Jade Divers of Big Sur
Smelly beats, hippies, artists, and bums are drawn to the sacred energy of California’s most coveted coastal region
There, they discovered a magical stone
You want to see what the jade says
Big Sur inspires reverence. When the explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo became the first to sail along the Alta California coastline during the fall of 1542, he was transfixed as oak-laden hills turned mountainous and studded with plentiful conifers, which rose abruptly from the turquoise water like enormous terrestrial swells. “There are mountains which seem to reach the heavens, and the sea beats on them… It appears as though they would fall on the ships,” he wrote aboard his flagship, the San Salvador. Entranced as he was, Cabrillo dared not seek harbor beneath these newfound peaks and instead continued to ride the wind northward.
Later generations of seafaring explorers also tried and failed to penetrate this stretch of coastline — home to a range so rugged, isolated, and unnavigable that the native Esselen people who inhabited these mountains spoke a language uninfluenced by any other …
Delray Beach, America’s Rehab Capital
It is impossible to grow up in America without repeated exposure to cripplingly addictive drugs
The Florida Shuffle ain’t what it used to be
Do you have a lighter?
Florida looked as you imagine.
A seagull jerked its reptilian eyes around an axis of scrawny neck: noon, ten o’clock, three o’clock, noon. It squeaked and whined to the air, which was 75 degrees Fahrenheit; and to the water, which was a charming turquoise; and to the sky, which of course was azure; and to the trees, which, naturally, were palms with trembling fronds; and to the girls, who lay on their stomachs in, indeed, bikinis, reading thin paperbacks; and to the man, whose hair was the white of retirement age.
The man sat in a blue polyester folding chair, a few yards from the girls. He faced not the ocean but down the endless beach to the south, where the sun lay. The sun made the man’s fat silver wristwatch and gold baptism chain glitter, and it made knives dance on his sunglasses, and it deepened the caramel of his skin.
“Ladies,” he called over, his voice tight and gritty with …
No More Fun
Six Flags America became a relic of an all-too-recent age when we all rode rollercoasters while being indoctrinated into a Disney-like version of a common past.
The DC suburbs are now home to an astounding share of our national wealth, thanks in part to Osama bin Laden and the taxpayer-funded paranoia industry he helped to create.
A pestilence of lanternflies.
The decay of the Six Flags America theme park outside Washington, DC, is a painful reminder that America itself may only be a passing moment on the billion-year scale of geologic time. Superman: Ride of Steel is now in danger of being melted into industrial sludge, perhaps to be repurposed as the siding of an Amazon fulfilment center. While the statue of Daffy Duck in a tricorner hat that crowned the fake Independence Hall next to the fake Liberty Bell — discordantly Philly-located landmarks — will be lucky to decorate the lawn of some wealthy Americana enthusiast, to me it’s a no-brainer that The Wild One, until recently the oldest operating rollercoaster in the United States, should be relocated to the National Mall. But this is the dream of a child. The Wild One will be sawdust soon; there is no fantasy that can rescue it, and probably us, from the junkyard.
In the spring of 2025, the …
