The Winter Texans are back. We have entered the season of our torment.
Lord, it seems like they just left, migrating North late last spring in a drove of aluminum RV’s and shiny trucks.
Farmers on subsidies, milking the great American tit……
And now they’re back, with their cheesy jokes, and mid-western farm field bullshit. If I hear jalapeño pronounced jal-ap-ano one more time, I may have serious issues with the Oshkosh-overall clad fucker. They can get the silly umlaut right, but give them an enyay….
No, I don’t like lutefisk. Can’t even stand the smell of the stuff. Give me menudo any day.
How long Lord, oh how long must we suffer the bastards?
My friend Don thinks they snuck in on the heels of the Bikefest crowd, unnoticed among all of the motorcycle trailers. I think he’s right. And, now they’re here; doing whatever they do, driving slowly, like they’re still out in the fields on their subsidized John Deere tractors, lost to oblivion, why oh why can’t they just stay up North and drive badly on their tractors? And they're out on the bay in their walleye boats tossing shrimp and great chunks of squid at hapless hardheads and whiting, or crowding the streets of Nuevo Progreso looking to “jew down” the locals. Winter Texans are everywhere en todos lugares.
Everywhere you go, you can overhear them talking about how things are so much cheaper back home, how they do things different back home, how things are so much better back home. Hell, why don’t they just go back home then? Get out of our hair.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Friends of Isla Blanca?
I was just made aware of the "friends of Isla Blanca" website. Apparently their message board has been rather active lately, and not all entries in favor of their cause either. Here is the link for your viewing pleasure. Let em know what you think (either for or against....Le Menagerie don't give a fuck).
Monday, October 16, 2006
Perspective
The older I get.....the better I was.
-Overheard at the Leo Najo oldtimers baseball hall of fame celebration
-Overheard at the Leo Najo oldtimers baseball hall of fame celebration
Friday, October 13, 2006
Billy K.
The third coast and its inhabitants gauge their existences by hurricane season, by hot and hotter by the tides rising and falling around oyster encrusted pilings holding up forlorn and ancient docks reticent with neglect, against which rusting shrimp boats lay, relics of another more prosperous era. They lay tied to the dock with umbilical cords of bleached and frayed three strand line wound in neglected figure eights around cleats thick with powdery corrosion, and no life pulses through the processing plants or the umbilical cords connected to boats and docks. The people of the third coast hurry and scurry like the Sally-lightfoot crabs that live under the ancient docks reticent with neglect, hurrying and scurrying to the shade, from piling to piling.
The people and the tourists on the third coast seek refuge from the relentless sun, ducking into ancient seafood and ancient Mexican food restaurants where humid air conditioning belches out of veiled vents, condensing the vapid air on windowpanes and the sunglasses of the tourists who scurry back outside to another destination of artificial shade and comfort, to palapa bars or bayside bars where they drink Corona beers and piss away their vacations on the third coast, or to the white sand beach where Gulf waters lap the shoreline and mullet swim in great schools between the legs of surf fishermen and children playing with bright plastic toys in the calm of the first sandbar.
There are no trees on the third coast capable of providing any respite from the relentless sun except for a few scraggly mesquite and tepegujues, and the omnipresent nopal which provides only enough shade for the rattlesnakes and tarantulas to escape the relentless sun, concealed in near lifeless torpor, until the relentless sun finally gives up her stranglehold on the third coasts’ southern latitude and the night wind begins to pick up, signaling the time to slither and crawl from ectothermic reptile and insect siestas in search of a midnight snack before the relentless sun makes its appearance again in a hurrying and scurrying few hours, in a unisonous and endless cycle like the tides, like hot and hotter, like the annual ebb and flow of hurricane season.
The National Weather Service calls it tropical cyclone development and they send in airplanes and instruments to measure, predict and verify, but the people of the third coast know it in their bones, in their psyches, and they suffer from June through October when the Gulf heats up like a bowl of Caldo Mariscos, and swirling bands of clouds converge to rotate in a counterclockwise dervish of convection, traveling over open ocean till for reasons that may never be understood by mere mortal, they join the shoreline in a rush of energy that the Mexicans call Chubaso, La tormenta, pounding la tierra with powerful winds and torrential rains before exhausting themselves over perennial coastal desert and monte ruled by the relentless sun, leaving behind a wake of carnage and cleansing.
