SUNDAY JOINT, 1-27-2025: ZERO-PERCENT CONTAINMENT

Hey All,

The last two Joints were meant to be on the Palisades Fire, but the fire kept growing and the bad news kept coming—not just the headlines but straight to my inbox, from people who live in or near the burn area; no deaths among them, but houses gone, sometimes multiple houses in the same family. Three days into the fire I watched a passenger-side-view YouTube post of a car driving slowly north on PCH, from Topanga to Big Rock, charred hills to the right, smoke still trailing up from burned foundations, set against an otherwise perfect Southern California winter morning, blue skies and offshore winds. I clicked out before getting to Carbon Beach and scurried back to writing about Kaena Point.

Things are off to a rough start here in 2025. Maybe you feel it as well—overwhelmed on two or more fronts. Longtime Joint readers will recall that on occasion, in years past, I might throw a cheeky little fin-reverse into politics—I'm so far to the left my son has to operate the right-turn blinker for me, etc—but that's over since November 6, and no we're not fleeing to Vancouver or Figueira da Foz, but I'm also done with lefty Threads, Pod Save America, op-eds, the Times and the New Yorker, except for the crossword. Weed is more legal than it has ever been, which I guess is good. But otherwise, off the top of my head, I can't think of a single political or social or environmental cause that might in the near future raise a cheer from those of us on the liberal side of the stadium. The arc of the moral universe is not bending toward justice, it is tied to a Cybertruck and getting dragged through Palm Beach County, Florida. What to do? I have by and large quit paying attention. My snowflake head has found a new and thus far comfortable home in the sand. Eventually I will see this as lazy or irresponsible or both, but for now, like the old bumper sticker says, "Since I gave up hope, I feel much better."

So there I was, just one week into the new year, on a trial separation with the future—and three-quarters of the homes in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood close to my heart, near and dear to my past, goes up in flames.

My family went to a wedding in 1969 at the Palisades Lutheran Church. On the steps out front, my dad happened to look across the street, saw the long, sloping, U-shaped parking lot on the north side of Palisades High, pointed it out to me and said, "That'd be a great place to skateboard!" My brother and I returned the following weekend, with boards, and began zigzagging down "Giant Hill" (our Venice hometown was and is flat as the Dakotas; Pali High was Waimea Bay by comparison) like the Mahre boys on their first trip to Sun Valley.

For years, I thought we discovered that spot. Not even close. Those first-gen Santa Monica and Pali skaters were all over it by 1965—and way better dressed than we ever were.

Anyway, you know where this is going. Palisades High burned on January 7. Not the whole thing, but almost half. Just over 6,800 Palisades homes, total, were destroyed. As of 2:00 PM today, the fire is not yet fully contained and there is a flood watch across the burn scar. Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Monica and Topanga—the Silk Road for every LA area gremmie; the gateway to Malibu, the original surfing adventure, setting up all surfing adventures to follow, none of which hit my bloodstream like that winding 20-minute drive from State Beach to First Point—is still closed.

I've foregrounded some threadbare 50-plus-year-old memories here, possibly for no other reason than it's the Sunday Joint house style. But maybe the only way to access an event as catastrophic as the Palisades Fire is through a small opening. A 20-minute slow-drive video of Coast Highway with flames still peeking up from bare foundations, or an aerial photo showing whole neighborhoods leveled down to fields of gray ash—I rubbernecked online, like everyone, but it felt distant and overpowering at the same time. So again, I clicked out. I didn't see the Pali High photo, below, until a week or so ago. That's what finally pulled me in.

That, and hearing from Rich Wilken. You older EOS diehards might remember the name. In 1970, the year I began riding Malibu, lifelong Palisades resident Rich Wilken (Pali High, Class of '64) was known up and down the coast for making some of the cleanest, most progressive sticks in California, and his small but bespoke Wilken Surfboards operation had attracted some of the hottest young guns in the great Los Angeles area, including J Riddle, Robbie Dick, Marty Sugarman, Glenn Kennedy, and Nancy Emerson. Wilken also organized surf contests, wrote articles for the surf mags, and took photos. He hung up his planer in '73 for what turned out to be a long and successful career as an architect, raised a family, did volunteer work of every description, and in 2010 was named Citizen of the Year by the Palisadian-Post.

Wilken shot me a brief thumbs-up email after last week's Mike Hynson tribute Joint. I assumed that meant the fire had steered clear of his place, but asked anyway, and minutes later got this reply:

Lost our house, thousands of 60s and 70s surf slides, 15 or 16 Wilken boards and 6+ other boards in my collection. We have bad fires here every 5 to 10 years and normally only lose a few homes. We evacuated along with everybody else but thought we would be back home in a couple of days. Not this time. One pair of pants, one pair of shoes, a couple pairs of socks, 3 pairs of underwear and 3 T-shirts. Been living in a hotel in Santa Monica the last 12 days. It will be an interesting 2-3 years while we plan and rebuild. Instant decluttering.

I don't for a moment think Rich feels like this, so casual and calm, all day, every day. My very non-scientific estimate is that 90% of Boomer-age adults wake up at least once between three and five AM and shuffle to the bathroom with one foot on the floor and the other hanging in the void. The object is to pull it back together before 9:00 AM.

For decades, to my own great expense, I ignored or eye-rolled all the simple and familiar pared-down bits of life instruction. I am slow that way; skepticism is my first-responder. But I do move forward, and coming up on 65 I have learned that "practice gratitude" is an absolute North Star bit of advice, a perfect nondenominational two-word psalm, in part because it is not at all simple—practicing gratitude is in fact something you have to practice. And the value is limited. Passive, even. Gratitude does nothing to address any of the 250 or so associated failings that have gotten us to this bleak and spiraling point in time. But practice anyway. Give a wink and nod, or more, to your family and friends, your dogs and-or cats, your god, your playlist, your meds, surfing, fresh fruit, Dolly Parton. Gratitude can escort you from that 5:00 AM nullity back to your life, not always but often, and keep practicing because you may at some point level all the way up to where Rich Wilken is today. Covered in ash but still grateful.

When the time comes, hopefully many years from now, may Wilken's final words be "instant uncluttering."

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Matt

[Photo grid, clockwise from top left: Miki Dora at State Beach, Pacific Palisades; Rich Wilken, '64 Pali High track team; Wilken Surfboards teamrider Craig Wilson, 1969; lifeguard tower on fire, January 7, 2925; burned Palisades neighborhood; skateboarding Pali High, 1965, photo by Grant Rolhoff. Palisades Fire as seen from Venice Pier, photo by Willy Duerr. Skating at Pali High, by Rohloff. Pali High, post-fire. Rich Wilken at Malibu in 1965. Wilken and his factory van, around 1967. Wilken Surfboards teamrider Marty Sugarman. Glenn Kennedy and Stanley Washington, 1969, photo by Wilken.]