Memorial Day tourist race is on

Memorial Day has become a checkbox to summer.

Fly a flag. Check.

Honor the war dead by posting something patriotic to Facebook. Check.

Hit the beach before everyone else. Check.

Memorial Day is the demarcation line between winter’s sorrow and summer’s light.

Even the span of the day recognizes the change. This time of year, the morning overcast doesn’t lift until after lunch. Then the sun breaks high and softly parched.

It is a solar tease, not as punishing as the Fourth of July or as desperate as Labor Day.

It is the first time we get to try out the new Costco beach chairs, with the optional oversized towels. If you look down a cliff onto any Laguna beach, you will spot the Costco towels.

They. Are. Everywhere.

It’s also the coolers, tents and those ridiculous four-wheel-drive utility carts with little Confederate flags. It’s red Inland Empire meets blue coastal waters.

As a result, it’s hard to endorse the day. You try to smile, yield and point the way. But there are limits.

Like can you please stop gridlocking the intersections? As if that extra car length is going to matter.

At least the police have started trying to help. At Forest and Park and Coast Highway — that triangle of hell — pedestrians are clueless, so it’s actually nice to see some official assistance.

Officer: “Yes, ma’am, red means stop.”

It begs the question, if everyone outside of Laguna Beach thinks Laguna is a pedestrian-friendly village where you can pretty much walk anywhere anytime you want, why don’t the residents?

There are other things that are unique about Memorial Day, primarily because they’ve been absent for a few months:

•Airplanes dragging banners.

•Pale skin made paler with sunscreen.

•Raiders hats.

As in any change of season, it’s also a chance to see if there are new fashions — or not.

For example, yoga pants. Seriously? Still? Will they ever just go back to the yoga studio?

White pants. It’s a fact now that 9 out of 10 women wear white pants.

We don’t know why.

But we do know when there’s an eager new boat owner who wants to show off his toy by dashing close to shore, only to find a reef.

Young men are the first to pull of their shirts, usually revealing some menacing tattoo or military code of honor.

Ball caps are still ubiquitous. More often than not they announce a hometown allegiance: Cubs, N.Y., L.A.

And dogs. Why do people insist on bringing dogs to crowded, hot places without water? Dogs everywhere with tongues wagging, some so exhausted — or tired of getting stepped on — that their owners have to carry them.

Thankfully, there are children to reprioritize adult foibles. They just want to get sandy, chase bubbles and cry when they’re told it’s time to go home.

They are immune to the machinations of parking, such as the pros and cons of a parklet.

The beauty of all this, despite the carnival and the two-hour wait at Nick’s, is that we get to do this all summer, starting now — starting last fall, actually.

This is the rising tide of year-round summer. It’s the Memorial Day surge, pulling us along like a poorly placed anchor.

The only real hope is to go with the flow. Focus on the kids, stay positive and try to keep your sense of humor.

Sometimes, the tourists themselves make it easy. On Memorial Day at Main Beach, a mom was pushing her child along in a stroller.

“Oh look,” she said to the child, stopping and pointing. “The storks again. I’m pretty sure they are storks.”

The small child repeated “storks” and giggled.

Overhead, the pelicans didn’t seem to mind. They, too, know it’s tourist season.

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DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at [email protected].