The Brief

On a hot summer day, sometime in June 1973, I was picking peaches at Mr. Oliver Bowman’s ranch near Modesto. I had been picking all morning, and I felt tired and physically exhausted. I was dehydrated. I started throwing up and felt like passing out.

I sat down for a bit when my father happened to glance at me. He came over and berated me, saying not to be lazy, to get up and act like a man. I must have been 12-years-old.

From an early age, I worked.

I did not mind working hard. I had a strong and positive attitude toward whatever life threw at me. The way I saw it, working and carrying that weight — peaches or other fruit — up and down the ladder was good exercise. It made my legs stronger, and it made me stronger.

Plus, when the day ended, we got to swim in the irrigating canal, which was big and refreshing. I loved swimming. That was also our bath because at that time, we were living, sleeping and eating in the storage barn, along with the rats, right next to the fertilizer that was used on the crops we were picking.

Like I said, it made me stronger.

Shining shoes in Ensenada 

I started working when I was a young boy in Ensenada, Baja California. I worked as a shoeshine boy to help my family, which was poor.

I was around 7-years-old. I worked with my older brother Salvador; he was around 10, and I became his trainee. Sal taught me how to work and took care of me in the absence of a father figure, since my dad was working in the U.S. My mom had joined him there, along with our baby brother and sister, while the older siblings — my sisters Olga and Eva, brothers Sal and Armando, and me — stayed in Mexico with our grandmother.

The author, second from left, with siblings in Ensenada. Left to right: Eva, Arnulfo, Alfredo, Martha, and Armando.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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My father used to send money home all the time, but it wasn’t enough for our large family. Back then, it was Sal and me against the world, watching each other’s backs, shoe shining, selling gum, newspaper, handcrafts, fruit from door to door, even washing and waxing cars.

Weeknights, after school, and on weekends, we would hit the town to work.

Sal and I would go to the Malecon, the fishermen’s landing, and offer our services to the gringo tourists coming back from a long day at sea, helping them carry their fish, ice boxes, and fishing rods.

I could say, with a strong accent, “Can I help you?” and “thank you” and a couple of other English words. They would give us a couple of quarters, a buck or two if we were lucky. On one occasion, someone gave me a $20 bill. The word spread among the rest of the kids doing the same odd jobs, and soon I had a line of kids wanting me to teach them English — which I did, as much as I could.

We used to dive between the boardwalk and a floating restaurant called the Kon-Tiki. There was a small arched bridge where the tourists would cross, and they would throw us coins. We dove for them, retrieved them, and the crowd would cheer us on. More coins would follow. It was just a couple of us kids, and we would end up with a pocket full of coins.

My siblings and I would help Olga, the eldest, make empanadas and popcorn that Sal and I sold at night at the local baseball stadium, a few blocks from the house. Olga gave us a cut of the profit. My sister was like a second mother, who along with my Grandma Casimira, helped raise my siblings and me until she turned 16 and left home for the U.S.

Luckily by then, Olga had taught us how to live and work in any place with whatever resources we had. She was a resourceful young woman who presented a strong role model for what someone could accomplish. Both she and Sal were very influential in my upbringing.

Up to L.A.

Around 1969 or 1970, my father decided to bring the rest of us to the U.S. Sal worked out a deal with a teacher at a school that organized humanitarian school trips to Disneyland; included on this trip were Sal, my sister Eva, and me. We came to the states via Disneyland and remained in Long Beach, where my parents were living.

I remember upon our arrival we were not allowed to go outside or sometimes even look through the window curtains for fear of “La Migra.” I was around 11 then. During the day, I attended Garfield Elementary School. Some evenings, my father would take us all to work.

The author as a boy in Long Beach, back to visit after he and his dad left to go north to the fields.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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He was working at a potato processing plant called Joy Potatoes, and he had a contract to clean the plant after hours. Most times, the employees would complete the orders at night or in the wee hours of the morning, then we would help him clean. After three to four hours of work at the potato plant, I would not go to school that day.

We moved to Paramount for a while, then to L.A., where we lived close to downtown, near 2nd Street and the 110 Freeway. When I was around 12, I was robbed while going to the grocery store, by local gang members. They continued to harass me afterward. Little did my father know the trouble he saved me from when he and I left for Modesto and the fields.

