Backwards Beach

My friend Maurice teaches high school. And so after nearly two months of vacation, he is being violently thrown back into the working world . Therefore, to celebrate the official end of summer (because when you go back to school, there is a very finite conclusion to the season) we went to the beach.


Let me rephrase that... We went to the city of Long Beach on Long Island.

See, I grew up in California. My earliest years were spent in Orange County with the smell of the ocean in the air and a persistent layer of sand in the back of our car and inside my shoes. I am the daughter of a bona fide Santa Barbara surfer. I know which west coast beaches have the best sand, the best waves, and the best sunsets. In my mind, beaches have a lot of associated connotations... and this was not a beach the likes of which I am used to.

It was lovely, don't get me wrong. There were long grasses, soft white sand, the ocean smell was still in the air... but something wasn't quite right. There was NO surf culture. No tanned, bleach blond grommits skate boarding down the street with a wetsuit pulled half on and a surf board under their arm. No surf shops lining the streets. No black ball flags on the lifeguard towers. No crowds of sun-bleached and wind-blown beach rats hanging out of convertibles and soft-top jeeps. It was weird. I've never been to a beach before without surf culture, and it was very strange.

Long Beach, apparently, is where city investment bankers go to escape the grind on a long weekend, not where the off-spring of the extremely wealthy go to spend their days chasing monster sets.

And to top off the strange feeling of miss-equilibrium, the sun set on the wrong side of the ocean! It felt kind of like the first time you see Star Wars and Luke walks out into the sunset on Tatooine with the two suns and you go... whoa, that's not right. (Yes, that was a giant wave of my geek flag.)

So all I'm really saying is that so far, BEACH is the one that California does BEST.