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Albertsons LLC is an equal opportunity employer.Find Your Nearest, Cleanest Beach | Newsweek
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Find Your Beach
Amani Willett/Gallery Stock
New York City, 2009; photograph by Amani Willett. A collection of his images, Disquiet, was published by Damiani last year.
Across the way from our apartment—on Houston, I guess—there’s a new wall ad. The site is forty feet high, twenty feet wide. It changes once or twice a year. Whatever’s on that wall is my view: I look at it more than the sky or the new World Trade Center, more than the water towers, the passing cabs. It has a subliminal effect. Last semester it was a spot for high-end vodka, and while I wrangled children into their snowsuits, chock-full of domestic resentment, I’d find myself dreaming of cold martinis.Before that came an ad so high-end I couldn’t tell what it was for. There was no text—or none that I could see—and the visual was of a yellow firebird set upon a background of hellish red. It seemed a gnomic message, deliberately placed to drive a sleepless woman mad. Once, staring at it with a newborn in my arms, I saw another mother, in the tower opposite, holding her baby. It was 4 AM. We stood there at our respective windows, separated by a hundred feet of expensive New York air.The tower I live in is univ so is the tower opposite. The idea occurred that it was quite likely that the woman at the window also wrote books for a living, and, like me, was not writing anything right now. Maybe she was considering antidepressants. Maybe she was already on them. It was hard to tell. Certainly she had no way of viewing the ad in question, not without opening her window, jumping, and turning as she fell. I was her view. I was the ad for what she already had.But that was all some time ago. Now the ad says: Find your beach. The bottle of beer—it’s an ad for beer—is very yellow and the background luxury-holiday-blue. It seems to me uniquely well placed, like a piece of commissioned public art in perfect sympathy with its urban site. The tone is pure Manhattan. Echoes can be found in the personal growth section of the bookstore (“Find your happy”), and in exercise classes (“Find your soul”), and in the therapist’s office (“Find your self”). I find it significant that there exists a more expansive, national version of this ad that runs in magazines, and on television.
In those cases photographic images are used, and the beach is real and seen in full. Sometimes the tag line is expanded, too: When life gives you limes…Find your beach. But the wall I see from my window marks the entrance to Soho, a district that is home to media moguls, entertainment lawyers, every variety of celebrity, some students, as well as a vanishingly small subset of rent-controlled artists and academics.Collectively we, the people of Soho, consider ourselves pretty sophisticated consumers of media. You can’t put a cheesy ad like that past us. And so the ad has been reduced to its essence—a yellow undulation against a field of blue—and painted directly onto the wall, in a bright pop-art style. The mad men know that we know the Soho being referenced here: the Soho of Roy Lichtenstein and Ivan Karp, the Soho that came before Foot Locker, Sephora, Prada, frozen yogurt. That Soho no longer exists, of course, but it’s part of the reason we’re all here, crowded on this narrow strip of a narrow island. Whoever placed this ad knows us well. Find your beach. The construction is odd. A faintly threatening mixture of imperative and possessive forms, the transformation of a noun into a state of mind. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. On the one hand it means, simply, “Go out and discover what makes you happy.” Pursue happiness actively, as Americans believe it their right to do. And it’s an ad for beer, which makes you happy in the special way of all intoxicants, by reshaping reality around a sensation you alone are having. So, even more precisely, the ad means: “Go have a beer and let it make you happy.” Nothing strange there. Except beer used to be sold on the dream of communal fun: have a beer with a buddy, or lots of buddies. People crowded the frame, laughing and smiling. It was a lie about alcohol—as this ad is a lie about alcohol—but it was a different kind of lie, a wide-framed lie, including other people.Here the focus is narrow, almost obsessive. Everything that is not absolutely necessary to your happiness has been removed from the visual horizon. The dream is not only of happiness, but of happiness conceived in perfect isolation. Find your beach in the middle of the city. Find your beach no matter what else is happening. Do not be distracted from finding your beach. Find your beach even if—as in the case of this wall painting—it is not actually there. Create this beach inside yourself. Carry it with you wherever you go. The pursuit of happiness has always seemed to me a somewhat heavy American burden, but in Manhattan it is conceived as a peculiar form of duty.In an exercise class recently the instructor shouted at me, at all of us: “Don’t let your mind set limits that aren’t really there.” You’ll find this attitude all over the island. It is encouraged and reflected in the popular culture, especially the movies, so many of which, after all, begin their creative lives here, in Manhattan. According to the movies it’s only our own limited brains that are keeping us from happiness. In the future we will take a pill to make us limitless (and ideal citizens of Manhattan), or we will, like Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, use 100 percent of our brain’s capacity instead of the mythic 10. In these formulations the world as it is has no real claim on us. Our happiness, our miseries, our beaches, or our blasted heaths—they are all within