22nd September
Lighthouse Avenue
Monterey Bay.

After filming, we sit in Barbara’s small café/takeaway next to the Bull Dog British Pub on Lighthouse Avenue. She talks about Monterey, how it consisted of 6-7 canneries, sited to exploit the Sardine shoals off the coast. Talks about how waste was dumped straight back into the Bay & could be smelt as far as Salinas, over the headland. At that time the town was rough & didn’t really develop beyond the Sardine canning industry until the collapse of the shoals from the late 1940s onwards, caused by overfishing [the shoals have only recently begun to return]. Steinbeck made Monterey famous when he wrote Cannery Row, a book that effectively documented a vanishing industry & set of social relations. Read More »