Billy K. is a tall stooped man about sixty five years old with the countenance of forlorn beagle. The entire world is out to get him.
Perennial residents like Billy K. become the human counterpart to the perennial hurricane. Billy has lived in Port Isabel all of his adult life, working first as a commercial diver, salvaging valuables from the myriad of shipwrecks from the past, recovering gold, silver and other treasures, only to have the State of Texas claim their rightful share of the plunder, which Billy doesn’t think they have any right to. So he tried to hide the bulk of the take from one particularly well endowed Spanish galleon, but the State found out, and took the whole thing plus more since Billy tried to keep it all. They never did found the remainder of the stash though, and Billy invested a good deal of that into a Marine Salvage operation, where he has made a fortune over the years recovering the largesse from named and unnamed tropical tormentas and hurricanes.
He has a salvage yard full of treasures that savvy wharf-rats know are worth as much as their weight in the gold and silver salvaged from long sunken Spanish galleons. Brass portlights, lifeboats, life preservers, engines and deck machinery, everything from sailboat rigging, blocks and fairleads to fishing winches, trawl doors and nets.
Billy K. owns a giant rusting hulk, bleeding long trails of iron oxide down it’s sides to its barnacle encrusted waterline, a British built ferry boat he obtained through some back alley deal, lying against one of his docks, tucked in there between filthy tugs and abandoned shrimpers.
Billy contracted a couple of guys from up the valley, out west in the desert area to sandblast the hull, get it ready to paint so that he could sell it to some unsuspecting soul.
So they hauled and drydocked the boat there on his property, and began to sandblast it, letting the paint, rust and sand fall into the open channel, and onto the drydock where it could be washed into the channel at the end of the day with high pressure washers.
…..But since this ain’t the wild west nomore, pretty soon his jerry-rigged operation came up on the feds radar screen……The Coast Guard, and the environmental police showed up and shut Billy K. down. “Hell” he claimed, “It’s not my fault, they’re just picking on me”. “If I hire a company to do work for me, than how could it be my fault”? “If you hire somebody to paint your car, and they wash the unused paint down the drain, would it be your fault that they violated the law?”
Later Billy K. got a contract from Mr. Z who owns about half of the town, to put in some decorative pilings and cement rip-rap out in front of Mr. Z’s’ new waterfront eatery, the Pelican Station. Give it a real rundown coastal look. A perfect opportunity to use up some of that old trash lying around the salvage yard, out of sight, out of mind. When the feds caught up with him again, for not having the proper permits to place fill in the water, threatening to fine him fifty thousand dollars a day for illegally filling coastal waters, Billy moaned; “they’re just picking on me, they’re always picking on me, why me?”….”how was I supposed to know that there weren’t any permits to do that?”…. “I can’t be responsible for this!”….
Billy K. owns a restaurant over on the island, the Palm Street Pier. An open air joint on the bay, the Palm Street pier is classically furnished with salvaged bits and pieces from Billy K’s. Marine Salvage Yard. Fresnel lights and ships’ wheels, cabin furnishings dating back to the 1950’s all held together by turquoise paint over its weathered lumber.
Billy K’s. neighbor to the South, Tequila Frogs, own the property that Billy uses for a parking lot out in front of Palm Street Pier, and recently decided for reasons not clear to anyone except he and Billy K. that the parking lot property was now off-limits to customers of the Palm Street Pier, so in the middle of a busy Saturday night crowd, the island constabulary came bursting in (well, came bursting on to palapa covered restaurant and grill), announcing that the patrons would immediately have to move their cars to the parking lot that was included in the lease when Billy K. originally leased the property several years prior, a parking lot located two blocks distant.
There hasn’t been much business at the Palm Street Pier since that happened. Billy K. swears it isn’t his fault. Hell, everyone’s always picking on him.
The people and the tourists on the third coast seek refuge from the relentless sun, ducking into ancient seafood and ancient Mexican food restaurants where humid air conditioning belches out of veiled vents, condensing the vapid air on windowpanes and the sunglasses of the tourists who scurry back outside to another destination of artificial shade and comfort, to palapa bars or bayside bars where they drink Corona beers and piss away their vacations on the third coast, or to the white sand beach where Gulf waters lap the shoreline and mullet swim in great schools between the legs of surf fishermen and children playing with bright plastic toys in the calm of the first sandbar.
