Oct 12 2008
Sunday Spot Check: Strands
Located just around the bend from Salt Creek in Dana Point, Strands Beach is a completely different world. With its quirky waves and rundown, forgotten shoreline, Strands is like the red-headed stepchild of South Orange County beaches–an outcast surf break for outcast surfers. Attracting an eclectic combination of reclusive kneeboarders, scooter-riding burnouts, and other nefarious individuals from the fringes of the surf community, the lineup at Strands is often almost as varied–and as challenging–as the waves themselves. From heaving shorebreak to dumpy closeouts to perfect A-frames, you never know quite what to expect at Strands, and that is part of its enigmatic appeal.
Unfortunately, the Strands of days gone by may be gone forever. The Strands of the weird; the Strands where the parking is free and the lineup is uncrowded. This Strands–old, familiar, strange–is quickly being replaced by the Strands of the wealthy–the Strands of the haves and the you-can-have-not. Once a last bastion of wild Orange County, a place where trees and vines and brush rose up to swallow and ensnare the few signs of human life dotted along its shore, Strands has finally been conquered–its defiant bluffs molded into graded hillsides, its unruly vegetation replaced with concrete and rebar and other ominous signs of encroaching civilization.
While it may be too late to stop the construction at Strands–the Surfider Foundation effectively put an end to their hard-fought Save Strands campaign in 2005 after exhausting all options–we still have time to prevent this tragedy from repeating itself elsewhere along our coast. Please visit surfrider.org to learn about other endangered coastal habitats and ways that you can help in the effort to save them.
