“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

– John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

We were in Monterey at the weekend. Down at Cannery Row (motto: “Yes, We Can”), where they pack souvenir shops in like, um, sardines, I sat and sketched since that day was also Drawing Day 2009. This gave me a contractual obligation to draw. Cannery Row (not in fact named after the actor Sean Cannery) was made particularly famous by John Steinbeck’s book about the place, that people pretend to know well when they go there even if it’s the first time they’ve ever heard of it (and to be fair, since bits of it are mentioned somewhere every few yards you feel like you’ve read the book, seen the movie and bought the fridge magnet). It’s funny how if a writer is associated with somewhere then they make sure to drum on about it as much as possible, like those pubs where Dickens/Twain/Kerouac etc drank (Dickens for one drank in every single pub in London, I’m surprised he was ever sober enough to actually get any writing done). Writers hold a special appeal to tourist boards. You never get areas devoted to, say, Joe Bloggs the stockbroker or someone.
The drawing to the right is of the beer garden of the Captain Bullwhacker’s pub (I think that was the name), which was heavily pirate galleon/British pub themed, and undoubtedly where Steinbeck once popped in to use the loo, maybe.

Also blogged at Urban Sketchers.