There are no trees on the third coast capable of providing any respite from the relentless sun except for a few scraggly mesquite and tepegujues, and the omnipresent nopal which provides only enough shade for the rattlesnakes and tarantulas to escape the relentless sun, concealed in near lifeless torpor, until the relentless sun finally gives up her stranglehold on the third coasts’ southern latitude and the night wind begins to pick up, signaling the time to slither and crawl from ectothermic reptile and insect siestas in search of a midnight snack before the relentless sun makes its appearance again in a hurrying and scurrying few hours, in a unisonous and endless cycle like the tides, like hot and hotter, like the annual ebb and flow of hurricane season.
The National Weather Service calls it tropical cyclone development and they send in airplanes and instruments to measure, predict and verify, but the people of the third coast know it in their bones, in their psyches, and they suffer from June through October when the Gulf heats up like a bowl of Caldo Mariscos, and swirling bands of clouds converge to rotate in a counterclockwise dervish of convection, traveling over open ocean till for reasons that may never be understood by mere mortal, they join the shoreline in a rush of energy that the Mexicans call Chubaso, La tormenta, pounding la tierra with powerful winds and torrential rains before exhausting themselves over perennial coastal desert and monte ruled by the relentless sun, leaving behind a wake of carnage and cleansing.
Billy K. is a tall stooped man about sixty five years old with the countenance of forlorn beagle. The entire world is out to get him.
Perennial residents like Billy K. become the human counterpart to the perennial hurricane. Billy has lived in Port Isabel all of his adult life, working first as a commercial diver, salvaging valuables from the myriad of shipwrecks from the past, recovering gold, silver and other treasures, only to have the State of Texas claim their rightful share of the plunder, which Billy doesn’t think they have any right to. So he tried to hide the bulk of the take from one particularly well endowed Spanish galleon, but the State found out, and took the whole thing plus more since Billy tried to keep it all. They never did found the remainder of the stash though, and Billy invested a good deal of that into a Marine Salvage operation, where he has made a fortune over the years recovering the largesse from named and unnamed tropical tormentas and hurricanes.
He has a salvage yard full of treasures that savvy wharf-rats know are worth as much as their weight in the gold and silver salvaged from long sunken Spanish galleons. Brass portlights, lifeboats, life preservers, engines and deck machinery, everything from sailboat rigging, blocks and fairleads to fishing winches, trawl doors and nets.
Billy K. owns a giant rusting hulk, bleeding long trails of iron oxide down it’s sides to its barnacle encrusted waterline, a British built ferry boat he obtained through some back alley deal, lying against one of his docks, tucked in there between filthy tugs and abandoned shrimpers.
Billy contracted a couple of guys from up the valley, out west in the desert area to sandblast the hull, get it ready to paint so that he could sell it to some unsuspecting soul.
So they hauled and drydocked the boat there on his property, and began to sandblast it, letting the paint, rust and sand fall into the open channel, and onto the drydock where it could be washed into the channel at the end of the day with high pressure washers.
…..But since this ain’t the wild west nomore, pretty soon his jerry-rigged operation came up on the feds radar screen……The Coast Guard, and the environmental police showed up and shut Billy K. down. “Hell” he claimed, “It’s not my fault, they’re just picking on me”. “If I hire a company to do work for me, than how could it be my fault”? “If you hire somebody to paint your car, and they wash the unused paint down the drain, would it be your fault that they violated the law?”
Later Billy K. got a contract from Mr. Z who owns about half of the town, to put in some decorative pilings and cement rip-rap out in front of Mr. Z’s’ new waterfront eatery, the Pelican Station. Give it a real rundown coastal look. A perfect opportunity to use up some of that old trash lying around the salvage yard, out of sight, out of mind. When the feds caught up with him again, for not having the proper permits to place fill in the water, threatening to fine him fifty thousand dollars a day for illegally filling coastal waters, Billy moaned; “they’re just picking on me, they’re always picking on me, why me?”….”how was I supposed to know that there weren’t any permits to do that?”…. “I can’t be responsible for this!”….
