Today is the first day of Summer, though I have been feeling like it’s been Summer for a while now. Living at the beach in San Diego, it’s sort of hard to identify “Spring.” You can kind of identify Winter, and you can sort of identify Fall. But it is always easy to identify Summer here in Ocean Beach, because, basically, it is the worst time of the year to be here.

I think it is pretty obvious to anyone who reads my blog on any sort of a regular basis that I adore where I live. But, I have to say, and especially on the eve of the real and true Summer, that it can get pretty tiresome around these parts this time of year. I suppose it is the same on the Jersey shore, and I reckon that the locals on the Amalfi Coast are pretty happy when October 1st arrives. In Summer, if you are where people want to spend time in the Summer, you are going to suffer. Your city or village or town isn’t yours anymore.

I guess I am kind of cranky because last night there was a riotous party on my street. On a Tuesday night! There is a group of four ugly two-story houses that stay empty for most of the year until the owner can price gouge a bunch of youngsters who want to live by the beach for a while. Now there are twenty? thirty? fratty types milling about down there. Last night, it sounded like they were all bobbing for apples with a bunch of porn stars or something. It was LOUD. And I am laying in bed at midnight thinking, oh fuck. Here we go again. Summertime. It’s just too damned hot to close the window and shut them out. Trapped with the whoo hoo’s of the Duh Generation for at least two months.

There are, of course, lots of good things about living here in the Summer…. the warm nights sitting by the ocean with that salty spray hitting your face, that lethal but super-fun combination of wine and heat, watching the sunburnt tourists and the setting sun through the windows of The Vine. The sound of fireworks at Sea World. Really tan, practically naked young men walking down the street. Girls, too. And I guess I sometimes wonder, was I as clueless as these kids when I was their age? Was I as loud or as unconscious of my ripple effect on the world around me? I don’t think I was, but I could be wrong.

I’ll get used to it all over again, and then the cool wind of October will blow, and I will once again walk down the street in my own town again. I’ll never stop smiling, living here. But then, that first day when I know they are all gone, I’ll look like the fucking Joker.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.