Surf towns are full of characters. Spend enough time in any beachside community and you’ll surely find them, especially in one with the kind of waves that makes people want to set roots and stay for a while. You’ll fall in love with those people as much as anything else in the town. Oceanside’s Bruce Parker, aka the Oceanside Trenchcoat Guy, is one of those surf town staples.
Parker has been patrolling the Oceanside pier for years, donning his trademark trench coat with a camera and phone in hand. He posts videos from the beach, reporting on conditions and spreading good vibes on the internet. But his charm really comes out with strangers passing by. He greets strangers and familiar faces alike and he even carries extra coats for anybody who wants to jump in on his daily routine: taking a dip in the ocean and getting pummeled by waves while wearing that unmistakable coat. It weighs as much as 75 pounds when wet but that hasn’t stopped Bruce. In fact, it’s a necessary piece for him to enjoy the ocean as much as he always has. He adopted the look thanks to a battle with melanoma, the deadly skin cancer that forces patients into a lifetime of dodging the sun.
But at 73 years old he isn’t dodging the sun. Far from it.
“When I was a letter carrier in Solana Beach I noticed that when I was delivering mail to people who retired, who didn’t do anything, very few of them lived beyond five years after they retired,” he says. “They just sat there in their chair and died.”
That realization set the wheels in motion for Parker’s now-daily ritual.
“I said ‘I’m never gonna do that. I’m gonna get out there and do something.’ So I do.”
He’s perfected the art of getting pummeled by waves in the process. And he’s having a blast doing it.
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