The Point

Walking down the sandy stairs and looking out at the crowded waves, I think about how Pleasure Point, a famous point break in Santa Cruz, earned its name during the Roaring ‘20s, long before surfing was even introduced to America.

In the beginning, there weren’t many homes on the point, just wheat farms. Then, an Irishman purchased a huge lot of land in 1902 and started constructing the Road House, which eventually became a popular saloon. It was one of the only buildings built on the cliffs overlooking the surf and became one of the biggest speakeasies in Santa Cruz in the 1920s. During Prohibition, its isolated location appealed to San Francisco bootleggers who buried boatloads of contraband liquor in the sand below the cliffs to be scooped up later.

Today, the sky is muted and there is no sand below the cliffs because the tide is too high. I will have to wait until this set has passed to paddle out into the silvery-blue waves. Might as well continue my story. Well, the Road House became quite popular during Prohibition because they welcomed everyone. The lively, free-spirited, and promiscuous Flapper girls of the ‘20s rented rooms upstairs at night, tying pleasure to the point. Since then, Pleasure Point has never been referred to by another name.

I enter the point’s frigid waters and it responds with a sudden splash in my face. I shut my eyes tight and when I reopen them, everything is white and gray with a blue tint. I’m awake. Colors return. I see some pink in her wetsuit and some red on his board.

Isn’t it weird that water doesn’t have a color, but we all associate a color with water in our minds? When I picture the ocean, I think of a deep turquoise that stretches in all directions and bounces the sun’s vibrance and warmth back at me. I have seen this exact color in the Caribbean Sea out of the window of a plane, but never in the beaches of California. Normally the ocean is a lighter blue when it’s sunny or greyer when it's cloudy. Today, the water is a shade of grey resembling the bottom of the puddles I splashed in as a kid.

Water has the unique ability to absorb the colors around it. I like to think that there is depth to the ocean’s colors, but sometimes it is just clear. The water is especially clear today. I can see straight through to the sand and the rocks below.

It has been a while since a wave has come by. My dad says we should move. I agree. We paddle to a big clump of kelp where the waves are breaking. My dad was right, there is a beautiful wave forming right before me. I paddle hard and catch the wave. I pop up and ride for about a second before the kelp suddenly takes hold of my board and I go flying off to the side. There is white water above me and pressure all around. Just a small wave, I think to myself. Air will fill my lungs soon enough, don’t panic. The wave passes and I take a gulp of air before getting on my board again and paddling out before I get hit by the next wave.

Birds flying low on the horizon. A whole group of them traveling to some faraway place. I wonder where they’re going? It is so quiet out here. All I hear is muted chatter, the occasional breaking of a wave, but mainly my own thoughts. Not too many people surround me. Just my dad and a couple of others I don’t know. We are on the shoulder, waiting for a wave again. Always waiting. But it is good waiting because it allows me to take notice of my surroundings.

Alas, some ripples appear on the horizon. Their sinusoidal fluctuations both scare and excite me. Today it’s not too big and the high tide is making the waves back off, but sometimes the small ripples keep building up and up until I feel as small as an ant staring up at the cusp of the wave before it comes crashing down on me. This ripple is not like that. This one just rolls under my board. But the next one is a little bigger and that one might break. Frequently, I catch myself and other surfers saying, “the next one looks good,” which says a lot about surfing. Time and patience are everything. Usually, the first wave in a set will be small, but the next wave may be the one that breaks right near you and you ride all the way in with a big smile on your face.

I love how consistent waves are. Point breaks are called so because quite obviously they are a point where waves always break. There will always be another wave. Even if the ripples sometimes don’t become surfable waves and peter out, there will always be another ripple on the horizon. You just have to wait and wait and wait some more. Hopefully, the ripple will amount to something. Hopefully I will amount to something.

Sofia McGee, 2022

Prose