What a Rush!

Surfer Derek

Surfer Derek lived in the park – that would be People’s Park / Perfect Park / Anisq ‘Oyo’ Park, depending on where you’re standing, in space and time. Derek would come into the New York Hero House late at night, and sweep out front or do some dishes in exchange for a meatball hero. Sometimes on a quiet night, he’d bring his own funny little cigarette, which we’d share in the back over companionable talk and the leftovers of my boss’s half-smoked Pall Malls. He had a deep voice, a friendly/gruff exterior, and a hearty guffaw – especially around pretentious people. His hair was like straw – blond, thick, and sticking out all over.

Derek was well educated, being a UCSB Poli Sci dropout who had time to read all of the papers every day - the periodical kind – not the rolling ones! And he had a lot of theories, most of them involving conspiracies, about who ran our world (and who’s to say he was wrong?). Derek espoused well-worn theories, and not a few of his own. These concepts were the reason he dropped out – of college and out of most of society. He figured he wasn’t going to help the Man control him by adhering to the Man’s rules. So he lived in the relatively benign environment of the Park, presumably through the generosity of college students’ handouts.

Not all of Derek’s education had gone to waste, of course. He was the first person to tell me that this new band, Van Halen, was great and would be going places.

He told me about walking along the beach when the 1978 Goleta earthquake hit. All over town, windows were breaking & things were falling off shelves. But Derek was walking along the beach, looking up at the cliffs, when they seemed to jump forward a few feet, then they moved back, suspending a one foot layer of topsoil in midair 60 feet up (at the top of the cliffs)! “No man, I swear I wasn’t stoned!” Then the cliff moved back and just a bit of soil and rock fell down the side. “What a trip, man!”

Smaller earthquakes were common that summer. One night, while Derek & I were sitting in the tiny back prep room at the Hero House, one rolling earthquake had a wavelength almost exactly the width of that little room. One end of the floor tilted up at the exact moment the other end tilted down. Then it went the other way, then back, then stopped. Nothing fell. It was really quiet. We both just looked at that cigarette, and simultaneously began laughing and slapping the table.

Sorority Rush Week was Derek’s favorite time of year. During Rush week every year, Derek would find a good-looking set of clothes in the free box. He’d shower and shave and even cut and brush his shaggy hair. Then he’d meet up with … well, I’ll tell it in his words.

“Yeah, I’d be looking good and respectable, man. Then I’d find a kegger with a bunch of tipsy freshman Rushees in the cute duds Mommy & Daddy bought them last week. They’re all looking to impress each other and one of ‘em goes off with the surfer dude – that’s me, man! They always want to go to my place, but you know, the beach is more romantic, right? So, we bring a blanket down to the beach, and have at it, man. Those girls are lookin’ for it, you know? So, off they go after a couple hours, happy and dreaming. So it’s always great, you know, a week or two later when they walk by me in the park and recognize me from that night I wasn’t, you know, hitting them up for a buck or nothing’. Man, you want to see a priceless look – it’s when they’re wondering if I’m gonna tell their greek girlfriends. It’s a two shot deal – I get the girl for a night, then I get a sorority sister who’s suddenly generous with the handout whenever she walks by. And they got Derek for a night. They can only dream about it after that. It’s a win-win, man! Except they gotta settle for those frat boys after me. That’s really too bad.”

Derek was great. A real piece of work. Always some new theory, always a bit too-well thought out. But the street got to him after too many years, even in friendly Isla Vista. After a few years, the street people get cranky and then they fade away. I don’t think it’s likely we’ll see him again, but if I do, I’m definitely gonna buy him a tall Coors and find out the latest take on the Man.