our own power to create, or destroy. On Tina Fey’s television show 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy—the consummate citizen of this new Manhattan—deals with problems by crushing them with his “mind vise.”The beach is always there: you just have to conceive of it. It follows that those who fail to find their beach are, in the final analysis, in Manhattan terms, simply weak. Jack Donaghy’s verbal swordplay with Liz Lemon was a comic rendering of the various things many citizens of Manhattan have come to regard as fatal weakness: childlessness, obesity, poverty. To find your beach you have to be ruthless. Manhattan is for the hard-bodied, the hard-minded, the multitasker, the alpha mamas and papas. A perfect place for self-empowerment—as long as you’re pretty empowered to begin with. As long as you’re one of these people who simply do not allow anything—not even reality—to impinge upon that clear field of blue.There is a kind of individualism so stark that it seems to dovetail with an existentialist creed: Manhattan is right at that crossroads. You are pure potential in Manhattan, limitless, you are making yourself every day. When I am in England each summer, it’s the opposite: all I see are the limits of my life. The brain that puts a hairbrush in the fridge, the leg that radiates pain from the hip to the toe, the lovely children who eat all my time, the books unread and unwritten.And casting a shadow over it all is what Philip Larkin called “extinction’s alp,” no longer a stable peak in a distance, finally becoming rising ground. In England even at the actual beach I cannot find my beach. I look out at the freezing 40-degree water, at the families squeezed into ill-fitting wetsuits, huddled behind windbreakers, approaching a day at the beach with the kind of stoicism once conjured for things like the Battle of Britain, and all I can think is what funny, limited creatures we are, subject to every wind and wave, building castles in the sand that will only be knocked down by the generation coming up beneath us.When I land at JFK, everything changes. For the first few days it is a shock: I have to get used to old New York ladies beside themselves with fury that I have stopped their smooth elevator journey and got in with some children. I have to remember not to pause while walking in the street—or during any fluid-moving city interaction—unless I want to utterly exasperate the person behind me. Each man and woman in this town is in pursuit of his or her beach and God help you if you get in their way. I suppose it should follow that I am happier in pragmatic England than idealist Manhattan, but I can’t honestly say that this is so. You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. “A reality shaped around your own desires”—there is something sociopathic in that ambition.It is also a fair description of what it is to write fiction. And to live in a city where everyone has essentially the same tunnel vision and obsessive focus as a novelist is to disguise your own sociopathy among the herd. Objectively all the same limits are upon me in Manhattan as they are in England. I walk a ten-block radius every day, constrained in all the usual ways by domestic life, reduced to writing about whatever is right in front of my nose. But the fact remains that here I do write, the work gets done.Even if my Manhattan productivity is powered by a sociopathic illusion of my own limitlessness, I’m thankful for it, at least when I’m writing. There’s a reason so many writers once lived here, beyond the convenient laundromats and the take-out food, the libraries and cafés. We have always worked off the energy generated by this town, the money-making and tower-building as much as the street art and underground cultures. Now the energy is different: the underground has almost entirely disappeared. (You hope there are still young artists in Washington Heights, in the Barrio, or Stuyvesant Town, but how much longer can they hang on?) A twisted kind of energy radiates instead off the soulcycling mothers and marathon-running octogenarians, the entertainment lawyers glued to their iPhones and the moguls building five “individualized” condo townhouses where once there was a hospital.It’s not a pretty energy, but it still runs what’s left of the show. I contribute to it. I ride a stationary bike like the rest of them. And then I despair when Shakespeare and Co. closes in favor of another Foot Locker. There’s no way to be in good faith on this island anymore. You have to crush so many things with your mind vise just to get through the day. Which seems to me another aspect of the ad outside of my window: willful intoxication. Or to put it more snappily: “You don’t have to be high to live here, but it helps.”Finally the greatest thing about Manhattan is the worst thing about Manhattan: self-actualization. Here you will be free to stretch yourself to your limit, to find the beach that is yours alone. But sooner or later you will be sitting on that beach wondering what comes next. I can see my own beach ahead now, as the children grow, as the p I see afresh the huge priv it reclarifies itself. Under the protection of a university I live on one of the most privileged strips of built-up beach in the world, among people who believe they have no limits and who push me, by their very proximity, into the same useful delusion, now and then.It is such a good town in which to work and work. You can find your beach here, find it falsely, but convincingly, still thinking of Manhattan as an isle of writers and artists—of downtown underground wildlings and uptown intellectuals—against all evidence to the contrary. Oh, you still see them occasionally here and there, but unless they are under the protection of a university—or have sold that TV show—they are all of them, every single last one of them, in Brooklyn.
