I'm all for people getting their exercise during lockdown but I can't but feel that going surfing is taking the mick, even if you live close enough to walk to a beach.
I'm lucky enough to be in that category and could have paddled out today for a low-to-mid tide 2ft wave at my local spot. I won't name it, not because it's a secret spot (far from it) but because I don't want to criticise the handful of surfers who were there. I'm sure they live nearby too, and felt, like the windsurfer at the same spot on Saturday (who got himself into trouble and had, ignominiously, to regain the land via, er, a tunnel), that it was legit to take their hour of exercise by riding waves.
But here's the thing. Against the corona-hell backdrop, surfing is a case of too much fun in a time of no fun.
The ever-excellent Matt Warshaw summed it up in his Sunday Joint (if you don't subscribe, do):
Two weeks ago in the Joint I suggested that the silver lining for surfers during COVID is that we'd get to ride this thing out in the ocean. I was wrong. The science argues against it, for starters. Beyond that, surfing is no longer ethically or morally defensible. If we're all grounded, we're all grounded. In non-pandemic times, I will defend to the death your right to be a selfish prick of a surfer, and at some point in our vaccinated future I will drop a Selfish Prick Surfer list in which I will unabashedly place myself in the back half of the Top 10. But not now. Not under these conditions. Don't look for the loophole, the angle, the surf-related hustle. Us vs Them is no longer in play. This is Us vs Virus.
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