Surf, Trains, and Desperate LA
San Onfre at sunset
San Onofre & LA
14 – 16 July
Sea level
Cool and breezy; bless the mighty Pacific Ocean
San Onofre was always a wild card. It had been nearly impossible to find appropriate camping sites in California. Most of the state beaches were closed because of COVID and other options were pretty dodgy. The California coast has always been a bastion for the wayward, people who lost their way elsewhere and ventured West, happy to literally set up camp on the beaches of Southern California when all else failed. Who could blame them? Yet, the idea of bringing the family into a campsite where drugs and despair were rampant wasn’t in the spirt of this particular safari.
San Onofre is famous for two reasons. First, it is a famous surf spot with a number of classic beach breaks (San Onofre SB; Trestles; Old Man). Second, a nuclear power plant was constructed right on the beach in the early 1970s. The plant was decommissioned in 2012 but it still stands there, its two ominous concrete domes plopped right down in the middle of glistening sand and surf. For some reason, I kept remembering the Saturday Night Live skit that portrayed President Jimmy Carter’s visit to the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. I was betting on the surf.
San Onofre campsite; looking away from the train
The camp itself was fine. Our neighbors were COVID sensitive and a mix of surfers and other campers fleeing the weight of the times. Just next to us were a group of women in their 50s/60s who got together every few months to escape their husbands and to surf. They were cool. When Silvia described her work at the World Bank, their focus was always on whether there was surf in the places she had visited. There were a group of nurses who had finally gotten a bit of time off and decided to camp on the beach and surf. Some lonely dude with a massive camper. All in all they were fine and while the nurses were throwing gasoline on their fire pit at night, they were happy to let all be all.
What was not cool was the bloody-fucking freight trains that rambled by during the night. This was unbelievable to me. The noise! It sounded like they were carrying cattle off to the slaughterhouse, a deep, ominous, LOUD “MOOOOOOOOOOO,” fractured only slightly by the squeal of metal against metal—loud and LONG motherfucking trains. There was one of these beasts at 3 am. 3AM!!! AND, all these otherwise friendly and cool people seemed oblivious to these rail-beasts. By 6 or 7 they were out, doing yoga, making coffee, and peacefully getting ready for the day. Were they all deaf or drunk?
I couldn’t figure it out, except that the surf was amazing. The water was warm—no suits just baggy shorts and our boards. Slow, perfect mounds gliding toward shore, around 3 – 5 foot our first morning. The kids were dumbstruck and pleaded that we stay there for the rest of the trip. We managed to stay for two nights. From San Onofre, we spent a day hitting the sights around LA.
Empty and sad . . .
Venice Beach, always a weird stew of beach bums, muscle maestros, LSD hazed hippies, tourists, and other colorful and fascinating riff raff, was nearly empty. It was left with the tragically homeless and the drug-wracked, minus any uplifting color or tourist gawkers. Covid had left it barren so that the dirt and grime eclipsed any remnant of the gaudy and the bizarre. The homeless and addicted sat on blankets or wandered aimlessly along the promenade, having given up any pretense about their condition or their place on these hard-stained streets. The basketball courts, always a buzz of leaping and laughing athletes, had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. The shops and restaurants, about a quarter of which were open, smelled of urine and had a barrage of warning signs about social distancing and masks. We moved on quickly, not ready for the face of American poverty that has always been there but that is usually masked by the so-called art of commerce.
Cordoned off basketball courts at Venice Beach
From Venice Beach, bizarrely, we went first to Santa Monica pier with its art deco neon sign (not lit) and then up into Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Beverly Hills was relatively deserted, a few super cars and a pair of cops who checked the plates on our outer space like camper trailer. Elena stopped to take a picture against the “pink wall,” a site of various quasi-celebrity shots. Now it was empty, just a concrete wall painted hastily pink to counter the harsh yellow sunlight of Southern California. The “Walk of Fame” in Hollywood was void of most tourists; more homeless people unlucky and stranded. We caught a quick glimpse of the Hollywood sign and when I asked if we should circle around for a better look, no one responded. We quickly ascended the ramp onto the 101 freeway, heading north. After an hour or so we reached Highway 1, the “Pacific Coast Highway” (PCH), that meanders its way up the coast, crossing between rolling hills, Spanish style towns, and the long beaches that epitomize Southern California. We watched all this landscape, happy that it was free of the people we had seen across LA who were lost and dazed by the impact of COVID.