Good insights guys and thanks for chiming in. Recent visits to So Cal have just got me wondering as I see similarities with crowds in the water, people, and real estate prices. Agree about level of surfing and lack of groms but that is changing. Middle age, drive, cold water, and cold attitudes at any wave that mildly resembles a point or has a section with more than 2 turns have kinda gotten old. Having surfed a smorgasbord of good waves throughout most of my life, my penchant for the garbage is minimal. Granted rando dogs can have their day and sure you can take a hike or pull over at a rando and surf, but in the end and on the regs how good is it?
After transplanting over 25 years ago now from the left coast, some valley time, and then coast time here in the Beave State, pulled the rip cord after 7 dreamy years in a small coastal hamlet in between SC and SF for an job opp in PDX with hopes of eventually securing a job back on coast. Recession hit, kids came, and family got to damn comfortable here while my restless salty self suffered after about 3 years into PDX livin. Now here I am almost 15 years later
, job downtown 3mi from home fizzled, and had to take something way to fuking far then I care to travel on a daily basis granted surf commute is more ideal.
While I haven't been to the Bay Area since I left, I can see how people in PDX might be more welcoming to a new comer as I am sure things have changed down there, yet I have noticed an increasing rudeness outside of the hipster snobbery that has plagued the Rose City for some time now. Terrible traffic, more honking, more aggression, less smiling, less laid back, less chill, less rat racy, etc, etc, etc. shite some old fuker in a BMW SUV stoped just to yell at me the other day saying I didn’t have enough lights on my bike. Granted it was the Pearl and I’ll admit I did not have my main blinker on my back pack, but geeze the guy was cursing and screaming like I had banged his wife or something? Then the transgenders friend on the Max who got all up in arms when I called them a him. Shitt I wasn’t thinking about it, it just came out, and as far as I can tell it was a him
I guess its evident that I need some waves and maybe even a change of scenery, which seems to be a challenge for me at this point in life, but its certainly OK to dream about it.
Routine is a vampire. Manu Chao-