A Crooked Hobby?

There's a time and place for every hobby.

Typically, you don't carve wooden ducks in the middle of traffic. You don't paint with watercolors in the rain. And you wouldn't knit a sweater while standing in the ocean.

And if you're one of those beefy, wife-beater wearing guys who likes to stroll the beach with headphones hugging your head and a long metal pole for an arm with a disc at the end, let me suggest there are more reasonable times and places, ethical even, to treasure hunt on the beach than say, 5:30 p.m. on a late summer day, in the very places just vacated by families.

Unless you're helping one of those specific beach goers who lost something valuable and metallic, there's no excuse for you to be out there their digging up other people's treasure.

An habitual late afternoon beach arriver myself, I've spied my share of metal detector guys sweeping and beeping down the beach in those peaceful early evening times, my favorite time to relax on the beach. And the mere sight of them is annoying and chilling.

Why wait for people to pull up their blankets? Why not simply circle the blanket while they are still there. Maybe modify your detectors with high-powered magnets and just suck the gold necklaces from their necks as they dose in the warm, summer sun?

Spending some evening time on the beach in this week's Indian summer weather, I noticed the skeleton crew of seagulls. The few and scattered people. And I figured now would be the appropriate time for metal detector hobbyists to search for their gold, particularly in the wake of last week's storms.

Otherwise, these alleged hapless, happy treasure hunters that magically appear in the misty haze of an early evening summer, really are no different than big city opportunists, working crowded sidewalks, looking to pick your pocket.