Report from Santa Barbara: “Surfing has not handled Corona with surefooted grace. We swing dizzyingly between smug righteousness and angry nihilism. Neither feels or looks especially good”

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?