Each day, Instagram offers up a parade of people
determined to signal their virtuous self-denial. I’m not surfing!
Look at me not surfing! As though following the rules is worthy of
a medal.
For one thing, it was hot.
That night, the winds came, scouring through the passes,
hurtling down the mountains, hot as the devil’s breath. I slept
fitfully, tangled sheets and fevered dreams, the sound of dry
leaves rustling, restless. Sunrise came too bright, too early.
I head down to the beach where a small, sloppy windswell is
almost enough to ride if you squint at it with enough optimism.
Everyone else has the same idea and we dodge and weave, trying to
keep our distance. Chatting with friends, we stand awkwardly, not
quite six feet apart, but not quite close either.
I paddle out, spring’s still-cold water welcome in the
disorienting heat. It’s April, but it feels like late summer. I
wander lost in the desert and dream of ice cream.
A girl in the lineup I’ve never seen before tries to chat me up.
She tells me she’s from Camarillo. She wants to know how the spot
works, when it’s good. I tell her I don’t really know, which isn’t
entirely a lie. I check it a lot. Sometimes, I get lucky.
I have found the things I hated before Corona, I hate infinitely
more now. The SUP strafing the lineup? So much hate. The snitchy,
pearl-clutching Karens on the internet? Still hate ‘em. The guy who
tried to burn me yesterday? “No! Fuck you!” I yelled with zero
regrets. Heat waves. I hate heat waves even more than I believed
possible.
A girl in the lineup I’ve never seen before tries to chat me up.
She tells me she’s from Camarillo. She wants to know how the spot
works, when it’s good. I tell her I don’t really know, which isn’t
entirely a lie. I check it a lot. Sometimes, I get lucky.
On the whole, surfing has not handled Corona with surefooted
grace. We swing dizzyingly between smug righteousness and angry
nihilism. Neither feels — or looks — especially good. Surfing isn’t
rainbows and unicorns during the best of times, and this is
certainly not the best of times.
Each day, Instagram offers up a parade of people determined to
signal their virtuous self-denial.
I’m not surfing! Look at me not surfing!
As though following the rules is worthy of a medal, as though
doing the bare minimum is worthy of great praise and adulation.
Look at me, I’m amazing! Yes, yes you are, you precious
darling.
The rest of us struggle to rise above our own worst impulses.
Fuck the rules, spraypaint the walls.
“Surfing is not a crime,” reads new graffiti at Malibu.
Resentment burns and festers against hikers, against anyone on a
bike, against everyone, really. We dream up intricate strategies
designed to evade the rules, sometimes with embarrassingly
hilarious results (Looking at you, Trestles
boat guy).
The whole thing feels like a test: Are you an asshole? You drove
an hour or more, past the closed beaches near where you live,
across a county line or several, to go for a surf. You put your
drone in the car and you went down to the beach, just so you could
later post a video online to shame people for going outside. You
burned a local.
Entitlement breeds a bitchy new localism. Just let us surf.
Close the beaches to everyone else, never mind the law, never mind
any nice notions like equity or fairness. Surfers have always been
selfish, but these days, it feels like everyone’s become an
exaggerated version of themselves.
The whole thing feels like a test: Are you an asshole? You drove
an hour or more, past the closed beaches near where you live,
across a county line or several, to go for a surf. You put your
drone in the car and you went down to the beach, just so you could
later post a video online to shame people for going outside. You
burned a local.
There are so many ways to be an asshole, these days. It’s hard
to keep count. Are you making things better, or just performing
virtue? Are you thinking about the people around you, or do you
just not give a fuck? The bar isn’t set terribly high, not really,
but it’s just high enough to trip and land facefirst. And so many
of us are suddenly so clumsy.
I ride my bike down the street, past the restaurants offering
curbside pickup, past the porta-potties the city has supplied for
the homeless people, who panhandle vacant sidewalks.
The Forever 21 is stripped bare. Only the fixtures
remain, forlorn and empty. At Tillys, a Sharpied sign
tells UPS to go around the back, and at Brandy Melville,
the clothing is off the hangers, stacked up on a table, entombed in
plastic. Fast fashion, here today, who knows about tomorrow.
There’s no forever now.
They boarded up the Volcom store, but the city must have
objected, because a few days later, the plywood disappeared. The
mannikins stare blankly out at the mostly empty street, all dressed
up in fresh boardshorts for summer, if we ever get there.
Two doors down, the Billabong store turned their mannikins
around, and their backs face the street. A blue-hued image of a
tropical island hangs in the window, a postcard from the past, a
dream for the future.
I put on my face bikini, this spring’s hottest new accessory,
and head to the grocery store. I feel ready for anything. Rob a
bank, start a riot. In truth, I’m just hoping for ice cream, some
fresh produce, and a roll or two of toilet paper. Maybe if I’m
lucky there’ll be some pasta, one of the good shapes, not the
shit-small shapes made for soup, the shapes that no one actually
buys ever, even now.
My mind wanders in strange directions.
I have a sudden desire to longboard Waikiki, even though I can’t
ride a longboard, not properly, not with any grace at all. I
imagine getting in a car and driving as far, as fast as I can, down
the empty highway to the vanishing point, with the stereo cranked
as loud as it will go. But I hate driving.
The days fade one into the next, mostly indistinguishable.
Is it May or July?
I’m not really sure.
I can count the days by the length of my hair, which rapidly
approaches full feral hippy.
The sun beats down, unfeeling and unforgiving.
Here I am, standing on the same street corner.
Another day, another espresso.
Is it today or yesterday, and will tomorrow be any different at
all?
