“Look me up on MySpace!” he called after us. “Grizzly bears.” We sat up and began to paddle away. “What’s that supposed to be?” he laughed. “Come ooooon, pretend you’re Cindy Crawford.” We bared our teeth and snarled at him as the shutter clicked. ’Cause I’m here every day.” He whipped out his waterproof disposable camera and squinted through the viewfinder. “I know almost everyone who comes to this beach. Struggling to stand still against the current, he grinned and invited us to smoke with him and his friends back on shore. “Can I take your picture?” he asked, throwing a soggy blond braid over his shoulder. Our raft rocked as a half-naked sunburned man splashed toward us, disturbing the calm waters. “Call me motherfuckin’ Mya!” echoed from the shore. What would Paradise Beach mean to me in five years? Would it still offer solace?įor now, I simply held Lilly’s hand. The city would change, as new developments rose, friends scattered and old haunts disappeared. Like an old friend, Sacramento would always be familiar, but as time went on, I would not fully recognize it. Once I left, I could never really return home.

Now that it was on the horizon, I found myself treading in nostalgia. Would she miss me as much as I’d miss her? What would time change? Who would we be by next summer?įor many years I had anticipated my escape with eager restlessness. This calculated transition to adulthood birthed childish anxieties within me. No more Saturday mornings spent tanning on her deck. No more practical jokes on mutual friends. There would be no more late-night talks over coffee. Hundreds of miles apart, we wouldn’t be able to sneak over to each other’s houses in the middle of the night or conspire ways to ditch cross-country practice. Soon our bedrooms would be packed into boxes, shoved into trunks of minivans and awkwardly reassembled in strange dorm rooms. Cool streams of sweat slithered down our backs, and Lilly wondered aloud, “What happens now?” It was the last summer of childhood. My best friend Lilly and I lay bobbing in our raft, watching the sun dive into the waves. I remember one such evening several years back. And in those moments it can feel like paradise. Once you’re on the water, the sounds of domestic dispute are carried away by the wind. So, on sleepy August afternoons, we river rats grab a raft and a six-pack and head to the only beach available. Sacramento, unlike the stereotypical California town, has no picturesque expanse of white sand sprawled along the dazzling Pacific Ocean. This is primarily due to limited options. And yet my friends and I return year after year in the summertime, to bask in the sun and count the number of children that lack a supervising adult. An old baby sitter swears she found a human hand once in the water there. Twice I have had the misfortune to stumble across a man pleasuring himself in the bushes. That’s because the shore is littered with used condoms and abandoned tighty-whities.

Paradise Beach, a bank of sand no wider than 200 feet along the American River in Sacramento, is a misnomer.

Paradise beach sacramento