Learning business in the fields

There was no real time for school in Modesto. “School is for pot smokers and worthless lazy people, you have to learn to work to become a real man,” my father would tell me.

My father’s first journey to the U.S had been to Texas when he was 11 or 12, after which he ran away from home and went back to Mexico. The next time, he came back as an adult under the Bracero labor program. He kept coming back until one day he stayed.

I learned a lot about business from my father. He was an unlicensed farm labor contractor, doing business in whatever field work was available throughout the year, in whatever town, all around California.

He used to rely on me to translate for him, and from this, I learned how he negotiated his contracts. Little did I know that through this, along with the shoe shining, cleaning and washing cars, and selling knick knacks at an early age, I would learn about work, responsibility, and the art of negotiation, skills that would last me a lifetime.

The author circa 1975 at 14. His dad, a farm labor contractor, occasionally bought and sold cattle that the author helped raise.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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For five years, we picked just about any fruit or vegetable that was grown in California, from Porterville to Ukiah, living around Fresno, Clovis and Selma. While picking grapes, we met Cesar Chavez and joined the farmworkers union. We joined the boycott for the causa, went on marches and attended conventions. I remember seeing some ranchers pointing shotguns at the workers marching to intimidate us.

During that period I must have gone to well over 10 to 12 different schools, whenever I had the chance, as we migrated to wherever there was work.

At one point, my dad ran boarding houses for field workers in the San Joaquin Valley towns of Exeter and Farmersville. He provided them with jobs and rides to and from work, along with room and board. My mother and siblings had joined us by then. We would get up around 5 a.m. to make flour dough, and then hand-made tortillas, so we could make lunch burritos for the workers. Then we would come home after a hard day’s work and make dinner for as many as 20 workers, depending on the season.

I have vivid memories of some of the migrant camps we lived in, on the outskirts of towns like Parlier, in Fresno County, and San Juan Bautista, east of Monterey Bay. We lived with migrant families from Mexico, Texas and California, people like us, who chased work throughout the West.

The summer that changed everything

In the summer of 1976, when I was in the 8th grade in San Juan Bautista and already 15, I was invited through my school to participate in something called the Migrant Education Program. My parents agreed to let me attend.

The author's Stanford student identification card from when he attended the Migrant Education Program there.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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It was a pilot program for around 50 migrant students from all over California to attend a summer session at Stanford University. Most of us were Latino boys and girls between 13 and 18, along with three Portuguese kids and a Filipino student. A goal of the program was for us to get a feel for university life.

At that time, in the mid-1970s, the school dropout rate was excessively high among Mexican Americans — and especially among migrant students.

The experience at Stanford was eye-opening for me. We took classes in Mexican American studies and culture, art, drama, and music, along with academics. We took field trips, one of which influenced me the most: We went to NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where we saw an early model of the Space Shuttle being tested in a wind tunnel. I was fascinated by the idea of flight, especially to outer space.

The author when he attended the summer program for migrant worker kids at Stanford University.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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This was the first time I did not work the whole summer in the fields. Attending Stanford that summer changed something in me.

Onward and upward

The experience sparked my desire for higher education, and pushed me to continue my high school education so I could get there. It was not going to be easy, having missed so much school with all the moving and migrating. But I was determined.

Starting at 16, I spent two years at San Benito (now Hollister) High School, where I completed my freshman and sophomore years.

The author, bottom row, far right, with members of the Club Estudiantil at San Benito High. His brother, Sal, bottom row second from left, was club president. Several club members also attended the Stanford summer program.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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From there we moved back to Long Beach. I was already 18 then, so I went to night school at Wilson High School for my GED. I started a full-time job as a mechanic at the Neill Aircraft Company in Long Beach. I was working toward my dreams.

After graduating from night school with my GED, I attended Long Beach City College, where I studied mechanical and aerospace engineering.

It was 1979 when I started working at Neill as a sheet metal mechanic. Meanwhile, in school I learned basics like drafting, tool and die design, and engineering. Eventually, I worked my way up to the office. Then in 1982, I was hired — then right away fired — by McDonnell Douglas Corporation in Long Beach, let go once they found out I was not a U.S. citizen. Immediately, I went to downtown L.A. and began the process of eventually becoming one.

Over the years, at Neill and other companies, I had the opportunity to work as an engineer on important contracts, including newly developed fighter planes, the International Space Station, and even the Space Shuttle.

