The Modern Beach-Front

A Futurist at work, rising above the crowd

The futurists would love it, but it’s not for me. The relentless hum of tires on concrete drowns out the crash of the ocean. The florescent tubes above cast too many strange shadows and offer no clue as to the exit. So I follow the markings on the road - dodging shoppers, soccer moms in 4X4’s - clad from neck to ankle in neoprene, surfboard in hand. It’s a surreal sensation, parking underground to go for a surf.

On holiday, only a week before going surfing meant a quick walk down to the beach, or a short drive which culminated in a gravel parking area encircled by fynbos. Now there are only buildings, concrete, asphalt and kikuyu, the latter brought in to provide some nature in the wilderness of parquet and paving. Where once there were shifting dunes now monstrosities of steel and glass dominate, looking out upon the once pristine beach and across the bay at the iconic mountain.

Once out of the concrete parking cave, I make my way down to the beach, for my first glance of the waves I’ve come to surf. Fretful of where I step though, only stealing brief glances at the ocean, for the beach is littered with stagnant pools of water, spawning frantic algae growth, on a beach rapidly turning a sickly greenish brown.

There’s a smell too, an odd blend of aromas, ranging from the natural, but still unpleasant, decay of kelp on the high-water line. To the unnatural and oddly conflicting wafts of deep fried chicken emanating from the food court.  Underlying these is a more sinister odour, just, just testing your olfactory lobes with it presence. It’s a smell out of place with the ocean and with the mall above, a smell which my brain wants to filter out because it shouldn’t be there. But it is and if you, like me, spend any time on beaches in the metropolis you become strangely accustomed to it.

It hasn’t rained for a while, so the smell is at its most subtle now. But still it remains, not the dead fish slap to the face of flowing raw sewage. Rather the more understated, seep of contaminated water leaking diluted effluent onto the beach and into the sea.

Still I’m here for a surf, and the crowd isn’t too bad at Karmas’. So I bend over, attach my leash to my ankle and brave the cold cape waters. With the first trickle of water into my suit I forget the depressing underground parking debacle. The first frigid duck-dive rinses the memory of the dying beach away. Now only what happens out in the breakers matters. That is until I catch my last wave. As it closes out I drop into a prone position to ride the foamy back to the beach. But once there the gall rises up again, how can all those people sit in the bars and restaurants, oblivious of what the development has done to this once beautiful stretch of beachfront?

Our secret spot, no crowds or underground parking garages  

But maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe they’re not so different from those of us who surf here. In Table Bay the options are limited, and the alternative is not to surf. Not to go out. One could I suppose abstain, but it seems unlikely. Adaptation is the more probable net result. Become a futurist; embrace the smog, the polluted water, the noxious vapours of decay and the drone of development.

The beach-scape is changing; the quiet point framed by untouched veld is no longer the norm. Futurists rejoice - the asphalt is cast.

First published in The Urban Edge Mag on the 24th of February 2012