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&& October 23, 2014 &&Rent a soft surfboard your first time out. Don't invest in your own surfboard if you've never tried before. At most beaches good for surfing, rental spots will be available close to the beach, offering pretty cheap rental options, by the hour or by the day.
You'll usually be able to choose between soft surfboards, sometimes called "foamies," which are lightweight and much cheaper than epoxy or fiberglass boards, which tend to be more expensive. Soft boards are extremely buoyant and durable, making them a good choice for beginners.
If you're not sure what you want, talk to people at the surf shop. Be honest and tell them that you're a first-timer and you want to know what you need to get started.
Try out a longboard while you're first learning. Longboards are the oldest and longest type of surfboard commonly available, ranging from 8 to 12 feet (2.4 to 3.7 m) in length. While they're not quite as maneuverable or versatile as other types of boards, longboards are often recommended for beginners because of their ease of use.
If you've tried a longboard and want something a little more maneuverable, funboards are hybrid boards which are typically 7–8.5 feet (2.1–2.6 m) are a bit shorter. Funboards combine the smoothness and stability of a longboard with some of the agility of a shortboard.
Work your way up to a shortboard. Shortboards are less than seven feet long, with a sharp nose and multiple fins. It takes more practice to master than longer types of surfboard, but is considered the definitive high-performance board for the pros.
Fish boards are even shorter than a shortboard, and much wider. The flatness and small profile make it ideal for riding small surf that other boards sometimes struggle with. It's a great board for intermediate surfers on up.
Alternatively, The Gun is another more advanced board. These boards are thin boards with very thin noses designed for experts surfing the very biggest waves. It can handle tall drops and high speeds with ease, but its hard to control if you're a beginner.
. In many places, a wetsuit is just as essential as the board itself to ensure an enjoyable surfing experience. The wetsuit keeps your body warm in cold water, helping prevent chills and hypothermia. If your surf shop recommends a wetsuit, get fitted and rent or purchase one before you hit the beach.
. Surfboard wax is an important and inexpensive product that can be rubbed onto the top of a surfboard to increase foot grip, allowing better balance in the water. Ask your surf shop which type is appropriate for the temperature of the water you will be surfing in.
Get a leash for your board. It keeps you and your board from separating in the water. If you wipe out you don't want to be stuck out in the breaking waves without a board. You also don't want your board floating freely into other surfers or smashing up against the rocks.
If you are riding for the very first time, it's great to rent a foam surfboard rather than a fiberglass one, as they are softer and less likely to cause you injury while learning.
Practice on the ground first. Attach the leash to your back foot and to the tail of your board, the lie belly-down on the board so that your body is lined up straight down the middle of the board. From this position, practice your paddling motion with both arms to get a sense of the muscles that you will be working.
Don't just jump into the water when you're trying to surf, or you'll get frustrated quickly. Take a little bit of time to practice on the sand, or in the privacy of your backyard, before you're on the beach in front of others.
Practice getting up. "Taking off" from the board and standing up takes a bit of practice. While lying on the board, bring your hands up from the paddling and place your hands on the flat part of the deck. In one quick motion, push your body up with your arms and tuck your feet up and under. Place one foot where your hands pushed up from, and the other at least a shoulders width behind.
Some beginners find it easier to "walk" up the board until your feet are under your body. It's slower then the jump up, but it works effectively for someone not ready for the jump up.
Never grab the rails or edges of the board during your take off, unless you want to get a nice gash on your chin when your hands slip off your rail.
