Journal from Richard Stone, July 28, 1927

The most damned thing of seeing New Somerset during the day is you see the textile mills along the river. I've talked to some avid birdwatchers travel eight hundred something kilometers just to capture vagrant flamingoes on rusty cameras. The crazy old men- barely acquiring tickets here, blowing leftover war money on a bunch of pink-feathered birds. But I didn't go off on them or anything. They seemed so damn giddy adjusting their cameras. So I turned away from the birdwatchers and descended into another kind of lunacy- Seaside Avenue. Place of cheese tasters, caffeine addicts, and Al Capone's wannabes. Yup, exactly what you're thinking- New Somerset wasn't the ordinary seaside town. If you drilled deep enough beneath the 15,000 populated town, you'll find a notorious bootlegger operation. And Seaside Avenue is the hub. If a Fed were to break in there, it would be the end of all speakeasies in Southern California. Like the core holding the card tower. Hell, it ain't easy to find it, I heard- easier to find a needle in a haystack the size of Mount Everest. You got to be sneaky like a drunk to get in there, and they ain't kidding- an ex-pilot named Charlie Baker in my poker club. Charlie doesn't like me to tell of his personal life, but to gloss it over he got invested in drinking shortly after a bitter divorce. He'd keep this outright creepy grin while he told his friends in the poker club, most of whom hadn't shared air with before. I was one of those people, and no other person fascinated me most than the damn old fool Charlie. The Volstead Act didn't shatter him; it only made him more determined. And a day after he won it all, he disappeared.