WSL @ Teahupo'o, Tahiti live right now (until 9.30 pm eastern) on Fox Sports 2 and for the next 3 or 4 days. check your local listings. Monday is scheduled to start at 1.30 pm eastern. Expecting a 10' to 12' swell with light offshores tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the wife is in PR, scheduled to leave this Wed just as the 'cane is supposed to arrive.
He was both a craftsman and an artist. Curving those 3/4" redwood stringers was no small feat. Everything cut by hand including those curved cuts in the blank. He was known for work like this. He sorta had that territory to himself up in SB back then. His only real competitor for business up there then was Tom Morey down in Ventura. Morey is the inventor of the Boogie Board. And a whole lot more surfing related things. Polypropylene fin systems, Slipcheck which was a sprayon texture coating for boards to replace wax, which it didn't. Too abrasive on the knees. We all knee paddled back then. We sprayed it on up on the nose mostly. That was back before leashes and when you would actually walk back and forth on a board rather than just stand there planted and carving.
And so much history there as well. I think back to Nat Young and one of the first modern revolutionary developments in board design with the V bottom tail.
FS2 is broadcasting the WSL daily heats live all week long from the Gold Coast in Australia this week from 6pm to 12am eastern time.
Slater just happens to be in the water right now.
Bump. Finals day ! Yesterday was washed out for some reason. It will not show up on the program guide but it is going on live now. Tide is still coming in. Glassy, with some barrel action today. This is some of the clearest water I have ever seen. Like Black's but even clearer.
So in the noodling around looking up stuff for my post below I found this video interview from a documentary about surfing in Newport Beach in the 50's and 60's. I did not wacth until after my post below. It brought back so many memories. Bob, the subject, has about 10 years on me, but the thoughts and experiences are still pretty much the same. He articulated "The Code" that I alluded to down below about how one handled themselves in the water back in the day, but he filled in all the gaps. I had a board that Dale Velzy personally shaped for me and got busted down on Pendelton more than a couple of times. I had forgotten about The Greeter in Laguna Beach. I remember him. He used to hang out around The Pottery Barn. I had no idea back then how special my time there was. I / we all thought this was normal and how everybody lived. That was not the case as we all have come to understand. Just was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
OBTW .. the Greg MacGillivray mentioned in the video is the same Greg MacGillivray who is doing all of the IMAX movies. He started out making surfing movies way back when with his partner Jim Freeman.
I'm curious about something: when you surfed in CA, did you ever encounter other surfers who tried to control public beaches by bullying and physically harassing "outsiders"? There was a recent article about that sort of thing, and the piece stated that it had been going on for years.
Surfers have always been territorial to some degree. Back in the 60's it was always locals rule and that was interpreted in many different ways. Back then, there were not all that many public beaches. That has since changed with public access laws, but even with that, home owners still get in the way even though the surfers have made peace.
But there is no simple answer for your question. Again the short answer is yes, never a physical thing in my case, but there has been property damage to cars, some minor, mostly tires slashed, but that was generally rare and extreme.
Down in the Orange County we were all mostly respectful though. It was when in Rome, do as the Romans do. What we considered crowded back then would be laughed at today. But depending where you were and who was in the water already, as a visitor or guest, you carefully studied who was good and who was not and figured out how to keep out of the good ones' way and not drop in on them. That was the surest and shortest road to a confrontation if one was going to happen. But again, you respected those who were there in the water first and found out how you could fit in best. If you were good yourself and figured out the break quickly, that would usually gain respect in short order. Provided you shared the waves and did not become a wave hog. Beginners or less talented, not so lucky. Then there the Valley kooks and flatlanders from inland. The San Fernando Valley and Riverside / desert ish people respectively. Those that didn't live at the beach and couldn't surf everyday. Their skills were generally suspect and limited. They mostly kept to the public beaches like Doheny and up around Huntington and Bolsa Chica.
Also the City of Newport Beach in Orange County had a unique approach in the mid 60's, they made us get licenses for our surfboards. Contrary to the article, city residents and surfers in nearby cities could buy one if they wanted to bad enough. They cost somewhere between $10 and $15 per board each year for residents. Might have been higher for non residents, I don't remember. There were serial numbers on them in the middle between the city seals so you could be identified without any I D, which being at the beach was most likely.
