Masked cops and soldiers round-up recalcitrant surfers; hit 'em with stiff-ish fines.

Thirty minutes south of San Diego on the toll road across the Mex border is the resort town of Rosarito. 

Lot of retired Americans getting leathered in the sun.

A few miles of beaches. Cold water. Gets pretty good. 

And, now, Rosarito will go down in some sort of history book, if they exist, of the world’s biggest mass arrest of surfers during The Big Shutdown. 

In Mexico’s case, they’re currently in phase three of their COVID-19 lockdown, running from April 21 through May 30, all public places closed, kissing and shaking hands banned, no surfing etc. 

See, Mex has a pretty young population, which is good, but a lot of fatties and diabetes and so on, as well as dire poverty, so it ain’t in a real good place to hit back at the Wuhan Wheeze. 

Anyway, yesterday, Tijuana’s El Imparcial ran photos of masked cops and soldiers waiting for the pack of local surfers, then photographing ‘em and finally driving ‘em to jail in the back of a police pickup. 

“The 22 [surfers] were rounded up before the judge and held in [jail] cells,” reports El Imparcial, “because they were surfing in the area …. at kilometer 43 of the Rosarito Libre highway. Francisco Arellano Ortiz, the head of the Secretariat of Citizen Security of Rosarito, mentioned that ‘these people were detained for not complying with the instructions of the agents, as it is prohibited to carry out any activity on the beach.”

The San Diego Reader spoke to a nearby surfshop owner, Al, from Playa Hermosa Surf & Skate Shop in Ensenada, who says each surfer was fined eight-hundred pesos, thirty-five American dollars, or thirty-five hundred pesos, one-fifty US, if they defended ’emselves in front of the judge.

“The virus cannot survive in the water,” Al told The Reader, “and by us exercising, our body’s defenses are stronger. The police are not making money with their corrupt acts that generate income, because people do not leave their houses, and they’re looking for money.”

Seventy-eight million litres or twenty million gallons of precious raindrops…

You ever wonder how much water goes into a wave tank ‘cause they big, yeah?

How much you think it costs to turn the hose on and fill the hole?

The Morning Bulletin, a daily newspaper that services Central Queensland, which includes Yeppoon, home of an experimental wavepool powered by a giant plunger, has reported of an imbroglio between the pool’s owners and local council over whether the pool should continue to receive a discounted rate for water.

The numbers are pretty wild.

See, from 2017 to last September, Surf Lakes and the Livingstone Shire Council had an agreement that gave Surf Lakes cheap water ($1.30 per thousand litres or 0.004 cents a gallon) because the company said it “could bring substantial future economic activity and benefit to the region”.

The pool, which takes seventy-eight million litres to fill, or “over nine times the average daily water consumption for the entire shire”, paid $102,078.60 for the initial fill, a saving of fifty-grand from the usual commercial rate

Since September, however, that rate went up to a little over two bucks.

As the Morning Bully reports,

“It would appear the reasons relied upon by Council to support the initial request are no longer relevant, or at least significantly diminished,” the April 2019 LSC council report read. 

The unlikelihood of the facility ever opening to Capricorn Coast surfers has made the project a point of community contention.

The newly formed council with new Mayor Andy Ireland confirmed the newly formed council will re-assess the agreement later this year.

The Slater pool in dusty ol Lemoore, meanwhile, takes sixty-eight mill litres to fill; the Wavegarden tanks in Bristol and Melbourne, twenty-two mill.