On July 1st, more than 40 California State Parks will close due to budget cuts. Following more than 25 years of underfunding, the park system has accrued an astounding $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance. Last May, the state government announced that 70 of the state’s parks would close due to $22 million in budget cuts. Since then, 27 parks have saved from closure by nonprofits, local governments, private business and gracious individual donors. At this moment though, 13 coastal beach parks—including surf breaks at Moss Landing near Monterrey and Garrapata in Big Sur—and more than 30 parks inland are slated for closure. Furthermore, parks that will remain open may face a decrease in staffing, hours of operation, days of operation, and fewer available facilities and trails
What are the consequences of these closures and overall service reductions? Possible depletion of valuable (and rather limited) natural resources for one: According to Surfer, when Providence Mountain in San Bernardino was left unsupervised this past winter, the park suffered from over $100,000 in damage due to vandalism to its buildings and limestone caves. Benicia State Park in Solano County fell victim to costly copper theft, and the New York Times cited that an illegal marijuana farm was set up at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (a booby-trap that consisted of a rifle set up on a trip wire was found when the farm was raided by government agents).
Parks that are threatened by closure will no longer (at least for the foreseeable future) be operated and maintained by the state, but there is a chance that they will not be completely off-limits to the public. Verardo-Torres, a representative of the State Parks Foundation, stated that, ““The state has said, ‘Look, we aren’t going to be the operator of [closed parks]. But we don’t want to close off the public’s access to them… We want good law-abiding people to go into parks and still enjoy them because that’s going to keep non-law-abiding people out.’”
The responsibility of caring for the parks that will close will mostly likely fall to individual volunteers—it’ll be up to them to protect and care for CA’s natural resources after the state let’s go of the reins.
For more information, please visit: http://www.surfermag.com/features/state-of-the-parks/
Discontent is floating in the line up at Malibu, also known as Surfrider State Beach. A number of ‘Bu locals aren’t too pleased with the Malibu Lagoon Reconstruction and Enhancement Project, which began on June 1st and will continue until this October. The project calls for draining most of the water from the lagoon (over 11,000 gallons), so that construction crews can reshape the actual structure of the lagoon with heavy equipment in order to improve water flow. The lagoon is notorious for having poor water quality—an issue that often plagues local surfers when the lagoon empties out in the lineup—and this $7 million project should clean up the nefariously scuzzy body of water. Well, that’s the plan at least.
When you’re mere moments away from smashing your pride and various squishy body parts into amorphous bits, there’s usually that brief reflective moment when time seems to unwind completely. You have a chance to soak it all in—everything slows and you’re able to take in every embarrassing detail of your untimely demise with perfect lucidity. I’ve experienced that moment, typically referred to as the “Oh, S*@t” moment, several times in my life. They mostly occurred during surfing wipeouts (save for one instance of a wicked skateboard accident that resulted in a chipped front tooth and a terrible family photo) that resulted in something painful occurring, either to my pride or to said various squishy body parts. In fact, I could tell you in perfect detail what happened during each wipeout, what mistake I made, or what went wrong with the board (typically it’s the board’s fault, not mine *cough*). I could also tell you what crossed my mind too: it was usually something along the lines of, “WHY?! WHY ME?! THE PAIN—.“ Yeah, something like that.
Like a surfboard that’s been sucked out to sea, doomed to float aimlessly amongst that 
