"She's SURFING!"
I’ll admit to you, here and now, that I’ve toed the line of good taste my entire surf journalism career. And by “toed” I mean both feet over that line dancing an ungainly jig. Oh the list of my transgressions is too long to detail here but a quick Google search will deliver many choice nibbles and by “choice” I mean rancid.
But, in all my years, I have never, and I mean never, been in more trouble than I have for poking very light fun of the uncommon cold.
This Coronavirus.
Furious people swinging in on social media, comments, emails demanding retractions for writing the disease “may cause many bad sniffles,” insisting that I stop putting the entire world in direct deadly danger.
And maybe these furious people are right. Maybe this is the worst disease since The Jersey Shore but still… should surfers be tattling on other surfers for refusing to practice social distancing?
Beaches are closed in Bondi, Indonesia and now San Diego, California because surfers tattled.
Tattled en masse.
Tattled via social media, comments, emails and in person.
Instagram is too full of surfers posting pictures of other surfers sitting near-ish each other in the lineup, of beaches half crowded with people sucking up once healthy vitamin D, featuring captions like “We need to talk.” And “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Too many surfers to detail here but we need to talk and can’t have nice things because we dared go surfing?
Dared go to the beach?
Other surfer fingers pointed in sneering, paternal derision?
Wild.
And maybe every single person outside right now is a selfish super spreader killing the rest of humanity but should surfers be the ones tattling on them?
Even in these apocalyptic times don’t snitches still get stitches?
Or is this a very savvy play, clearing the lineup to true zero?
I rode my bike past Swamis today and, while the waves were shit, not one surfer was in the water. Rumors of $1000 dollar fines for surfers who dared paddled Solana apparently floating slightly north.
I’ve never seen that in the decade I’ve called North County home.
Absolutely wild.
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Used to crack me up….there weren’t any sports teams to root for? I went there umm 74-77? I think….sheesh time flies. I did love going to sands, some fun shelf barrels there. And IV beach break when everywhere else was a mess. Fun times yes.
Inquiring minds want to know!
Haha
I’ll pay that
The only way that song was could be anymore laid back would be for the film clip to be a long shot of a sun lounge under a palm tree. Nothing else.
Anti. – oppressive
Much we can unpack here… much to debate with points for each side of the debate… but as one of the proud/embarrassed/self-loathing Jersey Shore locals here… Chas… I must say and never it thought it possible… but at this point and especially as the numbers of positive cases climbs in Monmouth/Ocean Counties, I do believe, finally here at the Jersey Shore, we have been blindsided by a disease far worse than that show…
It was unfair of me to leave out that Beachgrit commenters are indeed more clever and intelligent to read than almost any other comment section anywhere, at least if you are a surfer. That includes the Trumpers. In fact, the rapier wits deployed here make one tremble at the prospect of engagement. But the popups still suck.
You don’t get to say farewell then keep coming back with more comments.
yeah, agreed. The Spanish Flu didnt affect old folks, as much as younger ones . 50% of deaths were 20-40 year olds. People over 65 had very low death rate, as they had probably caught a version of it when they were younger. Old herd immunity.
Maybe best to catch the Corona now!!
I think the main reason for the distancing, is to “flatten the curve” so everyone isn’t all sick at the same time, since we all have zero resistance now, and not a very robust hospital system for the super sick. Otherwise health care system crashes, and regular death rate…accidents, crashes, gun deaths would skyrocket….(edit to add: suicide rate will probably spike this year…thats kind of depressing and sad.)
I “heard” (NPR?) that already there are docs and nurses who got sick (ish) and recovered and can go to work without worrying about it anymore. Lots of overtime there!
The only lesson I can see out of this whole mess is that its a good practice run, (despite totally fucking the economy.) for when some virus emerges from “somewhere” with a high mortality rate, like 10%? Or higher?
Somewhat overdue, too many of one kind of species in one place often leads to population crashes. Learnted that back in 1978 UCSB env st. haha!
Catch some waves for us LGR!
I couldn’t wrap my head around how a virus could know how old someone is. But the old folks catching a different version years prior is the most logical thing I’ve heard.
I aint no doc but everytime you get sick with a cold or virus, you now have immunity to that particular germ. Hence the troubles with “novel” ones, very few if any people have immunity, so they flash through a population pretty quick.
Back when I was surfing rincon all winter, in the 1400’s haha…seems like it we never stayed out of the dirty creek water…(where everything possible from the streets ends up….Loogies? Barf? Shit?…you name it)..anyways, I always thought maybe it was a good thing, getting semi-sick all the time, you know, build up the resistance. I dont think it works that way, but clean salt water is good for flushing out the nasal cavities. Always used to come out bending over to eat at the dinner table though. Gleek!! (thats what we called it)
Started surfing in 99. I got sick constantly for the first four years, since then I haven’t been sick one time. I have A Military grade immune system now. Hopefully it helps with this one. Gleeking during sex is my thing. All of a sudden a waterfall hits her chest. Always a good time
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for the people who consistently got all their predictions about this virus wrong to shut the fuck up.
