most idealistic way. I wore a pastel confection, serendipidously purchased Saturday at my neighbor’s garage sale – for 50 cents. Only fate knew it would match the pastel graffiti of Sunken City.


In the 1930s, a sizeable portion of land located in the southernmost tip of San Pedro slipped into the ocean, and is now referred to as “Sunken City”, and serves as our urban Atlantis. It’s only accessible via a backwards crawl through a small opening underneath an iron fence. On such a sunny day, we wanted to relax near the water, so we traversed down the windy dirt trail, where we found that we had the ocean and rocks all to ourselves!






I wore an 80s cheetah bathing suit, which foreshadowed our later encounter with a mountain lion (or maybe it was a bobcat).




When other trespassers started down the trail to our spot, we decided it’d be best for us to make our way up the hill to view Sunken City. Besides, we had already relaxed for a few hours. The trek uphill was scarier than I remembered. I had to climb on all fours like primitive man, trying not to think about the drop below. When we made it to the top, I asked Pete “Didn’t you think that was really scary?” He was more intimidated by the mountain lion (or maybe it was a bobcat) he saw strolling just across the valley. The feral feline seemed so out of place, I was starting to feel that we were in a Harold & Kumar movie. He/she disappeared behind the rocks, and we deliberated for quite a while as to whether we should take the short way back to our car, which involved potentially running into a hungry mountain lion, or whether we should go back down the hill and up another steep and slippery trail. We opted for the shorter path, despite the potential life threat. But, of course, nothing could be done until we took some more photos. It’s a shame we weren’t able to get a picture of the mountain lion – I was too scared at the time, and Pete thought I was on top of the matter.


We looked down at our Sunken City, our hearts still racing from the day’s epic adventures, declaring in unison, “that was fun."



outfit: pastel scrunchy dress (garage sale), 80s pastel color block shoes (thrifted), pastel belt (taken from another dress).