Billy K. owns a restaurant over on the island, the Palm Street Pier. An open air joint on the bay, the Palm Street pier is classically furnished with salvaged bits and pieces from Billy K’s. Marine Salvage Yard. Fresnel lights and ships’ wheels, cabin furnishings dating back to the 1950’s all held together by turquoise paint over its weathered lumber.
Billy K’s. neighbor to the South, Tequila Frogs, own the property that Billy uses for a parking lot out in front of Palm Street Pier, and recently decided for reasons not clear to anyone except he and Billy K. that the parking lot property was now off-limits to customers of the Palm Street Pier, so in the middle of a busy Saturday night crowd, the island constabulary came bursting in (well, came bursting on to palapa covered restaurant and grill), announcing that the patrons would immediately have to move their cars to the parking lot that was included in the lease when Billy K. originally leased the property several years prior, a parking lot located two blocks distant.
There hasn’t been much business at the Palm Street Pier since that happened. Billy K. swears it isn’t his fault. Hell, everyone’s always picking on him.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Another Public Service message
Well folks....it's time to call a spade a spade. The Isla Blanca controversy has turned into a strictly political battlefield. In this case, the candidate who portrays himself as the knight in shining armor is in reality, the wolf in sheeps clothing.
Come on Mr. Cascos, tell your loyal minions how you:
1.) As County Commissioner voted in favor of each and every rate hike increase for the park,
and
2.) campaigned to demolish a pefecty sound Convention Center structure within the park, so that the City of SPI could have a monopoly on a new, better structure (constructed in a hurricane washover no less).
Does this sound like the track record of someone with the best interests of a park in mind?
What makes folks think that if they succeed in getting this guy elected that he won't just sell out the park anyway? He's already proved willing to do that on numerous occassions.
Don't be ignorant folks. Question ALL motives....
(Not paid for or endosed by ANY political candidate, just common sense questions and observations)
Happy Trail(er)s
The seasons spin by the older I get.Sometimes I feel like the disappearing man.
It's the annual "bike fest" here on the island again, and the fuckers are showing up en masse. High dollar RV's and trucks, pulling trailers loaded with high end Harleys that only get ridden a couple of times a year.
Some of these people tow their two wheelers hundreds, maybe thousands of miles to their destination here at the "roar by the shore" so that they can ride up and down Padre Boulevard, a total distance of something like 6 miles. Real easy riders.
On Saturday they have a bike parade scheduled. They all act naughty, blasting over the causeway, and up the street to climax over at the convention center.
I have a novel idea for them this year.
Why not have a trailer parade? Cut through the crap. Their trailers get a lot more highway miles than their bikes anyway.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
SPI makes a splash....
Last week the wonderful berg of South Padre Island hosted “splash”, a homosexual debauchery on the sandspit, celebrating the cuteness of “being gay”
And what the fuck is “being gay”? I’m not the first to pen that the word “gay” used to have a totally innocuous meaning in more innocent times. Gay meant “happy”. Hell, I even had a “Gay Yellow Schoolbus”. Created when we were more innocent, and perverts stayed in the closet. It pains me to think of what that little toy would be today, or what the jokes surrounding it would be.
It pains me to see us having taken a giant step toward Gomorrah . Never mind Sodom .
Call me a homophobe if you like. I don’t give a shit.
To legitimize abhorrent behavior is to give the devil his due. Have we become a society so tolerant of deviancy that we will legitimize anything between two individuals, even at the expense of our own freedom, and the country in which we live?
Christ, I even saw a banner across the road welcoming participants of “splash” to the island. Real savory for families and children. What’s next? Hosting an annual convention of NAMBLA? It’s just a little further down the old (dirt) road. Thanks a lot SPI
I thought that Republicans were against this sort of thing? Seems like the political infrastructure of SPI is mostly the “R word though…..
So what gives? Could the town be so money hungry that it would sell its soul for a few lousy silver shekels? Could the City Manager (and I use that term loosely), Mr. Dewey Cashwell (you know him… of Hughy, Dewey and Louie fame) be persuaded to put aside principal for hotel occupancy? I tell you, I feel sorry for the hotel and condo cleanup crews after an event like this. Better wear full body protection, face masks and keep the industrial disinfectant nearby!
Ah well, what can we expect?