Bowls is a tremendous wave for a longboard even at size. Looked insane on the cam yesterday.
Herd immunity sounds great if you’re not one of the 200 million that die!
Chas, your book was amusing. You are a clever wordsmith, even as your limited toolkit of verbal tics and tropes wear thin over so many arch “shark” stores and other vacuous surf culture kitsch. Showing zero humility after your absurd “surfing the pandemic” stunt where you risked the health of your own daughter to pimp her in lame Kardashianesque gangster outfits, you keep riffing on the same dead-flat joke, as the house stares down at their empty drinks in embarrassment on your behalf.
Morally you are completely empty, or worse, pretending to be, and this is compounded by pretending to be even stupider than I suspect you are .
Effective Irony is always contextual, Chas . Yours is pure affectation – a pose- and so even by your own lights a complete failure. Because only a total fuckwit would think any of it is funny. As for the Trump-loving low-information morons here who think this pandemic is a hoax, and think it is funny that I have physician friends and relatives risking their lives in it, you can all choke on your own moral rot even if not your own pulmonary edema.
Farewell to this piece of shit website. I’ll miss Jen (who can actually write with sincerity and wit at the same time) but not the absolutely maddening popups…. Worse than fucking daily mail.
We all going to die
Where’s that?
Germany?
My money is on rogermexico is Jen alias.
I used to think like that
But now he’s my American idol.
Ok ok ok but, before you go, does it not worry you in the slightest the ease with which Americans pitched their civil liberties?
Kudos, Chas. You have much thicker skin than I do.
I used to be a doctrinaire libertarian, until I got older and realized its just one more incoherent ideology that doesn’t hold up in the real world. Nature is red in tooth and claw. It’s beautiful but it’s also trying hard to kill us. Anarcho-capitalism in real life just looks like a narco-state. With this many monkeys on the rock, there has to be some political structure with authority to organize society. It can be democratic and responsive, but it can’t be nonexistent or ignored.
Humans have the ability to reason and, voluntarily, act with collective purpose. Acting in our mutual interest under threat should be guided by science and done with sincerity. Neither affected irony unbent by the imperative of impending tragedy, nor grasping at simple minded rules, wherever their origin on the political spectrum, is useful right now. When we are all under a very real threat, we should try to think about what is useful to help ourselves and others.
If we jointly encourage each other to engage in behavior that benefits us all, rather than reflexively rebelling like 13 year olds left alone for the weekend, that is not “pitching our civil liberties”, it’s just being a responsible adult citizen. Even surfers can set aside their otherwise harmless cool posturing and be adults, can’t we?
I very much agree that we should all love our fellow man right now, a lot extra even, from six feet away but also still feel there’s value in a wink.
This is a great Beach Grit comment. Oh, I agree with the wink thing too. I mean that’s why we’re here right? The site could be called BeachWink.com.
Oh! I meant the line here. Not here as in BG here.
Says, “Chas”, from behind a keyboard and screen and counting his stacks of bitcoin….. I’m not sure that’s true but it could be…… Post truth era etc. etc.
And, Chas, when you’re not too busy being a fuck stick (adjectives to grab your attention), put on your big boy pants, although pajamas are ok too, and read this:
https://www.theatlantic.com…
I read. Ugh. But also much conjecture.
Less conjecture… But this isn’t the venue for this or I be the one getting reamed….. (I got more but not the place… you can PM me on idiot facebook if you’re interested)
https://medium.com/@tomaspu…
Good article.
Worrying numbers.
A recent analysis from the University of Pennsylvania estimated that even if social-distancing measures can reduce infection rates by 95 percent, 960,000 Americans will still need intensive care. There are only about 180,000 ventilators in the U.S. and, more pertinently, only enough respiratory therapists and critical-care staff to safely look after 100,000 ventilated patients.
Even accepting those numbers as accurate, which I don’t, it doesn’t mean 180K people will be needing ventilators at the same time.
As for the issue of ventilators, New York Governor Cuomo fucked up years ago:
“At its most severe, coronavirus attacks the lungs, making it impossible to breathe without a ventilator. Landing in the hospital on a ventilator is bad. But worse is being told you can’t have one. After learning that the state’s stockpile of medical equipment had 16,000 fewer ventilators than New Yorkers would need in a severe pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to a fork in the road in 2015. He could have chosen to buy more ventilators. Instead, he asked his health commissioner, Howard Zucker to assemble a task force and draft rules for rationing the ventilators they already had.
