A devil's bargain if there ever was one.

As any surfer knows, it has become very difficult to surf without hordes of VALs, blow-ins, transplants etc. utterly clogging heretofore manageable lineups. What used to be ten surfers enjoying a dawn patrol has ballooned to fifty or sixty and not just fifty or sixty on modern performance shortboards but fifty or sixty on fifteen foot gliders.

Surfing in the apocalypse.

You can understand, then, how core lords and ladies up in Bolinas, near San Francisco, have pounced on a devil’s bargain allowing them to forgo crowds by surfing in sewage.

According to The San Francisco Standard, “Marin County officials were alerted to the issue when a permit inspection revealed sewage leaking along a bluffside property. A subsequent investigation and E. coli testing revealed ‘at least a few dozen’ locations across a 1.5-mile stretch where sewage was flowing onto the beach at a rapid clip, according to Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency, which handles environmental health services.”

Grumpy locals reading and licking lips.

Mickey Murch, described as a second-generation farmer and Bolinas surfer, told the paper, “I really don’t know much about this except that the surf is nice and empty. I go in the water even during the biggest storms in the winter, when people’s septic systems are overflowing, so maybe I have a good immune system. I’m a nonbeliever.”

Others, standing nearby, nodding along but also holding fingers to lips, not wanting the secret to get out.

Residents are, of course, frustrated by the environmental breakdown but beggars can’t be choosers, these days. An empty wave even filled with poo worth much more than it was five or six years ago.

Over to you, now. Would you, like ol’ Mickey Murch, brave your immune system and paddle or fear the diarrhea?

More importantly, what would Kelly Slater do?

Not happy.

As the United States presidential election of ’24 reaches its backstretch, the elusive surf vote has become a prize for both parties. With Trump and Harris neck and neck, both campaigns are turning to previously ignored blocs, looking for that tiny edge that might just might tip the scales come November.

Team Trump was leading early with Kelly Slater’s very good friends RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard breaking for the former president. Slater is, of course, the big fish in the surf pool and with his endorsement the surf vote could be locked right up. Things got extremely interesting, though, days ago, when Kelly Slater’s other very good friend Jack Johnson announced that he was a “White Dude for Harris.”

Now, wave pool impresario Pharrell Williams has made his opinion on the matter known, specifically that celebrities, including surf ones, should shut their mouths when it comes to endorsements.

The multi-hyphenate artist-director-musician-etc. is also the brawn behind Atlantic Park, a Wavegarden tank in Virginia Beach that is certain to provide thrills for local surfers unable to ply their trade due medical waste. The opening cannot come soon enough but, in the meantime, Williams has thrown cold water all over Jack Johnson, openly declaring, “There are celebrities that I respect that have an opinion, but not all of them. I’m one of them people [who says], ‘What the heck? Shut up. Nobody asked you.’”

Ouch.

Haters flooded the hitmaker’s social media, complaining that he had really stepped in it this time. “Must be nice to ‘not do politics,’” one punched into the social media. “Some of us have no choice! Your lineage had no choice. Yet here YOU are pissing on them.”

“Not ‘doing politics’ is so incredibly privileged and out of touch,” another added.

Do you have thoughts on celebrity political endorsements?

What are they?

All eyes, in any case, back on Kelly Slater. Will he break for former BFF Barack Obama’s choice of Kamala Harris or new BFF RJK Jr.’s Trump?

Back to the Virginia Beach tank, though. Are you excited?

"The stuff has to stop arriving on the beach and then we have to do a thorough cleanup..."

A general pall is hanging in the air from Virginia to Maryland. A grey despondence that has nothing to do with the upcoming presidential election in nearby Washington D.C. nor the Baltimore Orioles sudden slip after beginning the Major League Baseball season on a tear. No, the depression is emanating from the region’s surf community, men and women moping around town instead of out on the water, where they belong, due washed up medical waste which has shuttered all beaches.

The coastal bit, where sand meets surf, has been closed for days now with no sign on re-opening as hypodermic needles, colostomy bags and other hospital-esque detritus.

The gross business.

Hugh Hawthorne, the superintendent of Assateague Island National Seashore, has provided no hope, telling the local news, “The stuff has to stop arriving on the beach and then we have to do a thorough cleanup of the main swimming areas before we can reopen. Our oceanside beaches remain closed on the entire island as of right now,” said Hawthorne. It’s a lot of plastic debris but it includes a large component of medical waste.”

Bummed surfers are are being told “not to be picking up these things, especially the needles, without proper protective equipment” leaving them extremely idle, hands becoming devil’s playground etc.

Which leads to a broader question. When you are unable to surf, due injury, illness, medical waste on beach etc., how do you fill the days?

a) surf skating

b) scrolling your high school’s Facebook page

c) sitting in a dark room plotting

d) other