Before I get started, I want to thank all of the people who overflowed my inbox with stories, thoughts, and ideas for the blog. All *checks notes* zero of you. Ha! Don’t worry, it’s okay. I know these things take time (and potentially a personal text) to get done.
That being said, my request still stands. Through you, me, us, we can turn this one-sided site into that chirpy, banter you might find at your local break and all over the world. That meaningless back and forth with some stranger that somehow means the world.
Just this morning, in the frosty and misty hours between sunrise and a 9 a.m. meeting, I had myself five waves and one twenty-five minute conversation with lifetime Ocean Beach local, Paul. You don’t know Paul? Me neither, until today.
About midway through my half mile long walk back to my car (god bless that OB current), I was run down by a grey haired man in a hoodie and baggy jeans with a lazy beard poking through the edges of his colorful mask. “Beautiful last wave of yours” he said “you were my lab rat out there. Looks manageable, I think I’m gonna have to check it out myself.”
I proceeded to explain the hellish high tide current which pulled myself and an incomprehensible amount of water four blocks north towards the Golden Gate, but ultimately ended my tired monologue with a “but yeah, couple fun ones for sure.” I wish I could tell you how many times I’ve said that. “But yeah, couple fun ones…” Almost as many times as I’ve heard it. What does that even mean? I’ve said that phrase on one foot days at Kaiko’s and I’ve said it at eight foot Ocean Beach. It gets sillier the more I think about it.
Somehow, this man ignored my ploy of passing small talk lingo, and introduced himself. The introduction began with his Dad, who used to surf OB with “the first group of dudes to do it.” He then moved on to his childhood, where he and his siblings could only surf if they stuck together (and were banished to a week of surfing Pacifica as punishment if they ever got split up). I watched in fear and awe as this introduction began to shape shift into a stroll down memory lane. He spoke, and I listened, and I spoke too, but it was clear who the real orator was.
Who was I to cut this man off?
“I’m Paul by the way.”
Who was I to cut Paul off?
I move through life with such haste, and then complain when years move through me just the same. Life is as good as the stories that it creates and what good is a story without a pair of ears to hear it. As I stood there, soggy and salty, Paul’s life began to take shape.
I didn’t get all the details of his life, but I did get the important ones. The ones about this wave, and his time surfing it. The more he talked, the more it became clear that his life was Ocean Beach. Having grown up in the Sunset, and having lived across the street from the beach for the past twenty-six years, it makes a sense that all his stories, all his paths, lead back to this beach right here.
From his siblings to his own children, having grown and watched grow, to his health and his injuries, a solo session after a run in with cancer and a long paddle to the beach with a torn rotator cuff. This man– Paul– tied every story he told back to his home break of Ocean Beach. He was inseparable to his sense of place.
To my own surprise, I found myself asking Paul more and more questions, completely entranced with this man’s relationship to this wave. All the while he continued to spew stories and namedrop legends into his cotton mask strapped tightly to his face.
“Where did this guy come from?” I thought to myself, retracing the events leading me to this moment. I caught that wave in… was walking back to my car… and then all of the sudden there he was, as if he had popped up out of the sand dunes like a ghost of Ocean Beach past.
Now, thinking back on this morning, it fills me with nothing but pleasure knowing that people like Paul exist not just in San Francisco, but in every swell-catching coastal city in the world. People, that most have never even heard of, who live a life in synchronization with the ocean and the waves. People full of knowledge and stories and memories that fizzle out of them like the foam in a cold can of beer.
Eventually, like all things, the conversation faded to an end. Actually, it didn’t fade. I had to cut it short (I had a meeting at 9 a.m. after all). I told Paul that it was great to meet him and that hopefully we would cross paths out in the water.
“I’m sure we will. Look for the old man on a standup paddleboard with a helmet. Everyone out there looks at me and thinks I’m a kook. But anyone actually from here knows I’m not a kook. Because they know that I fell off a four story building when I was fifty, and that I can’t get up off the couch without wincing. So, yeah, I’m the paddle boarder with the helmet.”
Huh. What the hell, Paul. Loud, quirky, welcoming, and defensive as the city and wave that made him.
BAMBOOBLISTER 
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