I've had this one reoccurring dream recently. 

You know the kind: sweat, knotted sheets, the frantic sensation of a bedroom at rest suddenly illuminated by the slash of the big light. Anyway, I have this midnight vision at least once a week where I have to go for a pint with this one guy I always see in the parking lot at the wave I surf in the mornings. Have I actually talked to him before? No. Not yet. I'm quite sure we have the same office-to-work-from-home-to-office schedule though. So, we’re always within render distance. It's also not a huge parking lot. 

He’s got a beige car, a wetsuit rinse bucket, and changes into khakis which he tucks a button-up into after every surf. I always run down the beach to a different peak so I’ve only actually seen him in the water a few times, and he’s just fine. A real drop-in, do that weird pump motion where it’s all in your toes, sad top turn, and finish it with a floater type. He does rock up with a fresh board every four-ish months though and, I’m sorry, but at that skill level has all the unerring energy of someone whose favourite Sunday activity is typing, “best high-performance shortboards 2023” into Google. “Used to have the JS Monsta,” he’s telling me, while he sips an IPA he got on draught that he left to warm up to room temperature before he drank it, and I say: Right. “It’s got the FCS II boxes on it. Bought the Nathan Florence ones after I saw his video about them.” That must be good for travelling, I say. “It is, yeah. Have you seen his YouTube series?” No, I haven’t. We fall into a lull of silence. “Got the Slater Designs one after, though…” Have you ever, I ask, screwed five fins into one of those boards all at once? 

It always ends the same way: He thinks for a moment. “Have I surfed with five fins in at once?” he whispers. This man is boring but he also has all the air of someone who is an absolute fucking nutter. His eyes look right through me behind blue light glasses and I hear, distantly, a sound like a metal filing cabinet falling over. Like a bullet being loaded into a gun. "Yeah," he says, eyelids flickering slightly. "Yeah, I saw Kelly do it once on Instagram.” And then I open my mouth to speak but suddenly my head’s back on resting heavily on the pillow.

If you’ve lived and surfed anywhere on this planet you know people like this are everywhere. Sometimes they’re very standard human filler. But there are other times when they are some of the most interesting people you can come across. In fact, some of the best regular interactions happen with concrete crustaceans. Concrete crustaceans? Yes, like a crab or lobster or maybe even a prawn only not. These are a species that crawl around and bask in various parking lots and other salt-water adjacent asphalt plots. Solitary, more common than you think, and strange to look at after you do it for too long. "Little bit hot today," that guy who drives in a wetsuit to the beach but always just tosses it lazily into the boot of his car afterwards is saying. Do you panic? Sorry, I don’t want your fucking life story, mate, you say. Is that right? Wrong. 

See, people are weird, and crustaceans are doubly so. Our little thing of waking up every morning so we can bend the will of the actual ocean to our exact needs and desires is, objectively, a silly exercise. So the people who do it on a consistent enough basis are bound to have some strange things going on underneath their rolled-up beanies. As someone who has spent a charmed bit of their life jaunting across the globe, I've come across some finer species. Anyway, here are some standouts:

Barcelona: The Surfealis Au Naturalist.

Barcelona is about as fine as a city can get and its people are even better. It’s a big city however and like any other big city not everyone is as exciting and welcoming as you’d expect. You know the type. Your life has a few stars and then a few- hundred-thousand dog turds, and by that I mean there is a lot of this man: Lad Who Was Always Trying To Surf Barceloneta When I’d Go There To Also Jump In The Water Every Morning. 

Whenever I was going for a dip before class or work, he was there. Nothing weird about it. Normal behaviour. Admirable, if anything, all his flailing about and slow pop-ups in the flattest Mediterranean slop. The only thing was he always stripped down to the full nude after to rinse off and then tan. Every day. Me, being young and an idiot who grew up in a god-fearing American Catholic home, filed this sort of behaviour under: Just A European Thing. When I told my Gràcia-born roommate about it much later he put his caña of Estrella down slowly. “No, no, no,” he shook his head and said. “That man is a freak.” Runs in Parc de la Ciutadella were more regular after that. 