You can practice taking off without a surfboard present, so feel free to do it wherever you have a bit of space until you feel comfortable doing it.
Learn to stand on the board properly. Once you've taken off, keep your knees bent, your arms loose and extended, and your torso leaned forward to lower your center of gravity.
Depending on which foot comes naturally in front, you'll be either a "regular foot" or "goofyfoot." Regular means that your left foot is in front, goofy foot means your right foot leads.
Beginners have a tendency to adopt a "stinkbug" stance when learning. Their feet are widely spread apart from bow to stern of their boards. This might feel comfortable, but it actually makes it harder to control. Balance is side-to-side, not front to back. You will notice that experienced surfers usually ride with their feet much closer together.
Paddle around and get comfortable in the water. The only way to find the "sweet spot" on your board is to take it into the water and paddle. Your board should plane across the water, the nose slightly above the water.
If your nose is to high up, you're to far back on the board, if it digs water, you're to far forward. It is essential to find the sweet spot as that is where you will achieve maximum paddling efficiency.
Paddle with long, deep strokes from as far forward to as far back as you can comfortably reach.
Talk to more experienced surfers or instructors if you get the chance. The best way to practice and prepare for hitting the beach is with another person nearby who knows more about surfing than you do, and can provide feedback and advice.
If you have a friend who surfs, ask for help. Friends don't usually charge and you can practice privacy of your own home rather than on the beach in front of others.
Pay an instructor. This is the most reliable way to learn the basics of surfing in a clear, methodical way. For a fee, he or she will teach you all you need to know and give you pointers that will help you get out into the surf and having fun quickly.
Find a spot. Before you plan to surf, visit a couple good surfing beaches and take a good long swim to make sure you feel confident in the water. Never surf anywhere you aren't comfortable swimming on your own.
Ask around for advice. Ask your local surf shop, or surfers at advanced surf breaks where beginners should surf. They will be happy to point you to an appropriate spot.
Check online. If you can't find any advice that seems reliable, go online and search for recommendations there. You will often be able to find discussion boards for local surfers that have good information.
Play it safe. If there is a lifeguard tower, plan to surf at a time when the lifeguard is on duty. Take some time to ask other surfers on the beach if they have any advice or warnings for you.
Learn basic surfing etiquette before you head out. Knowing the basic rules of the surf will help you make sure that your first time out is fun and safe. Here are a few basic safety rules to keep in mind:
Respect the right of way. When there is more than one surfer paddling to catch a wave, the person who has paddled closest to the peak has the right of way for that wave.
Don't "drop in" on others. Paddling to catch or dropping into a wave while someone is already riding closer to the peak is considered rude and potentially dangerous. Remember to scan the line of the wave for other surfers before you try to catch it.
Very popular and busy beginner surfing locations don't usually have these strict rules and multiple people will often ride the same wave (sometimes referred to as a "party wave"). If two people are waiting on the same wave, whichever person catches it first and is closer to the peak has the right of way.
Set a target spot. You want to be waist deep in the white water, where the waves have already broken. This is the best place to start when you're a beginner. Don't plan on paddling too far out where more advanced surfers might be waiting for a set, but make sure you are in deep enough water to keep from hitting your head should you fall off your board.
Pick a reference point. Choose a landmark on the shore and glance at it periodically as you move into deeper water. This will help you gauge your distance, and reveal any hidden currents that might be moving you.
Paddle to your spot. When you're ready to go out into the waves, walk your board out until you're about waist or chest-deep, then lie on the board and paddle straight into the waves.
Paddle straight when you are paddling out. If you hit the waves at a glancing angle, you will lose the forward momentum you've built up. Stay perpendicular to the oncoming waves and “cut” through them instead.
Turn your board and wait for an appropriate wave. Sit back on your board until the nose is up out of the water. Kick your legs to turn the board around toward the shore. Position yourself in your sweet spot and get ready to paddle for the wave using long, smooth, deep strokes.
When you see a wave coming, get into position as near the peak as you can without appearing to be a "wave hog." When you are satisfied that you are in a good position to catch the wave, paddle like there's no tomorrow and give it all you've got!
Start paddling and try to catch the wave. When you have a good sense of the speed and motion of the wave, and you feel that sense that you've caught its momentum, take off using the techniques you've been practicing.
