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These industries offered high-paying jobs that afforded their employees-mainly white men-the ability to live on the coast. Navy built Defense Fuel Support Point Estero Bay just east of Highway 1 “ to store and transport jet fuel to the Naval Air Station in Lemoore, California.” Its two tanks held roughly 4,350,000 gallons of jet fuel each. (It’s worth noting that there is no mention of yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash history or culture in Castle and Ream’s book.) In the 1960s, the U.S. “By the end of the war,” Castle and Ream continue, “ would occupy more than 250 acres and provide many improvements to the town.” These improvements included infrastructure in the commercial part of the harbor, the Embarcadero, that enabled the town to boom following the war.

Navy “established an amphibious training base” in Morro Bay due to its coastal location and harbor, town boosters Roger Castle and Gary Ream report in Images of America: Morro Bay.

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I had no idea until recently, however, that the intertwined infrastructures of resource extraction and the United States Navy, which continue Serra ’s legacy of colonization and extraction, had fundamentally shaped the built environment and accompanying values of my hometown full of surfers.Īt the Chevron Estero Bay Marine Terminal, crude oil was loaded onto tankers from 1929 until 1999. Of how it took the Bruce family nearly a century to recover their land.Ĭloser to my home, the economy in Morro Bay has largely revolved around the fossil fuel, military, tourism, and (associated) real estate industries since the early 20th century. I’m thinking of how in the early 20th century, the Manhattan Beach, California city council used eminent domain to take the land from the Bruces, a Black family.

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I’m thinking of white locals in my hometown telling visitors “we grew here, you flew here” of white men stealing the waves of people they don’t know of the way professional surf contests as late as the 2000s were set up to give women the worst conditions to surf in as well as far-from-equitable prize money of white American men leasing private islands to capitalize on as surf resorts of literal surf Nazis. Contrary to its roots as a kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) cultural practice, modern surfing as widely distributed by white men has been a font of rugged masculinity, hyperindividualism, and conquering (especially when it comes to big waves). Surfing has a reputation for embodying all the most annoying and violent aspects of white masculinity, and for good reason. I had no idea until recently, however, that the intertwined infrastructures of resource extraction and the United States Navy, which continue Serra’s legacy of colonization and extraction, had fundamentally shaped the built environment and accompanying values of my hometown full of surfers. I knew from a young age (and with lots of rage) that Junípero Serra had colonized what is currently called San Luis Obispo with Misión San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, in large part by enslaving Chumash people. I grew up wearing a hand-me-down wetsuit to ride a dinged green yard sale funshape in the cold water of the future Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and in the traces of United States military infrastructure. I grew up surfing as a white settler on yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash land on the Central Coast of California. It’s another way to be connected with the people I surf with and the water I surf in. I call my board a log but it’s not, it’s a performance longboard for a man twice my size, a literal dad board for going fast and doing longboard cutbacks. I say hi to everybody I’m from a small town. I sit on my log in the lineup, waiting, watching the horizon (no glasses, no contacts, just vibes) in between bits of conversation. After the wave peters out and I paddle back out, I park myself in the water next to my board to pee and hope no shark swimming by mistakes my vertical body for a seal. I paddle to take off-so much paddling, just always paddling-going right and gauge the angle of my rail in relation to the face of the wave. The whitewater sweeps underneath me, brushes my nose, chills my hands. In any given session I paddle over whitewash, holding myself up like I’m doing a pushup on the board while I paddle out toward the lineup to keep my momentum going, so I’m not pushed back towards the shore. For health reasons I have to stay out of the water for the next couple weeks so I am dreaming about surfing, thinking about surfing, writing about surfing, doing everything but actually getting wet.