Tree Braids sculpted by Kirk Maxson

Dispatch from Ocean Beach.1

San Francisco’s Far West makes you wonder about everything

I wondered if they’d missed the turnoff to Santa Monica. The two young women, skin the color once known in the crayon box as Burnt Sienna, pinned down their towels with a beach bag bursting with water bottles and lotions. Their bikinis offered little protection against the windblown sand that nipped at their skin like biting ants. They giggled and shivered. Too late they’d learned one of Ocean Beach’s first lessons. With a few annual exceptions, this three-mile stretch of sand is not for sunbathers. It’s for thinkers, walkers, runners, artists, surfers, fisher folk, and dogs, not to mention the omnipresent birds of various tribes.

If the grid-like Avenues that border Ocean Beach are San Francisco’s residential stepchildren, Ocean Beach itself is its orphan. True, there’s heavy traffic on warm days in September and October, and everything from IMPEACH spell-outs to the Corgi-Fest attract crowds and attention. And there’s civic history. The Cliff House. Playland at the Beach. The Sutro Baths and Land’s End. But Ocean Beach is not loved to death every day like Fisherman’s Wharf or Lombard Street, and for those who live close enough to consider it ours, we like it that way. The current pandemic has only tightened this embrace.