This type of behavior is totally in line with a place whose citizens are more concerned with building sand castles, putting on parties and catering to ill behaved annual spring break children, than with issues of morality, global crisis or the impending implosion of western civilization. I say keep fiddling while Rome burns ya’ll, it’s easy when you’re insulated from the real world.
Maybe too much THC and LSD during the ‘60’s?
Any town that bases it’s entire economy on this type of thing is only a shove from total economic and moral collapse. Better keep whistling past the graveyard.
Peace and love ya’ll
And what the fuck is “being gay”? I’m not the first to pen that the word “gay” used to have a totally innocuous meaning in more innocent times. Gay meant “happy”. Hell, I even had a “Gay Yellow Schoolbus”. Created when we were more innocent, and perverts stayed in the closet. It pains me to think of what that little toy would be today, or what the jokes surrounding it would be.
It pains me to see us having taken a giant step toward Gomorrah . Never mind Sodom .
Call me a homophobe if you like. I don’t give a shit.
To legitimize abhorrent behavior is to give the devil his due. Have we become a society so tolerant of deviancy that we will legitimize anything between two individuals, even at the expense of our own freedom, and the country in which we live?
Christ, I even saw a banner across the road welcoming participants of “splash” to the island. Real savory for families and children. What’s next? Hosting an annual convention of NAMBLA? It’s just a little further down the old (dirt) road. Thanks a lot SPI
I thought that Republicans were against this sort of thing? Seems like the political infrastructure of SPI is mostly the “R word though…..
So what gives? Could the town be so money hungry that it would sell its soul for a few lousy silver shekels? Could the City Manager (and I use that term loosely), Mr. Dewey Cashwell (you know him… of Hughy, Dewey and Louie fame) be persuaded to put aside principal for hotel occupancy? I tell you, I feel sorry for the hotel and condo cleanup crews after an event like this. Better wear full body protection, face masks and keep the industrial disinfectant nearby!
Ah well, what can we expect?
This type of behavior is totally in line with a place whose citizens are more concerned with building sand castles, putting on parties and catering to ill behaved annual spring break children, than with issues of morality, global crisis or the impending implosion of western civilization. I say keep fiddling while Rome burns ya’ll, it’s easy when you’re insulated from the real world.
Maybe too much THC and LSD during the ‘60’s?
Any town that bases it’s entire economy on this type of thing is only a shove from total economic and moral collapse. Better keep whistling past the graveyard.
Peace and love ya’ll
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Isla Blanca Park is Never Safe?
Surfrider Mission Statement:
-The Surfrider Foundation is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches through conservation, activism, research and education.
Isla Blanca Is Never Safe!
That’s the rhetoric I spotted on the Marquis at “On the Beach” the other day when I drove past. It’s also bullshit. So is the above mission statement for “surfrider”.
Let me ‘splain again. This is getting to be a tiring topic, but one that is so deeply mired in politics that it probably deserves the weight of truth.
As you know, Isla Blanca County Park had been given a contract by the County Commission for development by a group called the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group. The park itself is located on the extreme south tip of South Padre Island, adjacent to the north Brazos Santiago Jetty. Because of it’s geologic setting, there is a net loss of property due to erosion produced by the inhibition of sediment transport by the northbound longshore current as a result of the granite jetties which were built in the early part of the 20th century. Bottom line, nature, and the acts of man are causing this small tip of the barrier island to disappear.
As a side product though, it is perhaps the most excellent wave riding spot on the Gulf of Mexico. Here the continental shelf is at its narrowest point, allowing deep water swells to roll all the way to the beach, which themselves play a role in the exaggerated rate of erosion. The same waves that “surfrider” is so concerned with preserving access to, are also relentlessly wearing down the beach front, and sweeping the park away.
On Tuesday I took my little ketch offshore, out the jetties, which are a great place to drill home the effects of nature and man by observation. When I was just about in line with the south beach, Boca Chica, I was able to turn around, and look west at the North beach (Isla Blanca Park), almost a half mile further west, a result of erosion and shoreward transport of this part of the island.
So there’s not much we can do about it. Nature will eventually have her way, always has. The island will continue its relentless march shoreward, eventually accreting with the western shoreline, subside and disappear in a process that will be repeated during the next regression-transgression of sea level.
