We were sitting at the furthest table at The Quiet Oyster, oysters on ice between us, the room doing that quiet, self-possessed thing it does when it’s full. A martini crowned with olives individually hand-stuffed with blue cheese and anchovy. A Negroni stirred deliberately with gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth, finished with an orange peel expressed just enough to wake up the bitterness.

Then the bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Sharp, clean, and praised for its green, flinty notes and depth. Textured and uncomplicated. I poured without asking. That mattered.

We ordered a dozen oysters. Bub’s & Grandma’s bread, butter. She reached for the lemon. I didn’t. This has
become a known difference.

It was the second restaurant I’d opened, housed in a fire station that had been vacant since the 1990s. Decades of quiet had settled into the walls, and the room carried that patience easily.

She lifted an oyster, looked at it for a second, then said it plainly, without warming up the sentence.

“You like to paint with a broad brush. You can’t make a blanket statement like suburban art is different from art in metropolitan areas.” A continued conversation from the car.

There it was. I smiled, mostly because she was right and we both knew it. “I do,” I said. “I just shouldn’t.” She smiled softly with slight funny irritating smirk and took a sip of her wine. “That’s lazy,” she said. “You like to put people in categories.” I swallowed an oyster, brinier than hers. “I’m talking about risk,” I said. “About what’s allowed to happen.” She shook her head, not dismissively, just patiently. “Art is art,” she said. “And half the stuff you’re talking about isn’t even that different.” We let that sit while the bread disappeared. But I ordered more bread. Because Bub’s and Grandma’s bread is the answer.

I brought up a gallery we frequent sometimes. It always comes up. She didn’t hesitate. “Ehh,” she said. “It reminds me of art in Pomona.” My eyes opened wide, like deer in headlights, totally in disbelief. “And all the nude women in the photos is “snore bore.” That one landed because I agreed. “It does become redundant. Although very different, the idea, pretending it’s transgressive.” “And honestly,” she said, “a lot of the work looks the same at that gallery.”

But lets remember, the body is one of the oldest tools in art. The question isn’t whether it’s there, it’s why it’s there. The same body once filled churches without apology, long before galleries learned to flinch. I mentioned the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s frescoes are filled with nude figures, prophets, angels, bodies.

But she wasn’t wrong. Most of it blurred together, point and shoot cameras, Kodak Gold, irony worn thin from overuse. Different artists, same visual sentence. Over and over again. But every generation of photographers has its thing.

There are exceptions,” I said. “Some photographers make photos that’s distinct. There’s history. Weight. Intention.” And to be fair, that particular gallery exhibits work that pushes beyond boundaries.

She gravitates toward the masters. Chuck Close especially—the discipline, the patience, the way the work earns its gravity over time. I love that too. I just tend to lean further forward, toward contemporary work, sometimes lowbrow, where things are still unsettled.

She agreed, but carefully, like she didn’t want that to become a loophole.

We ordered scallop tostadas next. Crisp, delicate, just enough heat to keep the conversation awake. Another bottle of white followed, colder than the first. The Trout collar followed by the Cod Sandwich.

“And yet,” I said, “I still appreciate what that gallery does.

She looked at me, waiting.

“They don’t hold back,” I said. “They let the work exist without apologizing for it. They don’t pre edit for comfort. That’s where I always get stuck.

It’s not that every gallery needs to shock. It’s not that everything needs to be out there. It’s that so many spaces, especially the smaller cities east of LA spaces start negotiating with the audience before the art even arrives. Anything that pushes the envelope gets hidden, even when it’s thoughtful. Risk gets diluted. Work that might breathe gets quietly smothered in advance. And for what it’s worth it’s not for shock value. It’s the reality of the artist and its culture. Out here in the burbs, galleries perpetuate the culture war by playing it safe, mistaking restraint for responsibility.

“I’m not saying all art should be the same,” I said. “I’m saying let it live. Let it irritate someone. Let it make someone uncomfortable. Let someone love it and someone else get angry. Art is supposed to make you feel something. It doesn’t all have to behave like a Hallmark card.

She took a sip of her wine.

“That’s art doing its job,” I added. “Not being agreed upon.”

She didn’t argue with that.

I brought up other galleries we spend time at on the west side. Imagine if they hid the work in a back office, tucked away where no one could see it. They’d be out of business within a year. So how do these art spaces expect to survive? Is it all just for show, or are they actually invested in the artists they claim to support?

I said what I’m usually not supposed to say out loud. A lot of these places aren’t really galleries at all. They’re frame shops with gallery space attached. That changes everything. When your business is selling frames, the art becomes an accessory, not the point. Photography “doesn’t sell” because it isn’t being treated like work that deserves to be sold. It’s being filtered through caution, through wall color, through what won’t upset the regulars. If photography truly didn’t sell, there wouldn’t be entire galleries on the west side of Los Angeles devoted to it. They wouldn’t survive. The difference isn’t the medium. It’s the willingness to stand behind it.

I asked her what artists had really emerged from the burbs lately. Not Instagram famous for a weekend, but artists with legs. There’s a massive opportunity out here to stop slapping a parental advisory label on everything, to stop sanding down the edges, and instead actually produce artists. Not safe work. Not polite work. Real work.

We ordered a half dozen more oysters because at some point the debate mattered less than staying. The conversation softened, looped back, drifted again. Artists we loved. Work we didn’t trust. Art that felt alive. Art that felt polite.

She glanced around the room, then back at me.

“This place,” she said. “You built it quiet on purpose.”

I nodded.

“See?” she said. “Not every restaurant has to be a club with music so loud you can’t have a conversation with the person in front of you. The 1990s was 35 years ago.

I smiled because she was right again.

“I paint with a broad brush when I get lazy,” I said. “When I slow down, I can see the difference too.”

