The Week That Perished: Gene Pool Drowners

Things don't go swimmingly for Daquan

The lead story in this week’s Week is about blacks and swimming, a topic we’ve covered before, and it really is astounding the extent to which this issue continues to crop up, not with “cold fries” frequency, but running a close second.

Back in my majority-black high school, it was a running gag that we didn’t have a swimming pool because it would serve as a student body decreaser. One time, visiting a friend at Beverly High, I saw their majestic indoor pool and I was like “man, if we had this at our school, they’d be fishin’ out bloated LaTimions daily.”

Me? My mom made sure I could swim at the earliest possible age. We didn’t have no swimmin’ pool at our little apartment on Doheny and Pico, but we’d go either to the local community center or what was known as “Mother’s Beach,” a man-made waveless lagoon in Marina del Rey where small children could learn to swim in the ocean (next to it was “Motherfucker’s Beach,” where black families picnicked a safe distance from shore). So I’ve been ocean-swimming since I was a toddler.

I swim not just in the pristine waters of El Segundo and Manhattan Beach, but Venice and Santa Monica, which means I’m pretty much immune to raw sewage, after being immersed in it for so many years. The only summer I skipped the beach was 2011, because idiots had us scared that Tōhoku tsunami bodies would be washing ashore on the West Coast, and I know my luck: I’ve never minded sharks, but I just knew that if there was a Japanese cadaveru floating around, I’d be the sonofabitch to bump into it, and I’d spend the rest of the day back home bathing in bleach to wipe off the death-stench.

My moderate germ-phobia and my love of swimming finally clashed a few years ago, though, after one too many L.A. Times reports about sewage levels at the local beaches. El Segundo and Manhattan are still clean, but it’s just too long a rail trip to get down there from BH, and these days I’m such a worn-out husk I don’t even like walking up the street to the grocery store.

Due to space restrictions, I couldn’t go into more detail regarding Al Campanis (you’ll read about him in the lead story). After poor Al, a Greek-American baseball legend and definite non-racist (he mentored Jackie Robinson and discovered Roberto Clemente) made his comments on Nightline about blacks not being able to swim, Ted Koppel replied that it’s because “they don’t have access to country clubs.”

As if all whites do.

Mother’s Beach was free. Still is. But with most of our blacks having moved to landlocked Southern cities like Atlanta, Memphis, and Birmingham, I guess it’s not much of a problem anymore.

Beans, on the other hand, tend to live on the East/Southside, where the drainage ditch that passes for the L.A. River flows. It’s so dry 90% of the year, that during the rainy season beans try to cross it not understanding it now has a current that can drag you under. Every year, especially in rain-heavy years, we lose about 30 beans who get pulled under and flushed back to Mexico. There’s even a welcoming station in Tijuana where families await the return of their loved ones as they float back across the border.

¡Gustavo, aquí! Nadar más rápido!”

Enjoy this week’s Week, and if you get a laugh or two, BUY ME A BEER! In just a few weeks I’ll be able to “drown” my sorrows again as I go off the wagon for the holidays…if my liver allows it (50/50 on that).

The Week That Perished

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