Keep looking forward as you paddle. When you turn around you loose power.
Be quick. You want to catch the wave before it breaks, so you have time to get up on the board.
Be patient. If you miss a wave, just paddle back out and wait for the next likely candidate.
Ride the wave. With your feet planted on the board, your knees bent, and your arms loose, you're now surfing your first wave! Stay focused and let it carry you in to shore.
Start simple. At first, you should ride each wave straight in. This is a shorter and slower way to ride than angling on a wave, but it is easier to get the hang of.
Try turning when you're ready. As you become accustomed to the feeling of surfing, you will probably want to try angling your board across a wave. Lean into your turn with your body, keeping your center of gravity on the board. Use your body to gently dip one rail of your board into the face of the wave. This creates friction/drag that will turn the board. Once you catch the right angle, maintain balance and ride down the curl.
Pick the direction you want to ride across the wave (left or right) early. If the wave is low enough, begin paddling in that direction before the wave hits. For larger waves, wait until you are getting pulled up onto the wave.
Get ready to wipe out. If you feel yourself falling, or if the wave dies down, jump away from the board toward the ocean and away from your momentum. Go with the flow, letting the wave carry you. Swim upwards gently and feel ahead of yourself to avoid getting hit by the board.
Once you have safely surfaced, pull your leash and climb back onto your board to prevent it from scything or flopping through the water, which can cause serious injury to yourself and others. Climb aboard, rest on your belly, and regain control.
Most wipe out injuries happen as a result of the board hitting the surfer. Always remember to bail to the ocean side of your board. You don't want to be between the beach and your board when a wave has control of the board.
Use the channels to get out of the way. After you wipeout or bail, you need to get out of the way so that other people can surf. Don't paddle up the middle of the break where other surfers will be coming. Instead, paddle off to the side first, to keep the wave zone clear.
Keep trying. You'll probably slide off the first few times, but don't be deterred. Some people can learn in an afternoon, while others take a few weeks to get the hang of things. Keep trying and you'll eventually make it.
Avoid getting to your knees. If you're going to commit, commit. Going to your knees is like saddling the horse but not riding it.
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For example:Don't say: Eat more fats.Do say: Add fats with some nutritional value to the foods you already eat. Try olive oil, butter, avocado, and mayonnaise.
In case you wipeout, practice holding your breath for long periods some waves can keep you under longer than others. Watch out for other waves that might head your way while you're down!
Don't be embarrassed that you're bad, because you're not. You're just new to surfing, that's all.
Always follow the advice of safety signs and more experienced surfers.
Respect the local community wherever you surf. Follow rules and be friendly.
Look the way you want to go (the shore), not down at your board.
Sit-ups and push-ups are a great way to tone up for surfing. Most actions in surfing depend primarily on the muscle groups that these exercises improve.
Don't freak out if you're underwater after a big wave.
Always surf with a buddy. It's safer and if you wipe out they can help you. They can also help push you into a wave!
Don't be afraid to ask for help! Many advanced surfers are glad to help beginners as long as they're polite.
Boogie board first. It will help you get the feel of riding the waves.
If you are totally new to surfing you could consider getting an instructor.
It is generally suggested that a beginning surfer use a board that is more than adequate to support their body weight. The buoyancy of the board as well as the stability are paramount considerations. A longboard is generally the choice of most beginners for just those reasons, buoyancy and stability. Many wannabe surfers will select a board that is improper to their skill level, never really learn to surf because of poor board selection and give it up.
Opening your eyes in ocean water doesn't hurt, look up to ensure that your board isn't lurking directly above you.
Never, ever call it a "POP UP," it's a take off! What are you, toaster strudel? Consult a licensed psychiatrist.
Stay calm. A wipe out can be dangerous, but if you keep your head there is usually nothing to fear. Think clearly and act decisively to minimize your risk.
Don't surf alone, especially as a beginner. Even a friend on the shore is safer than going solo.
If you get caught in a riptide, swim parallel to shore until you find the end of it, rather than trying to fight your way straight through it. If you can't swim parallel, tread water or float, and yell for help.
Avoid riptides. Riptides look like sand at the top of the water, and can appear brown or reddish. They usually form near rock jetties, reefs, and piers.
Stay close to the beach, in surf that's suitable for beginners, until you're thoroughly experienced with beginner waves.
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