Surfing in Los Angeles be like… Photo: Mike Marshall/Dyrland Productions
From vegan ice creameries to more hybrids on the 405 than tweens at a Bieber concert, Los Angeles prides itself on being a haven for the healthy. Yet despite the self-inflated image of environmental compassion, the City of Angels is a cesspool of nausea. Looming brown sugar smog clouds. Poop spewing power plants. And, of course, dirty beaches.
Back in September, Dockweiler State Beach in between Manhattan and Playa del Rey was closed due to a disgusting dump of used condoms, tampon applicators, and hypodermic needles. The dump was the result of a storm that forced the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant to divert 200 million gallons of waste to a sewage pipe nearby, which is aptly known by surfers as “shit pipe.”
And if that’s not a symphony of sickness enough for ya’ it turns out all the waste had been brewing in a sewer drain for 10 years. On that day of disgustingness, an L.A. surfer named Zan Sacker was out at his local spot when it took on the embodiment of its name and became a literal shit pipe, among other nastiness.
“I was out there surfing out there on that day that it dumped, I was swimming and it was disgusting,” Sacker told 89.3 KPCC. “I was here and I saw tampon applicators, um, a lot of trash, just disgusting — toilet paper and things like that.”
The occasional plastic bag out in the lineup at a Los Angeles surf spot isn’t all too rare – it’s like getting burned by C-list celebrities like Scott Caan from Entourage out at Malibu (or was that just me?). But that doesn’t mean it’s something you get used to.
