Summary

In Chapter 8: Against Dereliction: San Francisco: 1983-86, the author describes his time in San Francisco. After bouncing around the country to stay with Bryan in Montana, his parents in Los Angeles, and Dominic in Malibu and then living in a roach-infested East Village basement in New York City, Finnegan settled in San Francisco. He had a new girlfriend named Caroline, who was from Zimbabwe and whom he had met in Cape Town. She had lived with him in New York and then headed to the San Francisco Art Institute as a graduate student, and he joined her there.

He mainly surfed at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, which was generally chilly and had unpredictable waves. There was a small group of local surfers. San Francisco's surf was rough and it was a difficult place to learn how to surf, but experienced surfers could surf...