The Tyranny of Tradition

The Beach: America’s Garbage Can

Summer is just around the corner, which means a bunch of mindless automatons (often referred to derisively as Americans) will be burning their feet on scorching hot sand and wallowing in polluted, filthy water in order to have what the kids today call “fun”. The hotter it gets, the more people crowd into these mini-hells in order to soak up as much skin cancer as they can. Beaches are like giant moron magnets.

The beach is the single worst place in the world. Every last one of them. When I was a kid, we’d occasionally go to Jones Beach. If you got there by about 5 AM, you’d be one of the lucky people who go to get into Beach 6. It was everyone’s favorite because it was a short walk to the water. If you were any later than that, you’d stumble through a stretch of land resembling the Gobi Desert in order to have the rare treat of spending the day rolling around in dirt and washing it off with salt. I still swear I once saw a Jawa buying an ice cream sandwich from a vendor somewhere around the 11-mile mark of Beach 1.

Myself and Several Bedouins I Met On Our 8 Hour Walk To The Waters of Beach 1

If I wanted something a little closer to home, there was always Glen Island, made famous for its rare ability to attract used syringes, putrefied squirrel carcasses, tires and tennis balls. Demotion Hammer fans probably know what I’m talking about because I believe the song “Infectious Hospital Waste” was inspired by a trip there.

Of course, there was always Orchard Beach, a vile place that always smelled vaguely like horse vomit and Muscatel. Orchard Beach had a lovely, post-apocalyptic type ambiance that always made me feel like I was on the set of one of the Mad Max films.

What amazes me is the willingness people have to spend gobs of money to plunk themselves down in the middle of some miserable tourist trap surrounded by screaming children, drunken college students and kvetching adults under terribly uncomfortable conditions in order to what…relax???

Fork over hundreds of dollars to get on a crowded plane next and sit six centimeters from some chronic halitosis sufferer. In order to fork over hundreds more to stay in a shoebox sized room with LeRoy Nieman paintings and HBO. In order to burn your skin to the point where it peels off of your body.   In order to take selfies that no one except for stalkers and the NSA care to see. In order to find what passes for happiness in this sick, decaying world of ours. In order to dream the same futile, ridiculous dream for 50 more weeks until you can repeat the unpleasantness again if you don’t drop dead first.

But, hell, who am I to ruin someone else’s obscene, twisted fantasy? You want to be a lobster colored version of Walter Mitty? Go ahead. You like the sensations of hot filth and wet slime all over your body? Have at it. You want to pass off discomfort as joy and feculence as beauty? Be my guest. Only don’t talk to me about it. As a matter of fact, just don’t talk to me. Not until winter anyway.