From midnight, Coolly time, the Superbank is going to be shuttered, courtesy of the Gold Coast City Council.
Come tomoz morn, the joint, theoretically, at least, will be empty for the first time in living memory. It ain’t gonna be that great, so first day of the jackboot, no one’s missing a thing.
It ain’t the only beach getting shut down, either.
The Gold Coast Council will close all beaches from the The Spit to Surfers Paradise as well as that pretty long stretch of sand in Coolangatta that stretches to Kirra in the north.
All the other beaches from Coolangatta to Surfers will be open for locals, but closed to non-Gold Coast residents.
Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate said while locals were doing the right thing, there had been some visitors at beaches not following social-distancing rules.
“Unfortunately, over the weekend, out-of-towners are descending on the Gold Coast in mass numbers and I fear that this number will increase over the Easter weekend,” he said.
“Therefore, as of midnight on Tuesday, The Spit, Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta beaches will be closed [to everyone].”
Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said beaches would be “heavily patrolled” by police.
“Not only those beaches [that have been closed] — all of the beaches as we go into Easter weekend,” she said.
Commissioner Carroll said people who owned holiday homes should remain at their “principal residence”.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reiterated people were not to treat the Easter break as a holiday.
“There is no holiday this year,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
Loading comments...
Just one surf, baby, gimme one surf.
An open letter to Scripps scientist Kim ‘I wouldn’t go in the water for a million dollars’ Prather, Surfline and Surfrider: “If the public continues to get hammered with conjecture as fact from SARS-CoV-2 ‘experts’ and the irrelevant Surfrider lobby, they will eventually lose faith in the necessary process of shared sacrifice and cooperation!”
Have you published any peer reviewed articles on corona viruses and infectivity humans in the ocean?
Do you have any training in virology, public health, immunology, medicine, pandemic mitigation, etc?
No.
Did you help scare the hell out of the public and law enforcement with a lot of claims but no data?
Yes and yes.
The total beach closures that you have promoted have directly led to significant crowding of the coastal roads and walking paths. People are so closely confined in these already constrained areas as they walk that they are spreading the virus to a far greater degree than if they were in the open water or walking along a wide beach.
Come on up to Encinitas and walk Neptune Ave or the Cardiff trail, well done.
If the public continues to get hammered with conjecture as fact from SARS-CoV-2 “experts“, such as yourself and the irrelevant Surfrider lobby, they will eventually lose faith in the necessary process of shared sacrifice and cooperation.
I now cannot walk near my house during the day.
This going to be a very long fight and the public needs to be presented with data, facts, and proof from subject matter experts before major policy changes that have grave knock-on effects are enacted.
If the public continues to get hammered with conjecture as fact from SARS-CoV-2 “experts“ such as yourself and the irrelevant Surfrider lobby, they will eventually lose faith in the necessary process of shared sacrifice and cooperation.
If just three percent of an already highly stressed public says “screw it” then the authorities will immediately lose ALL control.
Since one percent of the population has schizophrenia getting three percent to totally losing it a few months is pretty easy.
Ratcheting down on the public from all sides without proof will sacrifice precious goodwill that we’ll need down the road as the facts on the ground change.
You are not alone.
I have seen a number of others touting breakthroughs and cures with bogus promises of being to treat the public in just a few months, when such options are much further out and that assumes their ideas pan out.
Most of my friends and my childrens’ friends who surf everyday, many at crowded spots, have not gotten sick.
That’s over 100 people surfing crowded spots everyday for months and months.
And, if you account for the huge number of untested and asymptotic virus shedders in SD County, there is a huge probability they have been shedding virus while surfing with all these kids and adults.
Humans have been shedding trillions of infectious viruses and bacteria into the ocean via sewage, run off and simply by being in the ocean. Some of the pathogens that are being released all the time are: e-coli, hepatitis A, influenza, herpes, norovirus, HPV, etc.
And yet the North County surfing public is just fine.
So please, collect coastal zone data to determine if there is in fact infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles in sufficient concentrations (as compared to the crowded Cardiff rail trail) to cause an infection. Then coordinate with the relevant subject matter experts (not the LA Times) to challenge your data and conclusions – in private.