The author, center, with brother Armando and nephew Ismael, circa 2006 shortly after founding his aerospace company.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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All the experience I gathered through the years eventually put me in a position where I could start my own company — in Long Beach, where I had my humble beginnings as a newcomer to the States.

After an aerospace career that has spanned 44 years, I still own and operate my own company, A&A Aerospace, Inc., which makes airplane parts for commercial aircraft.

The author in the photo at left; the clipping is from a 2014 Long Beach Business Journal article featuring his company.

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Courtesy of Arnulfo Puentes

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Mine is a story of success despite adversity. The young shoeshine boy who went north to toil in the fields of California made it, and he did so by believing and investing in himself.

For one weekend only, fans of Los Angeles-made chocolate chip cookies can engage in the cookie-focused version of a bar crawl, patronizing five established cookie purveyors as part of a quest to get even more cookies.

The “1st Annual Cookie Crawl” is a partnership by Milkfarm (Eagle Rock), Proof Bakery Co-Op (Atwater Village), Friends & Family (Silver Lake), Modu Cafe (Highland Park) and Valerie (Echo Park), all independently owned businesses.

You can go to any one of those locations, pick up a punch card, get a punch for a cookie, and subsequently get punched for getting cookies from the other locations, too. Drop it off at your preferred location by Sunday afternoon for a chance to win more of that store's cookies plus gift certificates from the others.

Why we celebrate the chocolate chip

The crawl honors this year’s National Chocolate Chip Day, on May 15, not to be confused with National Chocolate Day in October, or National Cookie Day in December, or National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day in August.

You can appreciate chocolate chips and the cookies they’re baked into without any historical knowledge, but just in case you are curious: While LAist couldn’t find a verified origin of National Chocolate Chip Day, internet records show the day nominally celebrates Ruth Graves Wakefield, the baker behind Toll House cookies. Cookie history sleuths dispute that Wakefield actually created the modern chocolate chip, but she did popularize them. (Earlier versions of chocolate chips include chocolate-coated molasses.)

Why you should participate in a chocolate chip cookie crawl

Milkfarm owner Leah Park developed the idea for this crawl years ago after talking with Proof founder Na Young Ma about how popular each shop's cookies are. Park said she wanted to do something collaborative, to encourage people to go out and try new things.

“I was starting to get it all together. We did the prototype for the punch card,” Park said. That was in early 2020; that first cookie crawl became another opportunity stifled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“And so everything just got put on hold. And I had the prototype punchcard that I made on my corkboard in my office since 2020,” Park said. “And I just kept looking at it, and finally one day I was like, ‘OK, I just need to hurry up and do this.’ And then it launched this year. We finally did it.”

Atwater Village resident Kenneth Rudnicki filled the majority of his card Friday morning.

“I would love more punchcards in L.A.,” he said. “I think it's a really good way for other businesses to get introduced to people who maybe wouldn't know them. And … it's fun to sort of have a task like this to do.” He bought several cookies to slice apart and share with friends.

And I did that too: As the senior editor of our esteemed LAist Education Team, I invited our available education reporters — in the name of hard-hitting journalism, of course — to sample all the cookies I brought back. You’ll see our notes below, with thoughts from me and:

• Julia Barajas,
• Sabrina Sanchez, early childhood engagement producer
• Elly Yu, early childhood reporter

Also, this list isn’t a ranking; one aspect of this crawl is that each cookie shows off how a baking classic can be transformed into something unique. And that means you can trade takes with other people about what makes a cookie great.

Let's eat cookies

A Proof Co-op chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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LAist

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Proof Bakery Co-op

Proof staff told me that they use Valrhona chocolate for a product that, as our tasters describe, is an ideal chocolate chip cookie — “crunchy on the outside, but, like, really soft and, like, buttery on the inside. The chocolate’s the right amount of sweet, and then you got the salt that's really nice.” We paired it with hot drip coffee, an excellent companion.

A Friends & Family chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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LAist

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Friends & Family (Silver Lake Outpost)

The original Friends & Family is in Hollywood, but this branch adjacent to Burgers Never Say Die also offers the bakery’s rye chocolate chip cookie, which staff members said is made with rich TCHO chocolate. Our tasters noted the earthiness of the rye — one said it comes across almost gingery. Despite the crinkly outside edge, it’s a bit chewy, and takes a light touch with the chocolate. We suggest pairing it with milk.