That task force came up with rules that will be imposed when ventilators run short. Patients assigned a red code will have the highest access, and other patients will be assigned green, yellow or blue (the worst) depending on a “triage officer’s” decision. In truth, a death officer. Let’s not sugarcoat it. It won’t be up to your own doctor.
Cuomo could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece or a total of $576 million in 2015. It’s a lot of money but less than the $750 million he threw away on a boondoggle “Buffalo Billion” solar panel factory. When it comes to state budget priorities, spending half a percent of the budget on ventilators is a no brainer.”
https://nypost.com/2020/03/…
If that’s a good article youre a bit sick
Thorough and well written.
Is that better?
Are you kidding? Here?
I think most of us are intelligent enough to see that joking about Corona is just a coping mechanism. It helps you stop from lying on the floor in the fetal position right? This is surfing – we used to be a sub culture, maybe after this we’ll be one again.
Don’t apologise Chas. It’s out of character. Great satirical writing is essential in topsy turvy times. It can cut through the noise like the rhythmic wheeze of your 80-year old Nan on a ICU ventilator. Drowning slowly, over weeks, in her own lung secretions.
Brilliant satire — it makes the unpalatable political truth digestible.
Alas, your writing on this subject isn’t that. It’s only point is, ‘Look at moiiii … so raw, so edgy, so well dressed.’ You mock others’ suffering and loss of life and do your best (perhaps inadvertently, just a poorly informed dimwit) to spread a deadly virus across Europe and the Atlantic. And all of this with your daughter as an unwitting accomplice, up there to be pilloried on a global publishing platform.
As we tell our kids, the internet never forgets.
The U.S. is about to blow up with 10s or even 100s of thousands of deaths. Epidemiologists (you know, people with actual scientific qualifications) warn it could be higher. And there you are making your daughter the public face of the arrogant American, parading fashion across an empty European landscape while the grim reaper cuts his swathe through the world’s elderly, immune compromised and just plain unlucky.
Are you not entertained?
Yes!
Oh well, good for you then, I guess.
But perhaps spare a thought for those who right now are watching their parents, partners or grandparents get waterboarded to death — slowly — by a strand of rogue RNA.
You and yours too…
“Look Ma, no talent”
Love you Chas. But maybe since this is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the next few months, it’s best not to be too facetious about it.
You sure? But also…. our mission is to be facetious! No?
Well there’s having a bit of fun with Elo etc, and jokes about toilet paper idiots and mad shark shit, and then there’s a whole fuck load of people about to die.
I often feel that when people are in the process of dying en masse, it’s best not to make fun of the thing that’s killing ’em.
It’s called gallows humor Nick
Good thing you aren’t running this website. I come here for laughs mate not to be lectured to.
Chas, I agree with Nick. THIS is the time we need you to strap on your journalistic beanie. No joking right now. We’re hoping to restart the joking by Easter. And then hopefully that’ll jumpstart the joke economy and we’ll have the best jokes of all the jokes.
But that, by Easter, we all let a police state strangle the world because we were scared? How’s that funny?
Trust me, a lot of surf journalists are saying, “Chas! You’re being totally irresponsible to want to restart the joke economy by Easter! Nick Carroll and the experts at Stab are saying it’ll be AT LEAST July or August before we can safely joke again. I think we need to heed their advice. I know we all want to go shred, but how many cutbacks will it take before you start to take this seriously!!!!
I think Howard Dean said it best: “Aaaaaaaaahhhh!!!”
There’s only one type of joke permitted right now: Inside jokes.
Do you mean “insider trading” from the people who knew, but decided to pretend it was all good until they and their friends had their stocks sold?
I’ll be at swamis at dawn Easter Sunday morning Chas. Surfline premium forecasts disabled no one will know it’s good!
China lifting lock down in Wuhan
Hundreds of thousands not dead.
They had a slightly more active approach to slowing the spread than most of Europe, Australia and the U.S. Full lockdown early on that went on for a couple of months, it’s still early days for most of the developed world, I’m fucking glad I live where I live and our govt are taking it seriously. (NZ by the way).
I personally guarantee that hundreds of thousands will live
True Nick. But if you’re coming here for health advice shouldn’t you be dead?
I’ve heard some say NC died the day he stopped working at Tracks back in the olden days…
maybe peein’ on a pyramid wasn’t so decorous either, no judgement though!
I got fun 2 footers today and I sincerely hope everyone else got something too; everyone was easily enjoying a 12 foot distance, I hope no one spat in the water? super fuked was potty’s we’re locked, & I’m telling you, that is a negative influence on my early a.m. performance!