Then you can contribute to peer-reviewed journals and contribute to policy decisions and risk benefit analysis.
If the ocean is in fact how the virus can super-spread then I will run ads in the local papers warning of such dangers and happily give you all the credit you would deserve.
Regards,
Charlie McDermott
PS: Dear paid Surfrider activists, please shut up, shelter in place, and do not drive to my neighborhood to spy on my family.
Loading comments...
Soloed this place for decades as Rincon attracted the flies. It’s become too crowded since late 2000’s, but I surfed the point alone with Dan Malloy during el Niño 2005. Surf schools and best friend parenting ’is a plague. No self regulation anymore, chaos is allowed though. This is the parking lot at the top of the point. The VAL crowd loves the easy coves and I wrote them off some 20 years ago… but this place held tight until demographics and reality set in. | Photo: Hippy
Report from Santa Barbara County: “We don’t have LA/OC/SD crowds beyond the dormant points, how can law enforcement close long stretches of lonely beach and why?”
"Desperation is objective and real. Surfing is now prohibited. Is that inglorious or fucking what?"
The drive from my home to quiet surfing is equally quiet. Rarely traffic. The beach breaks don’t seem to capture the imagination of those socially inclined to easy cove surf. Something about tighter transitions and a little more girth keep the VAL’s at bay.
Or so it seems so far.
With a historically poor winter on the points, I’ve dug in deeper to the sands of random beach breaks.
I laughed at the concept of social distancing because I’ve been practising for this my entire adult life and these misfits of sand and short-period windwell fit the profile I’ve become. Plus, you can work on quick twitch, tight transitions… at least that’s my favorite rationalization on the eve of any trip.
The drive today was very familiar, it feels like my car can execute the distance without my attention.
I pulled up to an empty lineup scattered with dog shit peaks trying to lure this angry, grumpy local out of my warm car.
“Roll down your window, please,” the dark shadow on my passenger side requested.
I never saw him pull up behind me.
“What is going on, officer?”
“I’m going to ask you to drive home. If you require an explanation, I will ask for your license, registration and insurance docs. The fine is exorbitant.”
He had his ticket book in hand and opened to a page he has reserved for me.
Two weeks ago, I opened three emails that wiped out my business. I’m very sensitive to new debts and I didn’t want to find out what he means by “exorbitant”.
Rumors are floating that the new fines for surfing are one thousand dollars. That’s more than the flight to Auckland I canceled just three weeks ago.
I drove away from a virtually empty, mile-long stretch of beach and was now acutely aware of my surroundings.
Past the point break I’ve spent four decades surfing, I see the police barricade.
How did I miss it on my way just minutes before?
Two more sheriffs standing sentry over the beach park that the RV’s occupy. Another motorcycle cop sitting by the mushy reef I never surf.
Why are there so many law enforcement occupying such an innocuous roadway, empty of fellow travelers?
The freeway is vacant.
I stop to shoot the flashing warning signs without pulling over… there is no need to. There is one car in sight and it’s well ahead of me.
The turnoff to Rincon is not usually lonely.
“We are not LA. As crowded as Rincon gets, I live three miles away and surf a sand point alone 90% of the time. We don’t have a social distancing problem.”
And there he sits, another sheriff and there it sits, another flashing sign in the lower parking lot.
The waves don’t warrant a citation, but the message is clear, Ventura County surfing is being shut down.
Another “Brick in the Wall” or is it another attack on our common sense/logic?
We don’t have LA/OC/SD crowds beyond the dormant points, how can law enforcement close long stretches of lonely beach and why?
I drive by a horrible stretch of sand within the Santa Barbara County and notice young kids at play together looking like a surf school. The beach is relatively busy, just four miles from the closure zone.
How long until SB beaches are shuttered?
I drive home and grab the puppy for a short walk to look at my sand point, the venue of last resorts.
It reminds me that I’m looking for diamonds in a pile of coal.
Puppy doesn’t seem to mind and I aspire to have her attitude, though it’s too late to change my tiger stripes.
Tiger stripes, has that fucking show infected my consciousness?