A Valerie chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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LAist

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Valerie Echo Park

Valerie is tucked into a cozy nook of Echo Park businesses set away from the bustle of Sunset Blvd. This weekend’s crawl features the Durango cookie, which our tasters describe as quite sweet (it uses milk chocolate) and nutty. This cookie will test your thoughts on texture; personally, I liked how the toasted almonds contributed to it. We also thought it might work well as a blondie.

A Milkfarm chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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LAist

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Milkfarm

Milkfarm owner and pastry chef-turned-cheesemonger Leah Park says her cookie was the result of a lot of trial and error when the store opened in 2014.

“How to get the oven the right temperature, and what size cookie, then the chips to use — we even taste-tested salt,” Park said. “We literally had different salt that we put side by side, and we ate salt to see what kind of salt we wanted to use on the cookie.” (They now use Jacobsen's.)

And that effort shines through: Milkfarm was a hit with our tasters (and several other colleagues who managed to snag a piece) — crispy edges, ample salt, thick ("but it's not cakey"), and just the right amount of chocolate (Ghirardelli). I haven't been a regular at this shop, but thanks to this crawl, I suspect it will be a new favorite stop on the way to work.

Park suggested pairing the cookie with a versatile cheese, many of which are also available from Milkfarm.

A Modu black sesame dark chocolate chip cookie.

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Ross Brenneman

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LAist

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Modu Cafe

I usually stroll Highland Park for the compact array of shops on York Blvd. stretching from Kumquat on the west end to The Hermosillo bar on the east end. But head a little farther east to reach Modu, a bright, spacious pastry shop featuring flavors popular in Korean cooking.

Their soft, black sesame dark chocolate cookie stood out to our tasters for how the sesame brings a nutty complement; it's not packed with chocolate, so our crew recommends taking big bites to guarantee you get the full range of flavor. Pair it with the first-rate Modu Latte.

You can hit all five stops in under an hour, but budget some extra time to walk around a bit and enjoy what else the neighborhoods offer.

Also, while this particular crawl has been in the works for quite some time, it inspired another option this weekend in West L.A.:

• Clementine, 1751 Ensley Avenue, Century City
• Fat + Flour, 11739 W. Washington Boulevard, Culver City
• Lei’d Cookies, 8588 Washington Boulevard, Culver City
• Petitgrain Boulangerie, 1209 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica 
• The Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World, 2625 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles

Reporters Julia Barajas and Elly Yu, and engagement producer Sabrina Sanchez, contributed to this story.

A brewery in Lincoln Heights is hosting bingo games with a Texas twist you’ve probably never played before.

It’s called, excuse our language, Chicken Shit Bingo. And the name says it all.

The game has become an annual tradition at Benny Boy Brewing on Daly Street. On a recent Sunday, spectators and players surround a wooden enclosure — think a ping-pong table but with a giant bingo board at the base and wire all around it — hooting and hollering and egging on a well-fed chicken in a handkerchief and tiny cowboy hat. (And yes, L.A. County Public Health is well aware.)

Gameplay is simple: you can put a bet on one of the 72 squares. If a chicken poops on your number, you get $100.

A bet will cost you $3. For another $2, you get a cup of chicken feed to coax the bird toward your coordinates.

Participants get their numbers for the next round of bingo.

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Kat Hanegraaf

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Benny Boy Brewing

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The backstory

The game originated at The Little Longhorn Saloon — formerly Ginny’s Longhorn Saloon — in Austin, Texas, decades ago.

That’s where Matt Farber, Benny Boy’s bingo MC, first played. When his cousin Benny Farber decided to open a brewery, Matt knew the chickens needed to make their Los Angeles debut.

“Ben and I both grew up on farms, so this kind of hit home for us,” said Matt, decked out in a Dolly Parton T-shirt and a palm leaf cowboy hat. “When [we were] brainstorming … events to do at Benny Boy Brewing, this was something that just kind of came up.”

“It seemed like a no-brainer,” Benny said.

Meet the chickens

The chickens are sourced from Future Foods Urban Farms, a small urban farmstead in Glassell Park. Chicken keeper Teresa Meza, who stands by the birds’ enclosure and (I like to imagine) hypes them up before their bingo debut, was immediately taken by the idea.

