The following is an excerpt from 'Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture' by Patrick Moser. Freeth has an amazing story.
yeah, we have to bring back lifeguarding is a glamour gig. guys used the lifeguardac becaue it really was a way to get women. you were the guy with the whistle. you were on the stand that . oh ,u i know k thing.nty of i know plenty of things. we ll get into it later.. but no, that used to be a glamour gig. the problem in the body positive era is we don t p actually champion what being a lifeguard was. you were the alphaosa, w guy at the pool. now the other part is you don t actually work. jesse s right. we don the need lifeguards. no one goes in the water. they just take instagram. if t people start swimming, we ll bring back the lifeguards. robotd basically likeurur lifeguards that don t short circuit the problem. think that through a little bit further. up next , 56% of americans admit reading a book duringg the summer just to look smarter. jesse would never do that . what are the five favorite beach boys? okay, well, right nowdi i m reading peter zion s new book, the endd of the
this is really bad for kids out of school and nowhere to go, hang out during the summer, parents still have to work. the community will is a good big deal. it s not like you can learn to swim on your own. i don t think we need the lifeguards, but the parents monitor the situation. what about liability? make sure there s some adults with their eye on the ball, decades ago we didn t have lifeguards everywhere, people just jumped in the ocean and the pool and it was fine. we were warned as litigious, you have to get everyone to sign a liability. that s true. i have the answer. this used to be a gig but we went body positive, we need to bring back baywatch in a nonpositive body positive way. every bathing suit online is positive, the men look like they are in their third trimester we have to bring back lifeguarding
usually we have 20-30 applicants and this year we only had six. thankfully six was enough for our ocean staff, but i see it definitely being an issue going forward. this is a nationwide shortage. it is not just new jersey, so why is this happening? i don t know. i think there s a couple factors here. one, with the youth now, they specialize in sports, so sports takes a precedent as opposed to when we were younger and their parents wanted us working. i think that s one of them. the other reason is i think there is a big commitment to lifeguarding. there s a lot on these kids shoulders and some of these kids don t want to make that commitment. a lot of local municipalities are barely treading water just financially coming out of this pandemic. is there a problem here just being able to pay lifeguards to come out to do this, or is it just a motivation problem? that is also it.