SO CAL SURFING: Stranded In A Sea of Surfers
Back to the passion that drives me: wave hunting, catching and riding! Finding the right spot and right time to get into this passion can be an unnerving task in southern California. There are more surfers here than black people! How is that even possible? I guess I should know, having grown up in Marin County a place with not so dissimilar a demographic breakdown than Santa Barbara. But at least WE had Marin City, a real-life black ghetto filled with displaced Bay Area black folks who could only afford to live in the massive, Bronx-style subsidized pink housing projects. SB has the West Side. Not really a comparison considering that Marin City produced Tupac Shakur. The best that West Side can boast is some Latino gangster/surfers. By the way, a great article appeared in the Santa Barbara Independent about bringing together rival gangsters in the area through a love of surfing. They could put down their hand guns for surfboard "guns" (a term used to refer to a specific shape of surfboard) — in other words, a bad pun on my part. It makes me wonder, could I just roll into Hunter's Point with a broken-down diesel van and some soft-top surfboards and motivate the gnarly San Francisco gangsters to put down their weapons for a moment in order to surf in peace. Nahhh.
Where was I? Oh yes, trying to find waves in So Cal. Well, I found them this particular day. I was even patient enough to actually walk onto the beach and snap a few shots before hurrying into my wetsuit and paddling out. The Strand. Saturday. November. 75 degrees. Bright sunshine. Dogs running. Girls bikining. What? People in North Dakota up in the mountains must be furrowing their brows big time! Ah, but my brow was furrowed as well, can you guess why? Yes the same old story for this jaded, whiny surf critic who drops in on one knee — it was too crowded! A downright dangerous scene if you ask me. The good waves, which were scarce enough without having to claw, scratch, hold, and steal your way into them, there was a gully full of boards and people to Dodge.
The Strand is one of the most exposed beaches in the area so plenty of the swell was slipping in to form nice barrels and glassy walls for carving. Buoys were reading 6 foot at 11 seconds, not a long enough period, but at least there was juice. Despite a humongous hole in the back of my wetsuit letting in gallons of water on each duck dive, I never got cold the entire session. Warm channel waters equals gross polluted channel waters. Earplug mandatory at this spot, and I try to keep my mouth shut as much as possible. Please no E- Coli for me?! The horror stories are endless around the harbor areas of southern California, many people getting sick, many people get serious infections. Why keep plunging into the corroded Pacific with hundreds of other people all fighting for the same thing that there is never enough of?
Good question. Sliding, riding and gliding down faces of the ocean. HMMM. I'll think about it and tell you later, but right now I have to go paddle out before sunset.
ER Harris
~admin
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said on
Your recent entry about SoCal? I think you meant Santa Barbara, no. L.A. Metro has more people of a brown/black skin color than of the pink milky ochre skins of us Europeans, me pure Scots/Irish with at last count 43 skin cancers. I grew up in that L>A>, spen years at the beach shooting the pier at Huntington, south to Sand and Sea ? motel where me and my posse would stay, in Lojolla…I was the color of a bright pink Flamingo most of the time. Used vinegar baths to quell the burning…my skin must have peeled at least 4 times a year for about 10 years. Now at 65 they are whacking and freezing all those carcinomas at the rate of about 1 a month. Two surgeries in last three months.
What’s this about anyway you might ask, well 1) skin color, how fortunate are those with some pigmented hues other than the kind I have. In other ways, of course, we know the story once again, look at NEW ORLEANS!!!! How soon we forget, while Bush trying on his impression of Ronnie trying on his impression of the Duke, and papa Bush saying, my god how did this idiot get to be president, and then relected…for heaven’s sake I couldn’t even win twice and I was a good student and spent decades in government before running…so what are we talking about now, SKIN CANCER the highest rising cause of death among all cancers, Australian’s, except for those beautiful blonde, blue-black Native peoples. There is a hole in the ozone wright over the whole Country and those of the lighter hue are- you guessed it- Scots/Irish…so we know in another century if the thing holds together, there will be basically one skin color, a kind of reflective reddish/brown, with more on the darker end of this hue. This was told to me by an Indonesian mystic when I visited there in 1973. He cahain smoked Krakatoya Kreteks, the clove flavored black tobacco, and drank 100%pure cocacola, about two six packs a day. He said it had nothing to do with cancer, cancer was caused by a spiritual imbalance in the energy field of individuals, ie, those who have the karma to get lung cancer will do so whether they smoke or not.
I better say thanks for the memories, those Marin City families go back generations and are really cool to get to know. Also the great Bola Sette ? lived in Marin City, a brilliant Brazilian musician, and Charles Mingus lived there too, as well as many great side men for the jazz stars that floated through SF in the 40′s and 50′s and into today. Quite an island unto itself.
Great idea about Gangsta Surfers…made me laugh out loud lol, then thought what a cool idea, let’s do it. The darker hued brothers and sisters are all playing golf now, well not all, but you know what I mean…
Onward, write more and more and more
latif the poet