She reached for her glass. We didn’t settle anything. We never do. And thats what’s beautiful.

Some conversations don’t need conclusions.

They just need oysters, good bread, a perfect bottle of wine, and enough trust to keep disagreeing without trying to win.

Julian Lucas is a darkroom photographer, writer, and a bookseller, though photography remains his primary language. He is the founder of Mirrored Society Book Shop, publisher of The Pomonan, and creator of Book-Store and PPABF. And yes he will charge you 2.5 Million for event photography.

The first thing that should be known is that I wasn’t supposed to be in the dining room that night. Executive chefs don’t get to glide through their own openings like guests who wandered in off the street, we’re supposed to be in the back, sweating, barking at the station chefs about ticket times, and pretending we don’t hear every whispered opinion drifting in from the front of house. But the room was glowing, and I wanted to see it breathe on its own.

It was opening night at Ristorante Panorama, a round room built for light, for watching, for being watched.

The lighting was too good, superb.
That warm, amber wash that makes everyone look like they had taken a bath in photoshop, pretty much they looked more interesting than they actually were. I wanted to see the space breathing on its own.

Panorama Ristorante lived inside what used to be the old Tate Cadillac building on Holt Ave, a dreamy mid-century curve of glass and concrete structure that caught light the way some people catch attention, effortlessly.

And that’s when she walked in.

Not alone, she arrived with our mutual friend I hadn’t seen in 6 years, the one I’ve known for twenty-five years but who somehow managed to keep entire universes of his people away from me. He never mixed his circles. He’d hide his friends like precious artifacts. She was apparently one of the hidden ones.

I’d heard about her and her boyfriend 25 years ago.
She’d heard about me for the same time frame.
But timing is a petty tyrant, and it never lined us up until that night.

She stood just inside the doorway, catching the glow. Glasses that made her look like the well read one in every room. Hair falling in that effortless way that’s probably not effortless at all. A plaid scarf soft enough to suggest she actually cares about comfort but has taste. And that expression, interested, intelligent, like she was auditing the room before deciding whether to participate.

We were introduced and exchanged polite smiles. Civilized. Respectful. I was also introduced to her boyfriend from twenty-five years ago, and honestly, I didn’t think anything of it. I made some comments about my interpretation of the food menu and the wine list. When he drifted off, she stayed and we kept talking, easy, natural. But then he came back, cutting the moment short, and she turned to walk away. Halfway through the turn, she glanced back. A subtle double take. Barely a pause, but enough to register in that part of the brain that notices things it has no business noticing.

It wasn’t dramatic, but it was just enough. And “just enough” is usually where real stories begin.

A week later, we ran into each other at a favorite restaurant of mine. She walked up and talked to me like we weren’t two people who had dodged each other’s existence for two and a half decades. The conversation was short, but the energy was different. More open. More intentional. The kind of moment that makes you suspicious of coincidence.

Weeks passed. Real life did its boring real-life thing, work, deadlines, other people’s noise, until one day Instagram decided it was tired of watching and stepped in. A comment. A reply.

We just started enjoying each other’s company, quietly, and very consistently. We went to art exhibitions, lingering longer than necessary because neither of us seemed in a rush to go home. We tried new restaurants, the kind you don’t tell people about because you want to keep them yours for a little while. It wasn’t romance, not officially. It was just two people doing what they naturally gravitated toward, art, food, and the kind of conversation that stretches out without permission.

And then we traveled.

Not by car, she hates road trips. The idea of being trapped in a vehicle for five hours makes her want to file a complaint. So our relationship formed in airports instead, which is honestly much more cinematic. There’s something about watching a person navigate TSA with grace that tells you they’re built for partnership.

We flew to places that didn’t care who we were. Ate in restaurants where chefs plated food like religious offerings. We didn't stay out later than college kids at a 10 kegger frat house party with no responsibilities, we were mature enough to go home and watch a movie until I fell asleep from the single glass of suav blanc I sipped.

Then there was the trip where everything went sideways, delays, lost reservations, rain that came out of nowhere like a prank. We ended up in a tiny bistro, laughing so hard the waiters were probably relieved when we left. That’s when I learned, compatibility isn’t measured in perfect evenings. It’s measured in the disasters you can talk through. You can learn from. Its beautiful.

Traveling with someone is one thing. Coming home with them is another. That’s where the quirks start revealing themselves.

Like socks.

She’d walk in from work, drop her bag, and then fling her socks across the room with the casual accuracy of someone who was once an Olympian in a past life. Wherever they landed, they landed. Near the fireplace, under the chair. It wasn’t performance art, it was tired from a days work.

Then there was the yogurt for dinner thing. A cup of yogurt, sometimes with granola, sometimes not. She’d eat it cross-legged like she was participating in a minimalist cooking show where the whole point was not cooking anything at all. Strangely, these were the nights I felt most close to her. Or sometimes it was steamed broccoli with rice. It was always something healthy for dinner.

You think you know what love is when it starts, the chemistry, timing, sparks, all the feelings. But you don’t really understand it until the dust settles, until you watch a person move through your space like they belong there.

It wasn’t a grand confession that told me what we were becoming. It was the morning half asleep. The late night conversations that wandered. The quiet car rides where silence felt like companionship instead of distance. Her leaning her head against my shoulder during a rerun. The first, second, and third disagreements.

And yes, it was that first night too. The opening. The double take. The moment she looked back and didn’t realize I’d caught it. That’s where the whole thing began.

People ask how we met, and I could give the long version, the flights, the art, Mohawk Bend, the socks, the yogurt, but the truth is simple.

She looked back.
I saw her.
And nothing was the same after that.

You Like to Paint with a Broad Brush

Yogurt for Dinner