Do Americans ever go to the beach?
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@HardwareGeek said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
We have rather different definitions of COLD and "normal".
Ha most Californians are kinda pussy when it comes to the cold.
I have a funny story I may have told,
I was in LA in December, wearing a tank top, shorts, and sandals. It was probably a bit cool for that but dammit I was in LA.
We were walking somewhere and a homeless man asks for money and suffixes his request something about the cold.
I chuckle and say,
I'm from upstate NY, I laugh at your cold.
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@Karla when I was in school in Utah, we could always tell the Californian students--they'd be wearing down parkas as soon as the temperature hit 50 degrees. Lots of the natives we still wearing shorts at that point.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Why? Well, because, as she related it, to those people (and as I heard it in other parts of the north-east, specifically Endicott, NY), "going to the beach" might mean an oceanic beach, or it might mean what she (in West Coast vocabulary) would have called "the lakeside".
Parts of upstate NY are on the coast one of the Great Lakes, up there we did call that the beach.
Smaller lakes were referred to going to the lake.
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@levicki said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Of course they never go to the beach -- they could see a lot of nekkid people there
Those sorts of beaches are few and far between. There are a number of them along the coast of California, but they're isolated and difficult to get to (that's why it's legal to be, or at least people can get away with being, nude there; they're not "in public" because nobody who would complain goes there). There are a lot of tiny coves along the coast where you could get away with anything, because you'd be the only person on the beach, but they're only accessible by boat (+/- offshore rocks, maybe) — or maybe by rappelling down the cliff through the poison oak, but I wouldn't recommend that. I heard of one in Washington when I was living there, but dreary, rainy Washington is not really beach country.
I understand there are even fewer such beaches on the east coast, and going to one is risky. The ones one hears of are illegal and at least intermittently enforced.
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I like how there's a sort of implicit assumption that Hawaii doesn't count.
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@Zecc Nor Alaska, and it has more coastline than all the other states put together. (Or just over 1/3 the total, depending on how you measure. CRS method measures only the ocean coastline and excludes bays and other such inlets; NOAA includes these, as well as the Great Lakes and offshore territories, in a total 7.65x that of the CRS.)
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@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Why? Well, because, as she related it, to those people (and as I heard it in other parts of the north-east, specifically Endicott, NY), "going to the beach" might mean an oceanic beach, or it might mean what she (in West Coast vocabulary) would have called "the lakeside".
Parts of upstate NY are on the coast one of the Great Lakes, up there we did call that the beach.
Smaller lakes were referred to going to the lake.
As a fellow native of WNY, I concur.
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@admiral_p said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@dkf my basic understanding is that the only beaches worth going to for actually bathing are basically those on the Channel.
Most of which are not worth going to, because they look like this:
Damn, those are tiring to walk on …
@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Parts of upstate NY are on the coast one of the Great Lakes, up there we did call that the beach.I remember being in Milwaukee, driving on a highway along the shore of whichever of those Great Lakes that’s on again (ICBA to look it up), and noticing it had enough waves that I would have mistaken it for the sea, had I not known it was a lake.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Karla when I was in school in Utah, we could always tell the Californian students--they'd be wearing down parkas as soon as the temperature hit 50 degrees. Lots of the natives we still wearing shorts at that point.
In the winter, my husband always warns me how brick (cold) it is before I leave for work (he walks the dog before I leave the house). I have since learned to confirm the temp as his suggestions are usually overkill for me. Damn tropical peoples (husband is Hispanic for those that don't already know).
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@HardwareGeek said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@levicki said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Of course they never go to the beach -- they could see a lot of nekkid people there
Those sorts of beaches are few and far between. There are a number of them along the coast of California, but they're isolated and difficult to get to (that's why it's legal to be, or at least people can get away with being, nude there; they're not "in public" because nobody who would complain goes there). There are a lot of tiny coves along the coast where you could get away with anything, because you'd be the only person on the beach, but they're only accessible by boat (+/- offshore rocks, maybe) — or maybe by rappelling down the cliff through the poison oak, but I wouldn't recommend that. I heard of one in Washington when I was living there, but dreary, rainy Washington is not really beach country.
I understand there are even fewer such beaches on the east coast, and going to one is risky. The ones one hears of are illegal and at least intermittently enforced.
We had a couple topless women close to our spot today at the beach. It hasn't been the first time.
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@HardwareGeek said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
only the ocean coastline
It's the only one that matters.
