It is 6:55 a.m. on a Saturday and Lulu Garcia is dragging six wetsuits out of a Toyota Tacoma onto the sand at Sloat. Five of the wetsuits are children’s sizes. The sixth fits a 14-year-old named Esme who has never put her face under water and has been on the waitlist for fourteen months.
Lulu, 38, grew up in the Excelsior. Her parents are from El Salvador. She did not see the ocean for the first time until she was 11 because, she says, “we went to school, we went home, we went to church, and the bus didn’t go to the beach.”
She learned to swim at 22, in a UC Berkeley pool, on a $40 community course she failed twice before passing. She learned to surf at 26, taught by a roommate. She started teaching kids in 2019 because, she says, she wanted to give the version of herself at 11 a different Saturday.
The school, which she calls Salada (Spanish for “salty,” her grandmother’s nickname for the ocean), has no website. There is a Google form people fill out. The waitlist is currently 38 kids long. Sessions run six weeks, two Saturdays a month, October through May.
There is no fee. Lulu pays for the wetsuits out of pocket and a small grant from Surfrider. She drives the kids from their homes to Ocean Beach. The parents either come or don’t.
“The first three weeks are pool time,” she says. “I rented out the rec center pool in the Bayview for $80 an hour. We learned to put our face in the water. We learned to float on our back. We learned the word ‘breathe’ in two languages.”
Esme is from the Outer Mission. She came to the U.S. from Guatemala when she was 9. She has lived eleven blocks from the ocean for five years and has never set foot in it. Lulu walks her to the water this morning, holds both her hands, and tells her, in Spanish, “this is the part where you stop being scared.” Esme is crying. She walks in to her knees. Lulu lets go.
Two hours later Esme is paddling on a foam longboard in 53-degree water. She does not stand up. She does not need to.
