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