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@HardwareGeek said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
but dreary, rainy Washington is not really beach country
Whenever I've been round there, I've thought “gosh, what good weather compared with at home”. YMMV.
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@Gurth said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I remember being in Milwaukee, driving on a highway along the shore of whichever of those Great Lakes that’s on again (ICBA to look it up), and noticing it had enough waves that I would have mistaken it for the sea, had I not known it was a lake.
The only (real) reason they're not seas is that they're not salty.
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@dkf said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Gurth said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I remember being in Milwaukee, driving on a highway along the shore of whichever of those Great Lakes that’s on again (ICBA to look it up), and noticing it had enough waves that I would have mistaken it for the sea, had I not known it was a lake.
The only (real) reason they're not seas is that they're not salty.
They don't have significant tides, either.
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@lolwhat said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
They don't have significant tides, either.
That's not a distinguishing factor as not all seas have much in the way of tides.
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@lolwhat said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
They don't have significant tides, either.
Neither do the Mediterranean or Black Seas.
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@dkf said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Gurth said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I remember being in Milwaukee, driving on a highway along the shore of whichever of those Great Lakes that’s on again (ICBA to look it up), and noticing it had enough waves that I would have mistaken it for the sea, had I not known it was a lake.
The only (real) reason they're not seas is that they're not salty.
Is it ok to punch them?
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@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@HardwareGeek said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
We have rather different definitions of COLD and "normal".
Ha most Californians are kinda pussy when it comes to the cold.
I have a funny story I may have told,
I was in LA in December, wearing a tank top, shorts, and sandals. It was probably a bit cool for that but dammit I was in LA.
We were walking somewhere and a homeless man asks for money and suffixes his request something about the cold.
I chuckle and say,
I'm from upstate NY, I laugh at your cold.
I was in LA for a few days back in, oh, February or March or something. Windless, sunny, 65 degrees, and the locals were complaining about the cold, while it was -10 or something back home for me.
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@admiral_p said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Likewise, the Bay Area isn't really renowned for beachgoing.
Tell that to the Los Gatos, which is clogged with traffic heading to Santa Cruz every Friday and Saturday. Pacifica and Ocean Beach get lots of people from SF. The SF Bay itself only has a few beaches along its shoreline, but there are intrepid lunatics using those too.
The water is cold and full of kelp in Northern California but everybody love a beach.
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@The_Quiet_One said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
You've never seen Baywatch?
Beaches are crazy crowded up and down the east coast.When watching Baywatch, that's not what I stared at
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@Zecc said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I'm under the impression Canadians don't partake in beach activities either.
Yes we do, it's just different activities
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Never did see the appeal of ocean noise myself...
You're supposed to hear it, not see it.
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@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I'm from upstate NY, I laugh at your cold.
You call that cold?
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@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
We had a couple topless women close to our spot today at the beach.
Excluding you?
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@Zerosquare said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Never did see the appeal of ocean noise myself...
You're supposed to hear it, not see it.
,... You mean it's not supposed to be an Oddly Satisfying thing?
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@TimeBandit said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@The_Quiet_One said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
You've never seen Baywatch?
Beaches are crazy crowded up and down the east coast.When watching Baywatch, that's not what I stared at
I stared at both East and West coast...
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@loopback0 said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I stared at both East and West coast...
The mountains blocked my view
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@TimeBandit said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
I'm from upstate NY, I laugh at your cold.
You call that cold?
Yes, your dick is bigger than mine.
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@TimeBandit said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Karla said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
We had a couple topless women close to our spot today at the beach.
Excluding you?
At the beach, one might mistake me for Muslim because almost everything is covered to protect from the sun.
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@Polygeekery said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
the Atlantic state beaches are COLD
And usually smell of rotting crustaceans.
Stop going to the skanky nudist beaches
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
@Karla when I was in school in Utah, we could always tell the Californian students--they'd be wearing down parkas as soon as the temperature hit 50 degrees. Lots of the natives we still wearing shorts at that point.
50s? They're wearing those in the 60s and 70s too! (I may not be as resistant to the cold as I used to be, but it's still just a light fleece for the 50s!)
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@tafinucane said in Do Americans ever go to the beach?:
Tell that to the Los Gatos, which is clogged with traffic heading to Santa Cruz every Friday and Saturday.
Welcome back to the forum from your 7-year vacation (or lurking).
Highway 17 is what I was referring to, above, as the mountain road with accidents, landslides and terrible congestion.