“I had never heard of [the game],” she said. “But I was immediately into it.”

The chickens get quiet time in the shade between rounds, and are kept separate from food and beverage service for everyone’s safety. Future Foods and other urban farm partners are experienced in chicken-handling, and follow standard animal care practices appropriate for backyard and farm environments. Beyond that, the mechanics behind the actual pooping are very simple.

“Chickens are extremely prolific poopers,” Meza said, gingerly placing a tiny cowboy hat on an enormous chicken named Sophie. “As long as they're well fed and well watered, they will be pooping. It’s probably at least once every 30 minutes.”

Chicken keeper Teresa Meza and Benny Boy co-founder Benny Farber hold two of the chickens participating in bingo.

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Kat Hanegraaf

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Benny Boy Brewing

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How it works

Proceeds from each bet go right back to the urban farm. Aside from bingo, the Future Foods chickens tend not to make public appearances, but for five years now, Meza and the birds have been at Benny Boy every month from March through August.

After you place your bets, you can browse booths of Western-themed art from local artists, chow down on some standout barbecue and, of course, sip on some of the brewery’s fantastic beers and ciders.

Each game day has a theme. For example, the most recent round of bingo on April 12 featured a Dolly Parton lookalike contest and line dancing lessons with The Honky Tonk Hunnies.

While the bingo games are seasonal, Benny Boy stays busy year-round. Between chili cookoffs, competitive cornhole and outdoor drawing sessions, there’s always something on the calendar. You’ll find pop-ups from some of L.A.’s favorite local restaurants.

Can’t visit? You can find Benny Boy beers and ciders on tap at more than 50 breweries and eateries throughout the city.

More than 30 teams will take their handmade cars through a custom downhill course of twisty turns and obstacles Saturday as the Red Bull Soapbox Race returns to Los Angeles for the first time in nearly a decade.

Teams from across the country were selected from hundreds of applicants to compete on creativity, design, showmanship, course navigation and time.

There are no engines allowed in this race — all soapboxes must be gravity-powered.

Fully-functioning brakes and steering are required, but almost every other aspect of the engineering and design is left up to the competitors’ imaginations. According to Red Bull, the soapbox should be an extension of its team, the wilder and more outrageous the better.

From real racers to a car made out of bicycle parts

Contestants take on the course at the Red Bull Soapbox Race in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2025.

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Long Nguyen

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Courtesy Red Bull

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The race includes competitors from across Southern California and beyond.

UCLA Bruin Racing, made up of the school’s Formula SAE Squad (which also design and race specialized cars), entered with its “Mk. 9 racer” soapbox that was originally an out of commission EV car.

Metro LA repurposed parts from some of the unclaimed bikes left behind on the transit system for its “carrot-colored” bus design (and yes, that is the agency’s nod to Tyler, the Creator’s song "Rah Tah Tah." IYKYK).

The Seagrave 13 team from Las Vegas is dedicating their soapbox to Pasadena first responders who battled last year’s Eaton Fire. They’re planning to donate the car to the L.A. County Fire Museum after the race.

Built on a patio

One of the homegrown teams trying their luck this year is made up of a group of renters and friends in Santa Monica and Victorville who built their “Runaway Hotdog Stand” soapbox on an apartment patio.

“The fact that we're able to do this shows that I mean anybody could do this, and honestly could do anything else,” Carlos Monson, captain of the Speedy Wiener team, told LAist.

The Speedy Wiener team drew their design inspiration from L.A.’s iconic hot dog carts, typically a small grill that serves bacon and veggie toppings outside concerts, sporting events and tourist attractions.

The Speedy Wiener team modeled their soapbox after L.A.'s iconic hotdog carts.

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Courtesy Carlos Monson

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“For us, luckily, a majority of them are Latino and we're like, you know what, this is actually a perfect opportunity because the whole team is Latino,” said Monson, who will also be driving the soapbox.

The group of friends, between 18 and 21 years of age, built most of their cherry-red car on Monson’s apartment patio under Victorville’s glaring sun.

The Speedy Wiener repurposed the base of an old, rickety go-kart frame for their "Runaway Hotdog Stand" soapbox.

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Courtesy Carlos Monson

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They repurposed the base using an old, rickety go-kart frame that Monson said took about an hour just to carry up the stairs and get through the front door.