I don’t think surfrider understands this, or if they do they certainly aren’t making their members aware of it, members who consist mainly of aging affluent still pot smoking yuppies, who only see a threat to their parking lot where they can conduct unrestricted hedonism. What else could it be?
Certainly, a development in Isla Blanca Park of the sort that the “enhancement group” proposes would have little, if any impact on the ultimate geomorphic process that I’ve attempted to describe. And in reality, as the plans showed, fewer inhabitants than currently utilize the RV park would be present at any given time, probably reducing “ecological impact”.
Wouldn’t this fit in with surfriders mission? Judicious development can produce beneficial results. Furthermore, in Texas, public beach access cannot be restricted, and the surf break that these former 60’s hippies are so adamant about is really a non-issue. So where is the problem?
Cameron Counties political infrastructure even negated the lease in order to placate these bastards, who, selfishly don‘t even realize that the income would’ve funded other low income facilities for the benefit of the rest of the counties population. Hell, I had one even tell me, when I asked him about what the underprivileged kids would do for recreational facilities, kids who don’t even have an opportunity to travel from their colonias to the beach; “let ‘em play at school”.
Real caring individual, unfortunately reflective of the majority of self centered surfers, who drive their high end SUV’s down to the park to “catch a wave”……These folks are isolated from the rest of their community, choosing to live here in the affluence of the island and coast, insulating themselves from the true reality of where they live, the same as they choose to insulate themselves from the reality of what really is happening at Isla Blanca Park. Wake up and smell the Sargassum folks, it’s really all about erosion.
I heard one of these assholes remark the other day about their petition with “over three thousand signatures”, but what they failed to mention was the percentage of signatures by folks outside of this area, this county, even this state. Can’t forget the almighty “Winter Texans” either (and yes Virgina….these bastards are returning again, all too early!), folks only concerned with their own ability to stay on the beach all winter cheap. They don’t give a flying fuck about this place either. Just what’s in it for them. What’s free. And that’s the sad reality.
It appears to me that from the beginning this has been a political issue, dominated by a single individuals quest for County-judgedom. The way I see it, this Cascos character has been in the fracas from the beginning, using the naiveté of the cannabis consumers as a forum, a moving billboard. Next to damn near every “Save Isla Blanca” sticker is a “Carlos Cascos” sticker…….Do people really believe that this man won’t parlay an opportunity into gain? Damn near every “rally” put on by surfrider et al has involved a political rally for this guy.
Now they’re at it again, over some perceived intricacy within the vestigial remnants of “the lease”, but this time there’s a problem. It’s blatant bullshit, and they’re caught, pants down. However, this doesn’t seem to make a difference. These people will not stop until they finally implode like the draft card burning jerks they once were. It’s like a Phoenix rising from the flames in reverse. I smell a rat, the unholy triad between Cascos (the father), Surfrider (the son), and the chosen few (the un-holy ghost).
I really don’t much care about political alliances, but what I do care about is this place, and that’s what’s got me so red-assed. All of this misplaced energy.
There are true ecological problems that should be addressed. For example, how can we mitigate the effects of erosion in a common sense way? What do we do about the denigration of water quality from an ever expanding population? How do we deal with the siltation of the navigable passes and channels? Limit trash on beaches?
I don’t hear these concerns voiced by Cascos/surfrider/the privileged few. They instead, have chosen to target a totally banal and political cause for their own selfish gain. In that, there is no difference between them and their enemy, the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group
-The Surfrider Foundation is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches through conservation, activism, research and education.
Isla Blanca Is Never Safe!
That’s the rhetoric I spotted on the Marquis at “On the Beach” the other day when I drove past. It’s also bullshit. So is the above mission statement for “surfrider”.
Let me ‘splain again. This is getting to be a tiring topic, but one that is so deeply mired in politics that it probably deserves the weight of truth.
As you know, Isla Blanca County Park had been given a contract by the County Commission for development by a group called the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group. The park itself is located on the extreme south tip of South Padre Island, adjacent to the north Brazos Santiago Jetty. Because of it’s geologic setting, there is a net loss of property due to erosion produced by the inhibition of sediment transport by the northbound longshore current as a result of the granite jetties which were built in the early part of the 20th century. Bottom line, nature, and the acts of man are causing this small tip of the barrier island to disappear.
