Don Winslow: The Kings Of Cool

Now, cranked out of their minds, they stand on the porch of the decrepit building they want to turn into a bookstore. Recent immigrants from Haight-Ashbury, they knew that the scene was disintegrating up there so they’re trying to replicate it down here.

Don’t hate them-they never had a motherfucking chance.

East Coast leftie parents (“The Rosenbergs were innocent”), socialist summer camps (“The Rosenbergs were innocent”), Berkeley in the early sixties, Free Speech Movement, Stop the War, Ronald Reagan (“The Rosenbergs did it”) Is the Devil, Haight-Ashbury, Summer of Love, they got married in a field on a farm in the Berkshires with garlands of flowers in their hair and some dipshit playing the sitar and they are perfect products of their times

Baby Boomers

Hippies. who came to Laguna to create a little utopia in the cheap rents of the canyon and spread the good word about love and peace by building a bookstore that will sell, in addition to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Anarchist Cookbook, and On the Road,

— incense, sandals, psychedelic posters, rock albums, tie-dyed T-shirts, macrame bracelets (again, try not to hate them), all that happy shit — and distribute acid to the turned-on.

There is a flaw in their plan.

Money.

More accurately, the lack thereof.

It takes money to buy even a shitty building, money to renovate it into even a hippie bookstore, and they ain’t got none.

Which is the problem with socialism.

No capital.

Enter Taco Jesus, surfing in as a savior like a cowboy on his horse to…

Again, fuck it. The surfer/cowboy analogy, the end of the American West at the edge of the Pacific, Manifest Destiny reversing itself with the incoming tide-who gives a shit?

Suffice it to say that the Surfers met the Hippies in Laguna Beach.

It had to happen.

The difference between a Surfer and a Hippie?

A board.

They’re the same cat, basically. The surfer was the original hippie; in fact, he was the original beatnik. Years before Jack and Dean hit the road searching for dharma, the surfer was cruising the PCH looking for a good wave.

Same thing.

But we’re not going to get into all that. We could, we could, we’re sorely tempted, but we have a story to tell, and the story is Stan, Diane, and the tribe are trying to build their store a block from one of the best breaks on the OC Coast — Brooks Street where Taco Jesus, aka “Doc,” surfs and distributes free food to any and all

(socialism) so Stan asks Diane, “Where does Taco Jesus get the money to be Taco Jesus?”

“Trust fund?”

“He doesn’t look like the trust fund type.”

In this Diane is intuitive, because Raymond “Doc” Halliday grew up in a blue-collar bungalow in Fontana and did two stretches in juvie for, respectively, burglary and assault. Ray Sr.-a roofer-left his son with certain skills with a hammer, but money?

No.

Eventually Doc migrated down to the south coast, where he discovered surfing and marijuana and also discovered that you could make enough money to support the former by selling the latter.

Now Stan and Diane watch him hand out tacos and decide to ask him where the bread for the loaves comes from. Crossing the PCH, which under the influence of blotter acid has become a river and its cars fish, they approach Doc.

“You want a taco?” Doc asks.

“You want some acid?” Diane replies.

Cue the 2001 theme.

This is a moment.

The seminal mind-fuck that gives birth to the group that will become known as

The Association.

(And then along came Mary.)

Here’s how it happens Doc gives Stan and Diane tacos.

Stan and Diane give Doc a tab of blotter acid.

Doc goes back into the water, gets into a wave, and discovers that the molecules that form the wave are the same molecules that form him, so that he does not need to become one with the wave, he is already one with the wave, in fact, we are all the same wave…

And goes and finds Stan and Diane and weepingly tells them so.

“I know, ” Diane gushes.

She can’t know, she’s never been on a board, but we’re all on the same wave, so…

“I know you do,” Doc says.

Doc comes back with his surfer buddies and they all turn on. Now you have Republican Orange County’s baddest nightmare-the worst antisocial elements (surfers and hippies) gathered on one combination plate in a demonic, drug-induced love fest.

And planning to institutionalize it, because

Stan and Diane share their problem-lack of funds-with Doc and the boys and Doc offers a solution.

“Grass,” he says. “Dope.”

Surfing and dope go together like… like… uhhhh…

… surfing and dope.

Surfers had been hauling grass back up from safaris in Mexico for years, the 1954 Plymouth station wagon being the smuggling vehicle of choice, because all of its interior panels could be removed, the insides stuffed with dope, and put back on.

“We can get you the money to fix up this place,” Doc says, volunteering not only himself but his surfing buddies. “A few Baja runs and that’s all you need.”

Doc and the boys make the requisite runs, sell the product, and donate the proceeds to Stan, Diane, et al. to spread love, peace, and acid throughout Laguna Beach and its environs.

The Bread and Marigolds Bookstore opens in May of the year.

It sells The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Anarchist Cookbook, On the Road, incense, sandals, psychedelic posters, rock albums, tie-dyed T-shirts, macrame bracelets (You know what? Go ahead and hate them), all that happy shit, and distributes acid to the turned-on.

Stan and Diane are happy.

The store opens, but — the guys keep making runs.

Because “enough” is a self-contradictory word.

Enough is never enough.

Finally- finally — surfers found something they could make money at without getting a j-o-b. And money they make. Fuck, they make money. Millions of dollars of the stuff. They even buy a yacht to hang out in and sail dope up in from Mexico.

Cool and cool.

But Doc Doc is a visionary.

A pioneer, an explorer.

Doc hops a plane to Germany, buys a VW van, and drives drives to Afghanistan.

Doc has heard stories about the amazing potency of Afghan hashish.

The stories turn out to be true.

Grass is fine, but Afghan hash?

Synaptic pinball, lighting all the lights, ringing all the bells.

Winner, winner, winner.

So Doc loads his van up with hash, drives back to Europe, and ships the van to California. Throws a few tasting parties, gives some samples away, and creates a market for his product.

It isn’t long before the other Association boys follow Doc’s footsteps to Afghanistan and load cars, trucks, and vans up with hash. The most ingenious smuggling vessel, though, is the surfboard. One genius ships a board to Kandahar, hollows it out, and stuffs it with hash, because nobody at the airport knows what a surfboard is or, critically, how much it should weigh. And no one even asks what a guy is doing with surfboards in a place where there’s no ocean.

All this shit comes back to Laguna.

Pretty soon Laguna Canyon fills up with houses full of dope and houses full of dopers. The canyon is so full of outlaws that the cops dub it “Dodge City.”

The little girl lives in a cave.

Not metaphorically-not a run-down house with no natural lighting source-a cave.

As in Neanderthal.

The cave is in the hills near the lakes that give Laguna its name.

A cave in Laguna in the summer isn’t such a bad place-it’s actually kind of congenial. The days are warm, the nights are merely cool, and the inhabitants of the cave do have some basic amenities.