San Diego: Hookdius Ondes Bookdius Horribilis Conversationalus.

Going off that quick comment I made earlier about my god-fearing upbringing: I’d like to clear the air and say that I do not like the idea of all that anymore. I’m still filled with constant fear and alarm but it's mostly just for that whole business. The god we’ve invented for ourselves in America to fulfil our peculiarly American needs is a sinister bit. So, yeah: not about that. 

In saying that there’s this guy who parks his car in the exact same spot, all day, every day at the spot I grew up surfing and still surf whenever I’m visiting home. He’s actually not that bad of a surfer. Very, “Goes for the barrel every time on the same yellowing single-fin,” type. The only thing is he also has a, “I wear the same Hawaiian shirt every single day, am deeply positive, and I also am religious to the point it’s uncomfortable,” vibe. 

Sadly, I went to grade school with him so if he ever gets a good wave I feel obligated to give him a, “Hey, nice wave.” He always returns the favour by firing back a, “Hey, thanks, you’re not still sinning and living a terrible life and will be back at church on Sunday?” And it’s like, remember that time you got hit with a basketball in the face in P.E. so hard you just started crying uncontrollably? Remember, you cried so much the nurse thought you'd had anaphylaxis? But I don’t say that though because I don’t have time for people that just end any conversation by waving anything with, “King James,” printed on its front cover.

Sydney: Soundus Homelessalia Blokea.

This one was interesting because he was actually a phenomenal surfer and just a Really Sound Bloke. Cracked jokes, was friendly but not overbearing or weird, had other things to do so it’s not like he was always hanging around. All that plus he seemed to be genuine friends with some of my mates out there so it was, like, he has to be normal, right? Yeah, his van was always parked in the beach lot, like, all the time. But all our cars were just around the corner as it was by work so I just tacked it up to him having impeccable parking luck. 

Anyway, there was one day some coworkers and I were all sharing tins with him after a good post-work surf when he decided to actually pop open the van and show us what was inside. “That’s my travel mug, there,” he said, pointing at a carafe in the front. “Heat that up with an attachment for the ciggy lighter for five minutes, and it’s hot enough to boil.” A coverless duvet was artlessly thrown over a thin mattress on top of a bit of plywood in the back. “That’s me office, right here,” he said while he held a laptop up, charging it from a large portable brick-like travel unit. “Never liked driving down to Syd for the 9-to-5 every day, so this is quite handy.” Is that a single, sink-washed white shirt hanging to dry behind the passenger seat? It is. There’s a shoe rack in there. The guy lived in his car.

Los Angeles: Techilis Fuckboilis Malibus.

Los Angeles is a wonderful place and that’s why I spent close to a decade living there. It's, unfortunately, suffering from the same disease New York and San Francisco caught before it. And by that I mean people are moving into it and treating the place like university halls, but for rich adults. 

The set-up is this: shitty apartments built in the 80s that are just repainted but advertised as, “Private Studios!” for upwards of $3000 a month. Bench-and-exposed-bulb work wine bars where a horrendous flight of vino is prohibitively expensive to the point your bank calls to make sure you’re not getting hit with a fraudulent charge after you order one to split. 

Thousands of other 27-year-olds who either work at an advertising agency they hate or in real estate and refuse to grow up are infecting the place. If this is new information to you, then: I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s just turned into London but with more sun. It’s okay, there are still some amazing pockets. 

The coastlines have fallen, though. All the beach lots are filled with the same immaculate Audi wagons with the same off-the-rack thruster roped onto the top (always on the top, why? Just put it in the boot, you have the room) of the roof. And you park your car and want to get out and confront the person in the spot next to you who’s firing up an actual drone so he can film himself. And you want to shout, "What're you going to do? Bag a clip of you straightening out on two-foot wind slop!” at him and then get in close and whisper, “Just because you are spending a lot of money doing something, doesn't mean people are going to notice you doing it.” But you don’t because you don’t want to get locked into a conversation that’ll only end with them trying to show you their Instagram that’s just a bunch of different photos of them at a wedding posing with a moustache on a stick or something. So you say nothing and run up the beach to surf the beach break instead.