The closest coast to us is 3 and a half hours away. It's also on the Gulf of Mexico, which is supposed to generally not be great for swimming/surfing/other seaside activities.
Not good for surfing in most places on it, at least when the weather's not trying to kill you. Rest of it's pretty alright, or at least was back before oil spills and whatnot.
Used to be fine for swimming and lounging about in the water, at least when the jellyfish weren't around, and the fishing was at one point pretty good. No clue what it's like nowadays, though, this was years back -- despite living either ~an hour or literally walking distance from the gulf for the last few years, it's probably been like half a decade or better since I've been to the beach. Don't like sunburns, or screwoff-huge jellyfish, or riptides, or sand, or... well, most of the everything a beach entails, anymore.
Still. There
is a reason a lot of the gulf area is known as a fairly high level vacation spot, and it's not
just because of the copious amounts of alcohol and other drugs.
Though @ Tack, nah, at the worst it's just being more blatant about it nowadays, coupled with maybe a bit higher overall output (computers are
really good for writing, ahaha!). We've been doing fanfiction since before we
had writing, and spent a lot of time in the interim period functionally just filing names off other people's works. Honestly, I see more innovation and experimentation -- greater imagination -- coming out of fanfiction than I tend to out of published stuff. Generally less polish, but not having to adhere to editing standards and publisher overlook and whatnot gives a lot of wing to the metaphorical authorial bird. Most people use those wings to fly into windows and oncoming traffic, but eh.