“Much ado 
about nothing.”
Shakespeare

I caught a glimpse of the local evening news a couple of days ago. The breaking news of the day was all about the king tides in The City and how elevated sea levels were wreaking havoc along the coastline. I saw a video clip of San Francisco Bay water lapping over the sea wall and onto the Embarcadero. It got me wondering what it might look like at Ocean Beach on the western side of The City. El Niño, Kelvin waves, elevated water temperatures, and a full moon had conspired to create something newsworthy. Curiosity got the better of me.

So I took the train to The City on Wednesday morning in search of king tides. High tide was expected right around the noon hour, maybe a bit later. After lunch at Java Beach Café, I walked across the Great Highway to check it out for myself. The image above is what I was expecting to see. This next image, too, illustrates a scene I imagined I might witness.

The first two photos were created using AI for the purpose of this blog post. Given the hype on the local news, why wouldn’t I expect to see something like this? Reality, however, can be quite different than what we imagine.

I feel bad saying that I was disappointed. It’s not that I wanted to see damage and destruction caused by rogue waves spilling over the sea wall. I had no desire to see vehicles half-submerged in ocean water. But I did hope to see something new, something unusual, something I’d never seen before.

This next photo (unedited) shows exactly what I saw at Ocean Beach on Wednesday, October 28th at 1:30. Nowhere did I see evidence that the ocean water had come anywhere close to the Great Highway sea wall.

Fortunately, the day wasn’t a bust. I returned to Java Beach Café where I had a nice visit with owner Pat Maguire and a number of his friends from the neighborhood who I’ve gotten to know over the past year. What an amazing sense of community in that place!