To the average passerby, I can seem like quite a pessimist at times, not going to get into the details, but deep down I think I’m really an optimistic person.  I’m the kind of person that always searches for the bright side of a situation, no matter how grim the details are.  I proved this once again when I began thinking about the oil pumping into the gulf right now.

No doubt its a terrible situation.  Not only is it bad for the environment, killing all kinds of wildlife and covering the beaches in a gross slick, but like every ‘catastrophe’ it has become a political arguing point.  “Drill Baby Drill” vs “Club Soda not Seals” is in a full climax battle, but luckily all this attention is creating some good.

I was driving up to a photoshoot in the great concrete jungle they called New York on Friday morning.  Typically this drive totally sucks, and gets worse as I approach the tunnels and bridges up there.  Its tradition to check out 1010 WINS news radio for the traffic on the 1′s (like 1060 for those readers who don’t leave the south jerz bubble).  Right after I got the news that I was about to sit in traffic for the next 50 minutes, some good news piped in over the airwaves.  “In other news… The surfrider foundation will be hosting a beach cleanup tomorrow from 4 til 6 pm at Rockaway beach…”  They went on to detail the event, and go into a light history of who the surfrider foundation is and how New Yoka’s could pitch in and help clean up the beach.  Inevitably they tied the whole piece up with referencing the oil spill, but the good was already done.  They talked about the surfrider foundation and cleaning up beaches for a full 60 seconds.  That doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you are talking about the biggest radio station in the New York area which reaches out to over 10 million people a day, its a pretty big deal to get 60 seconds of air time.  If you still don’t think 60 seconds is a long time, check out this video of Matt Kechele on Surfline, it makes 20 seconds seem long as hell.  They cleaned up Rockaway beach, which considering how close its located to the epicenter of filth, its a very necessary task.  And for the record, I’m not ragging on New York beaches – caught some of the most fun waves on the East Coast there two falls ago.

So in the end what do we learn?  Catastrophes get exploited, BP sucks, 1010 WINS gets a +1, and listening to the radio is pointless because there is always traffic in New York.

Unidentified New Yorker benefitting from NYC Beach Cleanups

Balaram Stack flying above the trash at Rockaway