I never watched TV beyond sports before this paradigm began.
I am now a Tiger in a cage.
Will the legal goal posts ever be removed or has the game changed?
How often have goal posts moved and then moved back again?
I can’t remember.
Loading comments...
"Sorry, baby. CNN said no no."
Fun Police: CNN warns against quarantined surfers attempting to conceive anti-depressive babies during these Coronavirus Doldrums!
First they came for our waves and we said nothing because we were too busy watching Tiger King. Then they came for our reproductive rights but we said nothing because we were all deeply considering polyamorous homosexuality thanks to Tiger King.
Then sharks ate the few remaining surfers as our kind forever vanished from the face of the earth.
And you make think the above a wildly fantastical scenario but ponder your life right now, locked indoors, unable to go to restaurants, unable to go to bars, forced to wear bandanas over our faces in public, performing “air elbow bumps” to friends via Zoom, discouraged from using this down time to procreate in order to usher anti-depressive joy into this depleted world in six months time.
Wildly, impossibly fantastic but as real and true as the bandana over your face.
“I don’t foresee a baby boom in nine months,” Dr. Renee Wellenstein, an OB/GYN and functional medicine specialist in upstate New York, told CNN.
In a less severe context, like a snowstorm, sure — it’s quite common to see an uptick in births nine months later.
She noted that couples spend more time cozying up indoors during the late fall and winter. Consequently, “in the northeast we see more babies in the late summer and fall months,” she said.
Although being snowed in can be a little fun and lead to romance, the pandemic is stressful for couples: “[The] libido is down and menstrual cycles may be off,” Wellenstein said. “It may not be possible to conceive due to this.”
But for couples who still have the urge, Wellenstein said she would “absolutely not” advise anyone to get pregnant now, due to the uncertainty swirling around Covid-19. “You can push off conceiving and getting pregnant,” she said.
There are a number of risk factors, starting with the fact that there’s simply less care available in many areas as hospitals prioritize more resources toward helping the surge of Covid-19 patients being admitted.
And for women who are already pregnant, each trip to the hospital during the pandemic carries additional risk.
“It’s never ideal to have any infectious disease during the pregnancy due to the unknown impact on the child,” Wellenstein said. “To enter a hospital puts her at risk.”
Regardless of where the science ultimately lands on transmission of the novel coronavirus in the placenta, it’s a risk not worth taking, Wellenstein says. Once the baby is born, we know with certainty that she is at risk from any virus carriers she may come in contact with.
So lame.
But, seriously… how far down the polyamorous homosexuality path are you, conceptually?
Loading comments...
Surfers (sitting) pictured being shamed with orange juice to make them sticky and preschool-like.
Shocking: “Openly activity-ist” San Diego elected officials ban surfing, encourage hiking countywide!
San Diego surfers are waking up this morning as properly designated second-class citizens. Discriminated against at the highest levels of county politics. Bigoted toward for the first time since 1971 as the Coronavirus Apocalypse turns a new, draconian corner.
Recreational boating, swimming and surfing will be prohibited countywide beginning Saturday under new county orders directed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, which claimed the life of another resident and reached 1,000 local cases as of Friday.
The mandatory order takes effect Saturday, while county officials on Thursday had strongly urged all people to wear facial coverings when leaving their homes.
Practicing what they preach, county supervisors Greg Cox and Nathan Fletcher, along with other officials, wore bandannas or scarfs at the daily afternoon press briefing Friday.
At the Friday county news briefing, Fletcher expanded on an order from Thursday that prohibited active recreation in the county such as basketball, football and volleyball.
“Included in active recreation are swimming, surfing and recreational boating,” he said. “All of those activities are prohibited countywide.”
Passive activities such as walking, jogging and hiking still are allowed, he said.
Activity-ism may well be the social curse we carry out of this troubled time. Judging others by how they play as opposed to the content of their hearts.
Shame.
Deep profound shame.
But should we take this opportunity to reach for our oppressed basketball, football, volleyball brothers and sisters?
A glorious underground union?
A National Association for the Advancement of Active People?
Has surfing been officially banned where you live or are you still blindly operating under the lie of equality?