That was a lot of cash for anyone back then, let alone kids. If you had a board on your car in the city limits without a license, the cops could technically give you a ticket, complete with fine and a court appearance. That was rare but if they caught you on the beach, busted, with ceremony. The cops or the lifeguards could bust you. They could even seize your board if you pissed them off enough. And then your folks got pissed off at you because they had to go to court with you and all that. They couldn't get you in the water because everything past the mean high tide line was out of the city's jurisdiction. But sooner or later you had to come in, unless you had a boat to go to. And that's when most people got picked off. Age meant nothing. It created great hostility between us and the cops and lifeguards. It did keep people from other places away, but still it was totally wrong and was eventually overturned in court, after I had moved east. I do not know if they had to return the fees. Probably not. Another thing that got me paying attention to politics at an early age. You were also easily identifiable when you went somewhere else and there were some who would take out their attitudes on you. You were one of them rich kids from Newport. Didn't matter if you were just as pissed about it as they were or as broke as they were. It could just suck to be you if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I do remember when the licenses first came out the NB lifeguards made a sneaky surprise visit to our beach to see if we had licenses on our boards. We did not. But back then our beach was private and not under their jurisdiction and we told them in no uncertain terms to get the fuck off of our beach and stay out. We did win that one. Fucking police state it was or they tried. Yeah, I did have access to a private beach just a ten minute walk from my house. We did our best to keep it to ourselves. But we did have to coexist with the people who ran a race horse recovery hospital there who charged people money at their gate to get in. It is also where I had a run in with the secret service when Nixon was visiting his brother who lived in the same place I did during his campaign in 1968 and I told them to get the fuck out of my neighborhood. I could go on and on for hours, but that is not what you read this far for ...
L A up north or down in San Diego it was a little different, especially up in L A. Much more crowded and more opportunities for hostilities. And this brings me to what you were most interested in, the article you mentioned about a group getting physical with outsiders. Yes, The Lunada Bay Boys. They even have their own wiki page, they are so notorious. I believe that you will find a link to the article you read about them at the bottom. The results on the google search will provide you with plenty of reading, too. Yep, they have garnered international notoriety. They do represent the other extreme but it will show you how far the territorial battles will still go. There are some places in Hawaii that are still enforced local only spots, but they are kept pretty quiet and handled much more subtlety.
Once again if you wish a deeper insight into the world that really made me a lot of what I still am today and more insight into the question you asked, read The Pump House Gang. While not exactly my world, I was a part of that world and mentality. You say you are a student of history ? The stuff provided above should either bore you in a hurry and get you off on a tangent that is hard to put down. You just cannot make up this stuff. Yeah, I was at ground zero for a whole bunch of stuff. I come by so many of my attitudes very honestly and a world (cohort to be more precise) few really know about, let alone understand. It might just be one of those things where you had to be there ... you tell me ... Where were you and what were you doing in the 60's, or just in high school cuz I think I have a few years on ya ... This was a time like no other before or since. And just think of all the new music that provided the soundtrack.
Beats talkin' about Trump, eh ? . an after thought. yeah, I realize I haven't done all that much in my life or with my life compared to most. There were plenty of people doing the same thing at the same time that I was doing these things. I haven't traveled the world, made any kind of money or contributed anything meaningful to the world. I'm not hung up and still living in the 60's. I'm just at the end of my life and reflecting on some very interesting and intense parts of my life that I lived to the hilt and somehow survived and made me into what's left of me today. Not bragging about anything or looking for pity ... someone just asked a question and I had nothing better to do than answer it and toss in some more stuff that came to mind along the way. Just stream of conscience ness ... of an old geezer ...
Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Nov 22, 2018 - 3:35pm
kcar wrote:
That was a very interesting article, Kurt—thank you for that and your memories. Far more interesting than arguing about Trump, as you pointed out when talking about growing up in a certain part of the country (can't remember where). I'm curious about something: when you surfed in CA, did you ever encounter other surfers who tried to control public beaches by bullying and physically harassing "outsiders"? There was a recent article about that sort of thing, and the piece stated that it had been going on for years. Happy Thanksgiving to you and Patty (your wife?). I hope she's feeling better. What she went through sounded pretty scary.
That was a very interesting article, Kurt—thank you for that and your memories. Far more interesting than arguing about Trump, as you pointed out when talking about growing up in a certain part of the country (can't remember where). I'm curious about something: when you surfed in CA, did you ever encounter other surfers who tried to control public beaches by bullying and physically harassing "outsiders"? There was a recent article about that sort of thing, and the piece stated that it had been going on for years. Happy Thanksgiving to you and Patty (your wife?). I hope she's feeling better. What she went through sounded pretty scary.
Short answer, yes. I'll get back to you on that. There currently is one place in particular and you likely read about that one in Palos Verdes (Lunada Bay IIRC). The two places I lived before moving east to Philly then Cleveburg were Berkeley where I was born and a little place called Corona del Mar, now part of Newport Beach.
Thanks, she's doing better and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
