Surf Ticket

Another south swell had called me away from work. I arrived late, dusk, and had to hurry to beat the darkness (I hear Jaws music once the sun goes down).

Parking my car, I noticed a machine in the middle of the lot, a bloody parking meter!

First, they paved the place; now they’re charging for the “service.” It’s like one of those bums who washes your windshield at the intersection and expects you to pay for it afterward. Would surfers reduce themselves to pay a toll? No way. And neither would I. Besides, it was practically nighttime. Who would know?

I squirmed into my wetsuit, descended the cliff, and enjoyed 45 minutes of surf that made up for a year’s worth of flat days.



You’ll never guess what I found on my windshield when I returned to my car: a scantily dressed blonde with a thing for scrawny surfers. No, it was a parking ticket for $104. One hundred and four dollars. One hundred and four dollars! Let’s see. At my salary, it would take how many hours before taxes…

I had been parking in this lot since it was dirt. Who had the right to charge me for it now? I looked for God’s signature on the ticket but did not see it. Please, before my brain catches fire, allow me a rant.

Ahem.

What does it say to charge a man to park on public property? Isn’t it an arbitrary demand for us to empty our pockets before the passing guards? The moment I got that ticket, I went from surfer to serf, indebted to my lord. On the steps of city hall, an administrator is even now overlooking the city and thinking, They are all on my land, and it’s gonna cost them...

As an underline, the toll does not protect us from theft or vandalism or anything; it’s just a hall pass to park a car in the same space that was yesterday free. Does the government reserve the right to charge us any time we stop? Is it not enough that I hand over 25% of everything I earn and 8% of everything I spend?

If you try to walk
they’ll tax the street
If you try to sit
they’ll tax your seat...

Paid parking is an underhanded way of siphoning coins from the peasants. The capital generated by these tickets allegedly goes toward the preservation of our coast, but recent water samples deny it. In the Santa Monica Bay, it’s easy to spot surfers at night—they’re glowing.

I’ve watched this pave-and-charge scam up and down the coast for the past ten years. C-Street in Ventura used to be surfer paradise until someone recognized its money-making potential. They paved, and we paid. To their credit, the locals at first rebelled by breaking the machine so that no one could pay, but over time the revolution vanished like sand through so many fists. The nice thing about a law is that if it sticks around long enough, people will come to accept it without question. The right to bear arms, for instance, comes from a time when we actually had reason to use them.

You won’t find pay machines at beaches that are not frequented by surfers, which poses a final irony: the more attractive a beach is to surfers, the more likely it is for that beach to be tolled by local government. Surf, then, subtly dictates which beaches are paved and which are left in peace.

Most surfers don’t think about this stuff and are content to break things for a while, but the rest of us can’t ignore the fact that beaches are being permanently damaged to feed the machine.

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.