The obnoxious electric golf cart invasion of Cayucos

August 19, 2022

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “Life On The Mississippi, 1969,” is currently on Amazon.

By DELL FRANKLIN

I was cruising in my 2002 Toyota at the posted speed of 25 mph down Pacific (the residential coastal road in Cayucos and our Riviera) the other day and ran up behind an electric golf cart hogging the road at under 10 mph. This happens a lot.

I always stay a ways behind and they usually pull to the side, but this cart did not. Two middle-aged people were in the back, facing me. I was headed to the parking lot at 24th Street. We were around 10th Street. I decided to move closer to let them know I didn’t feel like going under 10 mph, but still they didn’t pull over.

The people in back gave me looks indicating I was “out of line,” moving so close. So I slowly pulled around them and as I passed they all (four people) shouted, “Slow down!”

My usual retort would be to “kiss my ass!” But there was no need for that, so I exclaimed, “This ain’t the Hamptons!”

I resumed my 25 mph crawl. I had no reason to be in a hurry, but I don’t like trailing somebody who is far, far under the speed limit in what is not an automobile for 14 blocks; such behavior smacks of a certain arrogance and entitlement taking over in Cayucos, a sense of imposing one’s will, dictating policy and owning the place.

Later, they pulled into the 24th Street parking lot. They were having fun, I guess. I didn’t want to break up their fun. People seem to be having a lot of fun tooling around town in electric carts of all sizes, some with more extravagant gadgets. One day over the 4th of July crush in town, I counted 23 electric carts filled with young and old, music blaring, in a little over an hour.

When I first moved here in 1989, there were no golf carts on our streets. Lately, they are everywhere.

There’s another woman who pulls out from 5th or 6th Street onto Ocean (our main thoroughfare leading to our beehive downtown) when you’re zinging along at 35 mph and settles right in front of you, forcing you to brake, and refuses to pull over at 10 mph; and since there’s no way of passing on our bustling main drag you have to follow her all the way downtown. And if you honk she ignores you, she owns the road, she’s middle-aged and gray so there’s no use yelling at her or calling her names.

It’s just not possible to berate somebody that old and female who is not going to give me the finger or yell at me or tell me to slow down because her golf cart rules, and so deal with it!

Another time I was crossing Ocean toward the Brown Butter Cookie Company with my almost 16-year-old Lab and, as other cars slowed to a stop, two men in an electric cart with three kids in back, swerved around me (like I was an unwanted impediment) and passed into the downtown, and I quickly bellowed “assholes!” I guess one of these contraptions gives one certain privileges.

The reason I mentioned the Hamptons out on Long Island in New York state–where the billionaires with 100-foot long luxury yachts dwell–is because I read an article some time ago where lower stratum peon millionaires tool around their downtown areas in electric carts with air conditioning, lights, transparent coverings to protect against rain or mist, radio and flat-screen TV, GPS, as well as other gizmos leading to new compact car prices, surely a competition to appear more hip and wealthier than your neighbors.

These people on our Riviera didn’t seem like Hamptonites, but still, their grossly unfair and arrogant chiding of me for passing them at 20 mph has stuck in my craw, and when I told a couple of my seawall cronies about this confrontation, they were outraged, one of them telling me I should have “run their asses off the road.”

Trouble is, people who drive around in these carts (even the kids) probably have more money than I can comprehend. Their electric carts are accessories a pauper like myself can’t dream of affording.

If I run their miserable asses off the road and berate them like they deserve, they could retaliate by suing me for what little I have left in my pockets and send me out of Cayucos for good and force me to live in my nephew’s closet down in Mt. Washington in LA. He says he’s preparing for such an incident by building one of those tiny all purpose huts scheduled for homeless folks in his backyard, which is on a hill, which means he’ll have to create some steep stairs and maybe a ladder, something too dangerous for me at this point.

I despise LA anyway, even if I do like my nephew, so I have to think about that before I run one of these golf carts and their entitled owners off the road and berate them as wanna-be Hamptonites and worse.

Stay tuned.