"I was an extreme boogie border, so this was the next step up."

Hello, 2021 and how did you ring in the brand-new year? Socially distancing with loved ones while air clinking champagne flutes? Boldly ignoring stay-at-home orders to get punk in drublic? Sitting in your once lightly crowded lineup shoulder to shoulder with hundreds, thousands, of new faces?

Oh boy.

If 2020 brought us one thing it is many, many, many new surfers. So many that California surf shops cannot keep boards on the racks. So many that Maine surf shops cannot keep 7mm wetsuits on the hangers.

Crystal Ouimette, co-owner of Black Point Surf Shop in Scarborough, Maine told News Center Maine:

“We got a lot more surfers now. But the issue that we’re having is there’s nothing. I can’t order winter boots if I sell out of them. Winter suits I literally don’t have any. I have two women’s suits hanging left. That’s it. Normally we stay super stocked all winter we have access to reorder if we had to, but there’s no neoprene there’s a crazy rubber shortage just due to production delays more or less. It’s like southern California,” she said. “You’re like, ‘what are these people doing for work? It’s like Wednesday at noon what are you doing?'”

Great question. Another question, the writer, Lindsey Mills, opens the expose thusly:

The pandemic and the relative isolation that comes with it is prompting a lot of people to try something new. Something they never had the time to do before. For example, a lot of people appear to be bundling up and grabbing their boards. Did you think we meant snowboards? Nope. “I was an extreme boogie border, so this was the next step up.”

The “extreme boogie boarder” is not revisited nor explained. I have no idea who he or she is or anything about him or her.

Or they.

The more I ponder, the more fascinated I am.

Extreme boogie boarder? If you are reading can you please email [email protected]?

I have many questions.

Love is love.

How much do you love this surf life? Enough to paddle out on less than appealing days just to feel? Enough to break up with your guy or gal because they just don’t understand you paddling out on less than appealing days instead of snuggling up and watching Titanic? Enough to steal a car, break into a surf shop, steal three surfboards, two leashes then leading the police on a wild chase before fleeing your vehicle though getting caught eventually?

I didn’t think so.

And so let us meet our new icon Nathaniel K. Jacques of Massachusetts who was arrested by Salem police after a wild chase during which he allegedly nearly struck an officer and crashed into two cars after running over a spike strip.

The police found three surfboards in his car that matched ones stolen from Cinnamon Rainbows Surf Shop.

According to court documents, the surf shop on Ocean Boulevard was broken into at 1:53 a.m. Surveillance footage showed a light-skinned male of medium build breach the rear door with a pry bar. Footage showed the man dressed in a long-sleeve hooded sweater, baseball cap with a surgical dust mask on, remove two surf leashes from behind the front counter. Another camera showed him leaving the store with three surfboards.

It must be assumed that one of the boards was a retro fish and would have looked/been silly with a leash.

But wow.

We don’t love this surf life so much, at the end of the day.

Wanna plan a heist?

Lazy.

For certain you have seen the Disney Pixar masterpiece Wall-E wherein a plucky robot who was left behind on earth after it was abandoned by humans for being too trash-filled, falls in love with a different robot and followers her up to the space station where humans now live in a futuristic paradise.

All needs are instantly met, convenience and ease the priority. Humans spend their days gliding here and there on powered La-z-boys having solved the problem of exerting energy. Very much like humans on today’s e-bikes.

But oh is the e-bike a pestilence in your town? It is in mine with Wall-E-adjacent chunks speeding here and there, ripping down paths, barely moving their legs. Carrying the same rotten attitude as road bikers without even beginning to earn it.

Very gauche.

And rumor has it that in San Clemente a local Orange County e-bike maker is petitioning the city council to install charging stations down at the bottom of the path leading to Lowers.

Imagine the horror. Rich children, Mayhems affixed, flying at 20mph on mommy’s latest gift. Spoiled adults, feeling like environmentalists, Mayhems affixed, running over those fated to amble. The Lowers path becoming a choked freeway of gross incompetence and entitlement.

Extremely gauche and I can’t really imagine anything worse.

Can you?