Growing up in sunny Southern California beach towns, from Redondo to Avila, San Francisco's Ocean Beach has never held much appeal. I moved to the big city in the 1970s to be around smart people and leave mindless beach culture behind.
Forty-plus years later, Ocean Beach has become a safe haven during the pandemic for long, maskless walks, and it has been fascinating watching the animal and human life inhabiting its shores.
There are fitness enthusiasts on extrovert display, though not the multitudes of Southern California beaches.
There are also surfers...
...whose courage I admire immensely.
The ocean temperature hovers around 51 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter...
...and the sea is usually turbulent...
...with strong currents, riptides...
...and a long line of wave breaks.
Over the last month, dozens of amateur crabbers have arrived...
...setting up fishing poles on the shoreline...
...to snag Dungeness crabs with bait and entangling wire bundles.
The crabbers seemed to be responsible about throwing back undersized crustaceans into the ocean...
...while keeping others for a seafood feast.
And then there were people whose joy was in building castles out of wet sand.
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