California, USA, March 7, 2018 – Huntingdon Beach feels like Santa Monica 50 years ago. Not that I was there. But this gentle uncommercial beach culture is much closer to the surfing safari of my dreams. There’s a beautiful design aesthetic which feels vintage because it is. The original Surf City, it’s sheltered by Catalina Island which lies offshore, refracting the waves from the open ocean into a gentle to challenging surf every day of the year. By the beautiful long pier, light on neon and schlock, heavy on fishing and telescopes, hundreds of surfers, like so many black ants, kneel on their boards in a hypnotised silence, waiting for the right wave, then whooping and hollering as they ride it to the shore or tumble into its froth. This is early on a Tuesday morning in March. It really is endless summer.
* There’s more of this fine writing by Dumbarton woman MT Rainey OBE in Two Minutes Silence, a new book edited by Bill Heaney and available on-line at heaneymedia.com
