DISCOVER
OJAI MONTHLY OUR LONG, HOT SUMMER
Bret Bradigan
As with many places of astounding natural beauty within easy driving reach of Los Angeles, Ojai has been inundated with partiers lately. They come to have a good time, and we’re happy to provide that, because who except the scrooges and grinches aren’t happy to see people being happy? But this new breed of visitor is not “taking only pictures, leaving only memories.” They are leaving the dark triad of graffiti tags, trash and broken beer bottles. Between the Punch Bowls and the swimming holes on the Ventura River, the crowds once numbered in a single dozen on weekends have swelled into the hundreds on weekdays. Tempers seem amped up, tinder-dry and volatile. I know several locals who were abused for telling people that they weren’t allowed to drag their portable parties onto Ojai Valley Land Conservancy preserves. One encounter over a leashless dog rooting through the underbrush, threatening a clutch of baby quail, turned into a disturbing twist on the Central Park Karen debacle. People who should know better are flaunting their masklessness, as if daring you to say something. It puts Ojai locals in a precarious position of being unwilling enforcers of social norms. It all begins with leadership, and when the country is led by people who have politicized public health precautions like wearing face masks, this is what we get. Confrontation. Frayed tempers. People at odds with each other over the very things that should be bringing us together. A big part of the purpose at Ojai Monthly and Ojai Quarterly magazines, along with our online community website, Ojai Hub, is to fight against the fraying of the social infrastructure, to tell those stories of this community that bring us back together, to build and shape our narrative as inclusively and empathetically as possible. The pandemic is not making that easy, but signs point to better days ahead. There is a new sense of unity emerging from the ashes of isolation and protest. We cannot deny that the world that comes out of the global pandemic will be different than the one that went into it. Whether it’s better, or worse, is much more in our control than you might think. If you are willing to do the hard, and often boring and tiring, work of making it better, then you will have an ally with Team OQ/OM.
OM — July 2020
7
