CALIFORNIA LOVE :: POKER & LOVE - This is America

I wrote a story of my encounter with JOHN STRONG for PokerFirma.com (in German) during my recent trip to California.

There is an English version below. Enjoy the ride/read!

ENGLISH VERSION

​CALIFORNIA LOVE :: POKER & LOVE - This is America

In our age of digital high-speed cravings, we produce, share, accumulate loads of data. Fluffy dog content on social media, messaging services, gaming apps, poker hand histories … No matter what you’re into, it’s often about piling up digital stuff. But who has the time to digest all this?

What is all data in the world worth if there is no interpretation made of it? What is a poker history database worth if it’s never reviewed? What is a profile picture worth if it’s never viewed? What is a story worth if it’s never heard?

I met John in one of California’s most iconic locations: Venice Beach. I was spending a day on the beach while I was in town for the WSOP-C finals at The Commerce where Jessica Vierling shipped the Main Event. After spending days with poker players, John was exactly who I needed and precisely the kind of inspiring encounter you would expect to have in this highly gentrified special dimension right on the edge between eternal rest and bliss for the rich and beautiful face to face with perpetual damnation for the homeless and drug addicts. The rich get very rich here and the poor struggle big time. More than when I last visited in 2016.

I don’t think John is a local millionaire but you never know in these streets… :-) He is also not a bump for sure. He came from Ohio to California seven years ago and tries to make a living off writing scripts, screenplays, doing voiceovers… the classic Los Angeles film industry stuff.

He’s chilling sitting in the warm sand on the edge of the Venice Beach boardwalk with his shoes kicked off on that cloudy afternoon. Set up next to him, is a table with an old typewriter - not a tablet, not a laptop - a typewriter. Next to it, a few sheets of used Bank of America documents he uses the blank backside for typing his stories and there is a card board sign that reads: GIVE ME A THEME AND I’LL WRITE YOU A PAGE FROM THE STORMY EDGE ETERNITY

As we pass by, this friendly guy shouts from his sand couch and offers to write us a page. My girlfriend suggested the theme: POKER & LOVE. He smiled and immediately stood up in order to get to work at his improvised office desk. This is how I met John Strong.

And this is what he wrote (in less than 5 eye-opening minutes):

People often asked me write about love. And I always tell them immediately - you NEVER ask a poet about love. But I still forged a page anyway because it was my responsibility. But she was crafty. She Wass a post herself, and she mixed it with something yet called POKER. The cards always confused me, they are as foreign as most other societal mechanism where to me. But POKER … What was more mythological and conceptual and human and American than that? It was numbers and money. But it was also spliced with the flaws of humanity. It got people into trouble, it won a few others great fortunes and blessed some others with luck, and it was a profession as much as it was a game. Some guys were rockstars because of their talents. And it always forced them to play characters and pretend. It was an art as much as it was a job. It was a joke as much as its was serious. And just like LOVE, it made some men lose limbs. There were legends in the songs like House of the Rising Sun in which we still sang where men lost their children and wives to the sin of gambling in areas like NEW ORLEANS or VEGAS. And although LOVE was a simple word - so was POKER. But the dimension that funnelled beneath the speak of their language, was complex and infinite as a nebula that flickered above the SANTA MONICA ranges where you were high enough to be away from smog and desperate actors looking for gigs. But when I went up there to be away from the fire of the city, there were still the things like love and poker that were as sacred and true and helpful and big as they were painful and tragic. They were two things that have been there for a long time and they will remain after the storms of these fingers on the keys. And they are the two things that make stories of which without humanity makes less sense. So wee take math and the human soul and we have geometry and poetry and like love and poker they tangle and get lost and clash and fight but come back to make sense and bring back to life the damned and the weird and the human. Because it’s always two different things that develop something new and that lasts forever. Just like my parents - I had no idea how they ever clashed and made me and my brother - butt now because of their vast differences, there was poetry after after they were gone, and it’s my responsibility to develop a game like stories and screenplays to make sense of their love - much like POKER exists in the world alongside the difference of LOVE, which after my shattered relationships, has revealed itself also be a game. Love as much as you can. But play smart - just like the gambler who is always one mistake from losing it all. And just like the ones we love - who are always one moment away from vanishing forever.


- JOHN STRONG
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John has reminded me that the greatest story ever told has no real value if nobody hears it. Digital media and writing is a huge struggle these days. Not the writing as such but the distribution of the right content to the right place at the right moment for the right people is a pain in the neck. This guy: sits in the sand, chats to random passing people, no website, no plugins, no server crashes, no e-mail marketing… yet, he creates a story out of one single theme and magically manifests an audience at the same time. I’m so jealous right now :-D

We shot a friendly selfie with one of my instant print cameras and John ran it through his typewriter to leave a souvenir note saying: THIS IS AMERICA. This is indeed America, a place where anything can happen and anyone can be - for better occasionally and for the worse sometimes too. These encounters are the greatest value I take away from my poker trips.

Our Poker stories are told every week in all various sections of our websites and it’s very nice to see in our analytical reports that we have plenty of loyal readers. Thank you all for that! And thank you PokerFirma for supporting my photo journeys. And thanks, John, for the great discussions.

Photos of my trip to California

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4