The official end of summer in 2022 will be a Thursday. The weather in Laguna Beach will be in the high 70s – hot for locals but mild for our inland interlopers.
These visitors will continue to cool off on our languid shores, lapping up our breezes but doing nothing particularly useful.
Business owners will continue to lament the nosebaggers, as some call them, because they don’t buy anything. They tote their coolers on wheels and drag their yippy dogs and big-mouth cups.
They will take selfies to describe a lifestyle that isn’t quite real.
In reality, summer won’t end this year until October. Why? Because have you been outside lately?
It’s a Mars landscape. Hollywood doesn’t need to create hot, desolate, alien vistas anymore. They just have to go to East Jesus.
With climate change, COVID, and a lackluster streaming TV season, Southern California is content to visit Laguna at any time. It’s their right, after all, because the beaches are free and open (except maybe a few square feet in front of Hotel Laguna).
No, summer is year-round, now, haven’t you heard? Woo-woo! Or not.
Honestly, if summer never ends – and all indications point to some version of that – then there are going to be a beach-ton of Laguna residents who are really upset.
Upset because Labor Day has always been the day most marked on calendars – more than Christmas, wedding anniversaries or birthdays. It’s the day of our palpable, existential rebirth.
It’s the day the majority of tourists leave town, at least historically.
Now, maybe that’s not a given. It’s no secret that the line between summer and winter, tourist and non-tourist, has been blurring for the last few years.
You may notice it when there is unexplainable gridlock on a Thursday afternoon for no real reason.
Or when it’s Sept. 30, and there’s no parking at Ralph’s, and all you want is an avocado for toast.
Every nice winter day resembles a summer block party.
There will be a day in November or February, take your pick, when it’s 85 degrees in Laguna, and no one will think twice.
Welcome to Mars.
