Beach Blanket Bingo

This Memorial Day (observed) is May 27th, a Monday holiday kicking off the unofficial start of summer. You can safely break out the white pants, skirts and shoes without Miss Manners having an MI. This applies most to the Atlantic Seaboard. My wife, a New Jersey girl born and bred, was wondering why Memorial Day isn't the big deal here in California that is on the East Coast. "Probably because it's beach weather most of the time in California," she ventured. And I have to agree.

Memorial Day weekend is gridlock time back east. You haven't seen traffic until you've seen the L.I.E. (Long Island Expressway) back up for miles and miles with New York City-dwellers "rushing" for the beaches, or seen the Chesapeake Bay Bridge backed up all the way to Washington,  D.C. and Baltimore, a double-pronged nightmare that lasts, well, for three days. Repeat the aforementioned scenario on the July 4th and Labor Day weekends.


In the Golden State we often have warm weather spikes even in "winter months," while along the Northern California coast we often have chilly, foggy days in July and August. Growing up in the fog bank known as South City, we accepted the fact that warm days could sneak up anytime; we kept the beach chairs, blankets and towels in the car trunk all year. January heat wave? The beach was just fifteen minutes away.

I will stipulate that the Pacific is one cold ocean, at least in California.The East Coast has their treasured Gulf Stream which means much warmer water in those few summer months. Check. I have visited South Carolina, land of long, flat beaches and shallow ocean swimming. You can wade out a hundred yards off certain beaches and still be standing, Of course, this advantage if off-set by water temperatures that rise so high in August, the Atlantic offers no refreshment. If you get hot and sweaty (as you will in less than an hour by merely breathing the thick, humid air), go home and shower. Then take an air-conditioned nap because it ain't coolin' down anytime soon.

Meanwhile, in California we have a plethora of what we call micro-climates. In South City, a neighboring family I know chose to drive a mere thirty-five minutes across the San Francisco Bay Bridge to a lovely little lake in the Oakland Hills called Lake Temescal to find warm weather and warm water swimming. As a twenty-something year-old living in the City, I often drove a whole forty-five minutes to work on my tan beside a friend's apartment pool in Silicon Valley. Plan ahead for the full hour it took to drive up north into Napa or Sonoma Wine Country and don't forget the Bain de Soleil, mon frere.  The sweet mist of Pacific fog on my sun-reddened face was always a refreshing welcome home at the end of a summer afternoon out of town.


 As a child, I watched the Beach Blanket movies and wondered, why don't Frankie and Annette ever get cold?  Then I went on vacation to Santa Monica. No longer captive of the Japanese and Alaskan Currents, the Pacific felt like a completely different ocean experience. Then my older sister started to scream and scream. Bingo! Jellyfish, right between the thighs.Now that never happened to Annette, either.