November 30, 2023 | FEATURES | By Anya Jones
I decided to drive my dog out to the ocean to take him on a walk. Apparently, everyone else in the city made the same decision at the exact same time. It was like doggy Independence Day. They were everywhere.
The best dog I saw was not a dog, but rather a bear with abnormally long hair. It lunged in an incredibly uncoordinated fashion towards the water. Four times the size of its owner, it could have easily determined their walking path. But the dog seemed incapable of forward motion.
The dog’s head was permanently locked in a sideways cocked position. It bounced brainlessly as its owner – who was a dead ringer for a human version of his dog – looked menacingly out at the water. I am a firm believer that dogs look like their owners. This was a perfect example. If the man had buried his face in the dog’s side so that only his hair was visible, you would be unable to distinguish where dog ended and where man began.
There were more than just dogs on this walk. There was also a parade of people, both on foot and on a variety of wheels. A child pedaled on their scooter. I noted that it was not a razor scooter; it was the scooter with two wheels in the front. The kid panted heavily while their helmet slipped further sideways off their head.
A pedantic cyclist, instead of just staying on the left side of the street that did not have pedestrians, insisted on biking on the right side, leading him to execute an excessive number of legal passes on the left. He rang his bell and hollered a soft ‘on your left!’ each time.
This was starkly juxtaposed by the man on his hover skateboard going in the exact opposite direction of the flow of traffic, black pug in hand. He held his dog much like one holds a medium-sized box: under his right arm with the left supporting it. This meant the pug’s legs were dead hanging from the bottom of its body, eyes completely glossed over.
I have always been convinced that whatever lives inside of pugs is far less docile than whatever lives inside other dogs; it did not get a piece of the collective brain spread around the different breeds. I think what lives inside of pugs are the reincarnated spirits of the men from the Salem Witch trials: vicious and hysteric villains who inflict a shocking amount of societal damage while hiding behind the smokescreen of a paranormal threat. If you disagree, then their plan is working.
Needless to say, this pug was no exception. It stared blankly ahead as it and its owner zipped disruptively through the peaceful stretch of road. Its legs were perfectly straight as though it had entered a stage of rigor mortis, and I did not observe it blink once despite the stinging wind. Contrary to the belief of the man on the hover skateboard, they did not look cool. They just looked extremely off-putting.
What did look cool was the silhouette crafted by the limber wetsuits pointing at the triple overheads the morning report had called “hazardous” due to the “mini tsunami” warning. This was when I noticed the slew of long lens cameras trained on the monstrous waves and the few lone surfers. The only people surfing on this day were men over the age of 50 who spoke about the ocean in a different language and strapped their boards to the sides of e-bikes.
There were also a staggering number of people who sat on railings and benches, alone, staring out at the ocean. They all wore some version of the same thing: a corduroy button down that was fuzzy on the inside, a beanie and dark pants that were not jeans. They looked forlornly out at the swell, ostensibly mourning their inability to ride the giants. They blamed it on injury and not waking up early enough.
I also walked past something that resembled a birthday party, but definitely was not. It was an incomprehensible mix of people with pink boxes full of pastries and donuts listening to ABBA on a portable speaker. A few of them had dogs and children, but all of them had bikes.
Many of them still wore their helmets. I couldn’t decipher the conversation, but I assume they were speaking about mushroom foraging and the future of OpenAI. As my dog and I walked through the group, I spotted a frantic dog on wheels. A pug. A pug with no back legs and a tongue hanging out of the left side of its mouth.
I watched it scuttle in erratic zig zags until it screeched to a halt in front of us. Its beady and pupil-less eyes met my dogs, and then it met mine. Its tongue flipped back into its mouth for just a moment before it flew back into action, maneuvering its wheelchair at the Olympic level. The thing was most certainly possessed.