I guess the big "secret" is out. Jalama is a good place to get surf on the central coast. Wow! News flash! There are those out there who no doubt get very uptight just because I am actually putting the name in print, that I have the audacity of writing an article about the famed place. Whatever. As if this tiny weblog, this humble mode of expression could somehow, someway actually affect the number of people going to this beach. Please! This last Saturday was the supposed peak of the biggest south swell of the year. This Antarctic burst hit four foot at twenty seconds on buoys up and down the coast of California, on into Oregon and Washington, and was even noticeable on Canadian charts. There was a good amount of energy pouring into the southland, and believe me, people were ready. I am curious if this is how it has always been down here, since I have only lived in the Santa Barbara area for just over a year. Has surfing gotten more popular, or does Johnny's mom's niece's aunt's maid and her two twin sisters have longboards?

Waking up at 5 AM Friday morning, hoping to snag some early morning nuggets before heading off to work at 8, I made it to C Street in Ventura at 5:45 thinking to myself: "Finally, I will get to surf this place without a bunch of people in the water". Wrong! Boy was I wrong. I barely got the last free lot parking spot and there were already more than twenty vehicles waiting in line to get into the pay lot which opened at 6 AM. What the?! I raced into my suit and jogged down to the top of the point and paddled out in the dark with the seabirds rising and waking and causing a raucous. There were already ten guys in the water! I could not see anything, it was practically pitch dark, and I was already behind the eight ball. Bad fortune would have it that no discernable sets came in during the first twenty minutes I was out, by that time there were literally seventy five people crowding the top and middle of the point. By 7AM there were over one hundred and fifty people trying to get waves in an ocean that was dead flat for twenty minutes then a nice set of six to eight waves would come through, then silent again. Talk about infuriating. I can always snag one or two good waves in any crowd condition, but it's scratch, claw, bite, borrow, steal, arrrrggggh! It is the opposite of a peaceful communion with the ocean, that's for sure.

Jalama was even more bizarre in terms of crowds this past Saturday during the big south. I groaned at the 5 o'clock alarm and slept until eight, and arrived at the cliffs overlooking the turquoise waters at nine. The neon light on the way out the fourteen mile windy road that takes lives with regularity said: CAMPING: FULL - DAY USE: FULL. Thirty rigs illegally parked on the cliffs near the train tracks, with people carrying all sorts of equipment. Camping stoves, tents, tripods, coolers, logs, boards and board bags, backpacks, lunch sacks, extra clothes. I mean, was this Burning Man a la costa? Undiscouraged, I suited up and charged down the erosion path and jogged down the beach with my mouth agape. It looked like a carnival. There were hundreds of people on the beach and possibly that many in the water or getting in and out. Seven tripods set up. I mean it was head high and fun, but this was ridiculous. You could have taken a picture of the scene with a digital happy snapper, "photoshopped" in some banners and fake sponsor signs and claimed it was a Jalama Tour Contest. Something didn't feel right about this zoo of a scene. Maybe it's because I was used to going here ten years ago with friends who surfed, and back then it seemed desolate. A couple of cars on the cliff, a dash of surfers spread throughout the lineup, but nowhere near one hundred people. Maybe on a good day there would be a cluster at the top of Tarantulas. This was a scene out of Hossegor European Championships. Oh well, the wave machine was on, and I never sat on my board for more than a few seconds at a time. I got in, slashed down the line, carving blue lines on pure glass, and I got out. Ran back to my truck, peeled the green warning sticker off the back window of my truck and tried to pretend driving two hours to surf for two hours was a reasonable hobby.

ER Harris