SURFIN' SAFARI SUMMER TWO - DAY NINE July 22, 2020

Not bored. We paint and read, and pick at instruments and go for long walks and do all those things the “New York Times” says you should do to maintain “balance” and sanity. In fact, as a family, we feel like we were sort of built for pandemics.

But we do get cabin fever. On Tuesday, having painted, read, and picked at instruments by 2 p.m., it was decided to launch Surfin Safari Summer Two, Day 9, by heading up north to a seafood eatery called Neptune’s Net.

The idea was to clear out of the the city, elude the pandemic, and take some of the edge off things by, you know, “Goin’ Up the Country.”



It had been hot and still at our Sweetzer Avenue lair, but the shore was choppy, windy and cold. Temescal Canyon, Carbon Canyon, Latigo Canyon, El Pescador, El Matador... we swung off Sunset onto Pacific Coast Highway 1 and blew past Malibu’s many beaches.

We decided upon the surf spot known as “County Line.” The border between Los Angeles and Ventura counties is actually about a mile south, but surfers have, at times, called the shots when it comes to naming prominent parcels of coastal geography.

Neptune’s Net is an old roadhouse perched on a hill above the beach for something like 70 years. Bikers and surfers, and barefoot girls in tees and bikini bottoms, make it their hangout. It’s distinguishing culinary characteristic is that it serves Maine lobster. The Pacific lobster has no claws and is not as tender as its New England cousin. So at Neptune’s, for the price of your own left claw, you can enjoy this nautical garbage sweeper with drawn butter, lemon, and a view of surfers carving the ocean up, down below.

You have seen Neptune’s Net in all kinds of movies over the years. One time, the crew for a film entitled, “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,” starring Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke, pulled into the parking lot. A girl from the crew approached me and said my lobster and beer would be free if I’d sign a waiver allowing them to use my image.



My own lot has been one of intimate knowledge with labor in both its subjective and objective forms, so I told her I wasn’t signing any waiver without getting the Screen Extras Guild per diem, which was around $80 back then. She didn’t even flinch, paying me in a roll of pre-counted cash.

Screen Extras Guild was a union from a bygone era that eventually got absorbed into the Hollywood Teamsters.

But I digress ...don’t know what I was expecting, but Neptune’s was closed because of the pandemic, except for a drive-thru, which is not the Neptune's experience at all. Anna was upset she wasn’t getting lobster and it wasn't the best time to mention it wasn't on our menu in the first place. We were hungry and in the middle of nowhere.Things had gotten even colder and windier.

Between Vasco de Balboa, who caught the Pacific on a not very bitchy day for naming it, and early Southern California realtors, the branding of this region as a West Coast Florida is one of the 20th century's great public relations swindles.



The water looked raucous and things were falling apart fast, so I threw on a wetsuit. It had been an almost 40-mile drive and some return on the effort was required, however thin.

Anna did not want to go down to the beach and I did not feel at all comfortable leaving her in a car on windy Highway 1. But she was having a moment of obvious lucidity and assured me there was no amount of cognitive impairment to convince her it wasn't cold out there.

So there is some field research: refrigerating Alzheimer's patients works.

Aware there was not a lot of time before concern for her overtook my passion for getting crushed by water, I tender-footed my way down some big boulders onto the beach and into the completely frigid chop ...and it turned out great.

County Line is considered a good spot and it didn't disappoint. The waves were tall, but instead of rolling in and over and crashing at the shoreline, these built to a peak and let themselves out from the base, creating an incline to glide down before being caught from behind by most the effervescent pillowy foam the Gods can muster.

The surf session crowned a sequence of unfortunate circumstances that were shaping a day at sixes-and-sevens, and made the whole something dramatic with wind, and whipped water, adrenaline and a human being in black neoprene domesticating a wave, storm-sent from Chile, into the sand.




When someone asks me if it’s a good day, I tell them, “Get back to me at midnight.” A lot of championships have been won on the last shot, at the last second. I urge my kid to stick with things; see them through. If something isn’t becoming what you want, let it become what it will. It is still your creation.