Vintage Caravan Magazine Issue 36 | Page 10

Feature Trailer Going Back to Cali WORDS & PHOTOS CARLEY BEIMEL My name is Carley Beimel, I’m 31 years old and I live in the South Bay of Los Angeles, California. My husband Joe Beimel is forty and just retired as a thirteen-year Major League baseball player. We are the owners of Coastal Cocktails, featuring our Woody Caravan bar: Cali. We’ve rented in Southern California for ten years during the off seasons of baseball after discovering Playa Del Rey when Joe played with the Dodgers. We have been blessed enough to experience living in Playa Del Rey, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and currently Redondo Beach, which are all directly south of LAX airport. Aside from moving locally here in California, between both Joe and I we have moved 78 times in our lifetime. I love that our mobile life is now colliding with the mobile lifestyle of caravans/ trailers. I grew up similar to an army brat with my father working in the Casino Industry. I spent the first four years of my life in the Bahamas, then Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Las Vegas, Nevada, and parts of Southern New Jersey, including the Atlantic City area. After graduating high school, I packed an overnight bag and drove from Southern New Jersey to New York City, not realizing that would be the day I’d move out of my house and make New York a temporary home. I was able to convince someone to give me the chance to waitress at a high end, VIP bottle service night club called Aer, which catered to some of the biggest actors, musicians, models and athletes in the industry. I later met my husband while splitting time working in New York in the summer and Miami during the winter months and spent the next ten years as the wife of a baseball player, a life that is far more demanding than people may realize with a schedule of at least 162 games a year. We moved on average five times a year, relocating to places like Washington D.C., Denver, 8 | vintagetrailermagazine