If you live near where I live, it might be too late. Scraping your wax requires a few necessary tools: a credit card or driver’s license, acetone, sawhorses (if you’re really fancy) and sunshine. As of press time though, the May Gray/June Gloom has settled in for the foreseeable future here in Southern California and it’ll be August before we can get enough sun along the coast to melt our wax. Apparently Occy refuses to change his wax and just lets the rotting Mrs. Palmers create a mold around his feet. Thicker the better. Sick, we’ll be like Occ then.

I haven’t always been so comfortable with ugly wax. Growing up Deion Sanders was my favorite athlete and he had a saying: “Look good, you feel good; feel good, you play good; play good, they pay good.” I took that to heart and as a grom I made sure my aesthetic cruising down the beach was phenomenal.

I genuinely thought girls would appreciate a clean surfboard…remember I’d be channeling 1994 Kelly Slater. Bright white banana surfboards with barely visible bikini wax jobs. Chicks dig photo incentives!

I was very conscious of my gear for the inaugural arrival at Tower 2 — my home for adolescent summer days. I would tote a (pristine) backpack full of wetsuit options, trunks, a towel, a variety of Sex Wax smells and temps, $1.08 for a 99 cent Whopper and a surfboard that looked like I must get hundreds of them for free. Despite all this, the guys with shit wax jobs who never even bothered to use a backpack or paddle out often got the girls. Shoulder shrug.

I bring this up today because I can feel the pull of the summer coming. The gloom means summer to me and it's getting near. The low clouds, the crowds, full parking lots full of dogshit and slobber, flat spells, dirty, melted wax and boards roasting in the car. But have no fear! I learned something about the dog days of summer this week from our guest columnist Jesse Guglielmana.

As a precaution about his 12 Songs playlist (as I’ve said, one of the finest of the year) he texted me, “Warning! It’s a melancholy mix but hey, life isn’t all e-bike rides to Lowers lol.” The playlist includes Elliot Smith, Kurt Cobain, Christopher Owens, Leonard Cohen, J Mascis, Noise Addict, John Coltrane and more — and yeah, it’s a melancholy playlist on the surface, but it brought me a lot of joy over the last couple gray days.

Driving down to the beach on Tuesday I had a few boards in the car that really needed new wax. FU Wax was caked inches thick. Couple chips in the nose and tail that need Sun Cure. Wetsuit was damp and sandy. My gear looked melancholy and matched the color of the sky. Motivation was low. But as Jesse’s playlist transitioned from “Waltz #1” by Elliot Smith to “Say It (Over and Over Again)” by John Coltrane to “About a Girl” by Nirvana, I found myself pulling into the lot, staring at the 1-foot peaks psyching. Life aint e-bikes to Lowers every day.

What followed was one of the best sessions of my year and it happened in soft 1-foot peaks on a yellowed toastoid of a surfboard with a disgusting wax job in cold red tide conditions under sad skies. But I saw the bright side in the gloom. Who needs new wax or sun or swell? A sneaky fun session could be lurking in the melancholy anywhere. The playlist’s kick from Coltrane to “About a Girl” is a hell of a drug. —Travis Ferré

[Above art: Wrecktangle #12, 2014 by Herbie Fletcher]