{"id":635,"date":"2018-07-22T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=69976"},"modified":"2018-07-22T09:00:30","modified_gmt":"2018-07-22T16:00:30","slug":"meet-the-woman-making-long-beach-a-bit-more-bubbly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/meet-the-woman-making-long-beach-a-bit-more-bubbly","title":{"rendered":"Meet the woman making Long Beach a bit more bubbly"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The bubbles spread happiness, you know… They have a brain of their own, a personality of their own\u2014and people see and feel that,” Victoria Renyafarje said, standing on Pine Avenue Pier as she dipped her pair of giant sticks tied together with circles of mini-ropes into a bucket of soapy water.<\/p>\n

Then, gently\u00a0lifting the handmade contraption, she masterfully moves them through the air. Victoria calls this “aligning the brains,” because according to her philosophy, bubbles have brains that can read her like we read one another.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“I can’t be out here when I’m sad,” she said. “The bubbles are my employees and if I come to the office not wanting to work, they don’t want to work either. Sometimes, the bubbles are the boss … No, no, the bubbles are always the boss.”<\/p>\n

Victoria is The Bubble Lady, known throughout DTLB by locals and visitors alike as someone who brings joy out of the simplest of things while also turning it into an art form. Victoria’s creations\u2014images in and of themselves\u2014create new images of Shoreline Village and the Pike, as bubbles float into an environment where they were never intended to be.<\/p>\n

The Peruvian native has created a ritual for\u00a0her art\u2014a ritual that is as spiritual as it is simple: When the morning comes, and she\u00a0decides to invade Shoreline Village with her elastic, shapeshifting creations,\u00a0 \u00a0Victoria\u00a0first creates her liquid formula. Soap, water, and love are combined as she creates test bubbles in her backyard before packing up, checking the weather, and heading to DTLB.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Upon arrival on the shore, she prays.<\/p>\n

“I ask God to put me in a good mood because my mood affects everything,” she said, shortly before crossing her facade in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

After that, she leaves it to the power she respects\u2014that of God and the bubbles. Wind affects everything: too much and she is unable to create even little bubbles let alone the biggies she obsesses over; too little wind and the same lack of bubbles deflates moods and hopes.<\/p>\n

But should the wind\u2014and of course, the bubbles\u2014be of choice standards, wondrous creations flow out of Victoria’s contraptions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“The big ones are the best,” she said, “but today, the wind… It doesn’t like us at the moment but I remember every big bubble because it was mine. I created it. And you can never forget your creations.”<\/p>\n

Neither do her onlookers: Children and adults alike stop and stand, almost catatonically, staring in wonder at the ephemeral bubbles passing by. Adults become so enraptured, they pay Victoria in dollars while children, if they haven’t spent their precious quarters, drop whatever change they have to honor the magic of bubbles. Weekdays, she can score upward of $50 and on busy weekends? Hundreds of dollars.<\/p>\n

“I don’t do it for the money,” Victoria said. “That’s an extra benefit but I don’t do it for the money; I do it to make myself happy, to make people happy.”<\/p>\n

Make no mistake, Long Beach: The Bubble Lady doesn’t just make us happy\u2014she outright understands life better than we could have imagined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victoria is The Bubble Lady, known throughout DTLB by locals and visitors alike as someone that brings enjoyment out of the simplest of things while also turning it into an art form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":66157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[356],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","tag-people-of-long-beach","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}