Venice, California, is as good a place as any to stay young forever. The sun shines 11 months a year, the temperature never strays too far from perfect, and the famous (or infamous) boardwalk is home to more than its share of eccentrics, surfers, bikini-clad roller skaters, and body worshipers. Roy Walford, professor emeritus of pathology at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, would have to be considered one of the eccentrics, although he manages to stand out even among the denizens of Venice Beach.
Walford lives in a one-story, redbrick industrial building, one block from the beach. The windows are boarded over. The entrance is in back, off an alleyway, through a wrought-iron gate. Inside, Walford waits behind his desk with a shaved head and a dramatic Fu Manchu mustache of the kind more commonly seen adorning the members of outlaw motorcycle gangs than scientists.
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