Do birthdays matter? Not really. But they are, at the very least, an excuse to do something you might not usually do as a middle-aged father of two. On this most recent occasion, my birthday was a reason to drag an assortment of friendship flotsam across the Los Angeles coastline, working our way down through a selection of Southern California beach dive bars. (It also marks the second time I’ve used my assignments for Eater and Punch to rationalize, or maybe subsidize, a birthday bar crawl.)