As a side product though, it is perhaps the most excellent wave riding spot on the Gulf of Mexico. Here the continental shelf is at its narrowest point, allowing deep water swells to roll all the way to the beach, which themselves play a role in the exaggerated rate of erosion. The same waves that “surfrider” is so concerned with preserving access to, are also relentlessly wearing down the beach front, and sweeping the park away.
On Tuesday I took my little ketch offshore, out the jetties, which are a great place to drill home the effects of nature and man by observation. When I was just about in line with the south beach, Boca Chica, I was able to turn around, and look west at the North beach (Isla Blanca Park), almost a half mile further west, a result of erosion and shoreward transport of this part of the island.
So there’s not much we can do about it. Nature will eventually have her way, always has. The island will continue its relentless march shoreward, eventually accreting with the western shoreline, subside and disappear in a process that will be repeated during the next regression-transgression of sea level.
I don’t think surfrider understands this, or if they do they certainly aren’t making their members aware of it, members who consist mainly of aging affluent still pot smoking yuppies, who only see a threat to their parking lot where they can conduct unrestricted hedonism. What else could it be?
Certainly, a development in Isla Blanca Park of the sort that the “enhancement group” proposes would have little, if any impact on the ultimate geomorphic process that I’ve attempted to describe. And in reality, as the plans showed, fewer inhabitants than currently utilize the RV park would be present at any given time, probably reducing “ecological impact”.
Wouldn’t this fit in with surfriders mission? Judicious development can produce beneficial results. Furthermore, in Texas, public beach access cannot be restricted, and the surf break that these former 60’s hippies are so adamant about is really a non-issue. So where is the problem?
Cameron Counties political infrastructure even negated the lease in order to placate these bastards, who, selfishly don‘t even realize that the income would’ve funded other low income facilities for the benefit of the rest of the counties population. Hell, I had one even tell me, when I asked him about what the underprivileged kids would do for recreational facilities, kids who don’t even have an opportunity to travel from their colonias to the beach; “let ‘em play at school”.
Real caring individual, unfortunately reflective of the majority of self centered surfers, who drive their high end SUV’s down to the park to “catch a wave”……These folks are isolated from the rest of their community, choosing to live here in the affluence of the island and coast, insulating themselves from the true reality of where they live, the same as they choose to insulate themselves from the reality of what really is happening at Isla Blanca Park. Wake up and smell the Sargassum folks, it’s really all about erosion.
I heard one of these assholes remark the other day about their petition with “over three thousand signatures”, but what they failed to mention was the percentage of signatures by folks outside of this area, this county, even this state. Can’t forget the almighty “Winter Texans” either (and yes Virgina….these bastards are returning again, all too early!), folks only concerned with their own ability to stay on the beach all winter cheap. They don’t give a flying fuck about this place either. Just what’s in it for them. What’s free. And that’s the sad reality.
It appears to me that from the beginning this has been a political issue, dominated by a single individuals quest for County-judgedom. The way I see it, this Cascos character has been in the fracas from the beginning, using the naiveté of the cannabis consumers as a forum, a moving billboard. Next to damn near every “Save Isla Blanca” sticker is a “Carlos Cascos” sticker…….Do people really believe that this man won’t parlay an opportunity into gain? Damn near every “rally” put on by surfrider et al has involved a political rally for this guy.
Now they’re at it again, over some perceived intricacy within the vestigial remnants of “the lease”, but this time there’s a problem. It’s blatant bullshit, and they’re caught, pants down. However, this doesn’t seem to make a difference. These people will not stop until they finally implode like the draft card burning jerks they once were. It’s like a Phoenix rising from the flames in reverse. I smell a rat, the unholy triad between Cascos (the father), Surfrider (the son), and the chosen few (the un-holy ghost).
I really don’t much care about political alliances, but what I do care about is this place, and that’s what’s got me so red-assed. All of this misplaced energy.
There are true ecological problems that should be addressed. For example, how can we mitigate the effects of erosion in a common sense way? What do we do about the denigration of water quality from an ever expanding population? How do we deal with the siltation of the navigable passes and channels? Limit trash on beaches?
I don’t hear these concerns voiced by Cascos/surfrider/the privileged few. They instead, have chosen to target a totally banal and political cause for their own selfish gain. In that, there is no difference between them and their enemy, the Laguna Madre Enhancement Group
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