They worked on the soapbox in between classes and shifts at work. The final touches include stamping their Speedy Wiener logo and adding a mock-menu to the frame. There’s also ketchup and mustard bottles with yellow and red streamers hanging from the nozzles and a rainbow umbrella over the wheel.

The team, made up of renters between 18 and 21 years old, built most of the soapbox on their captain's apartment patio in Victorville.

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Courtesy Carlos Monson

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For the car’s structure, Monson turned to a collection of cardboard boxes he had lying around after a recent move and attached the various pieces with zip ties.

“We'll be able to hopefully last when they make it down the race track,” he said.

Engineering students’ big break

Another entrant on Saturday is the Los Ingenieros, a group of mechanical engineering students from Cerritos College in Norwalk, who has taken inspiration from the team’s Hispanic heritage and Los Angeles culture.

Their car is lucha libre-themed with rails modeled after a wrestling ring and the driver donning a muscle suit and mask.

The red, white and green colors represent the Mexican flag and features Chicano-style pinstriping from L.A.’s lowriders, as well as some Aztec patterns.

The Los Ingenieros team is made up of a group of mechanical engineering students from Cerritos College.

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Courtesy Ruben Orozco

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“It's definitely going to be a powerful testimony to our culture,” said Ruben Orozco, a Los Ingenieros member from La Mirada.

The team never expected to be picked for the race, and Orozco said the invitation has been “mind-blowing” and “surreal.”

Arelie Marquez, another member from Long Beach, told LAist she sketched the design for the modified go-kart frame before the team chopped the wheels, boosted the back axle and added suspension. While some of the students drew up blueprints on engineering computer software, Marquez used her welding experience to help mount the brackets — all in Orozco’s backyard.

As a community college student, Orozco said he’s felt like he’s missed out on opportunities to showcase their knowledge and innovations compared to students in the Cal State or UC system, but the Red Bull Soapbox Race has helped shed that notion.

“Not only has it been reassuring to myself, but also we've used it as a platform to kind of show others in STEM, in community colleges, that you could do crazy things as a student,” he said.

And yes, the team is already highlighting the unique engineering experience on their resumes, according to Gabriel Ramirez, a Compton resident and another member along with his twin brother, Hector.

Their next challenge? Cramming for finals next week.

The Surfrider Foundation is hosting a protest in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday to oppose what it sees as mounting threats to our California coastline.

In 2015, a pipeline operated by Plains All American spilled more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County. Hundreds of marine mammals were killed or injured and beaches across the region were contaminated.

Bill Hickman, a senior regional manager with the Surfrider Foundation, remembers it well.

“I live in Ventura. We had a bottlenose dolphin wash up here that was covered in oil,” Hickman told LAist. “That was really sad to see. And there was oil on the beach all the way down to L.A.”

The spill also “shut down fisheries, closed multiple beaches, and impacted recreational uses such as camping, non-commercial fishing, and beach visits,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In March, the Trump administration invoked the Defense Production Act to bring that same pipeline, now run by Texas-based Sable Offshore, back online. The company says that the system will produce tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day, as well as “provide a secure, consistent source of domestic crude oil, replacing approximately 1 million barrels per month of imports.”

But Hickman and other environmental advocates say restarting the pipeline raises serious concerns. California sued the Trump administration in March to keep it shut.

The restart, along with the Trump administration’s push to open the California coast up to new oil and gas drilling for the first time in decades, has Hickman sounding the alarm.

“Right now it seems like if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention,” Hickman said. “And luckily a lot of people are really fired up about all of the threats to the environment and particularly the Santa Barbara channel.”

Oil spills like the one in 2015 could also deeply affect tourism, the fishing industry and lead to billions in cleanup costs, according to Gov, Gavin Newsom’s office. In a January 2026 statement opposing the Trump administration’s new offshore drilling plans, the governor’s office said the state's coastal economy “supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and generates over $44 billion annually.”

On Sunday morning, Hickman will be part of a spiritual ritual in surf culture: a paddle-out into the ocean at Refugio State Beach.

He said anyone with a human-powered craft is welcome to join the circle to oppose drilling on our coasts.

“People are standing up. There’s a lot of opposition,” Hickman said. “Californians really treasure our coast, our beaches, our waves and really want to protect them.”