HEAVY DUTY

In a word, the Pacific is “rough” for seven or eight months in the year – not stormy, understand me – not what one could justly call stormy, but contrary, baffling and very “rough”.

~ Mark Twain

Lungs burning, thighs quivering, I begrudgingly turn around and lumber upward once again to the rallying shouts of the others around me, sprinting up the first of four shockingly steep flights of stairs. After three such round-trips, my legs already feel like lead weights, and my heart feels as though it’s about to explode out of my chest. I beg for mercy, but it never comes as the stairs continue before me, seemingly endless.

We’re at the notorious “Temple of Doom”, a series of diabolical and aptly-named cement stairways in the Sunset District of San Francisco – just a ragtag band of surfers, trying to bust our collective asses into shape, hoping to paddle out to meet the first large northwest swell of the season – and not drown.

It’s early September, and fog and howling onshore winds still afflict San Francisco’s western shores. It’s hard to imagine the sun ever breaking through, hard to imagine offshore-groomed A-frames humping their way up toward the beach. But we all know those days will come, most likely without warning. Get caught out of shape on a clean, early-season swell, and you’ll be cursing yourself for the rest of the fall.

After running several complete sets, I’m wasted. But it’s not over. We march directly to a giant bar overhanging the lowest flight of steps and begin doing pull-ups … the beach waiting ominously below us, some two miles away.

“This is nothing compared to getting caught by that first double-overhead set,” Jim whispers in my ear. I struggle through the last few chin-ups, and I know he’s right.

PART ONE: BEACH ANATOMY – DECIPHERING THE CODE

Self-RegulationFor some surfers, the mere mention of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach provokes an unsolicited rolling of the eyes or shaking of the head. “No, thank you,” is the prevailing wisdom, stated or implied. They’ve either personally experienced a winter drubbing severe enough to sour their taste for erratic, sizey beachbreak or they have it on good authority from a trusted surfing cohort who’s been sufficiently throttled that they just don’t want any part of it.

Ocean Beach is no secret spot, but it’s a mystery spot – perhaps the ultimate surfing enigma, known by most, deciphered by few, and mastered by none. This might help explain its undeniable magnetism … indeed, the obsession it inspires. Feast on one of its infrequent, magical days, and it could have you returning for years for another taste. But “The Beach” has always been unkind to outsiders and sporadic visitors, not so much because of hostile locals but due to its incredibly fickle nature.

Unless a surfer has the dedication to monitor conditions here day to day, hour to hour the chances of scoring are meager at best. Even when conditions do come together, knowing where to surf and on what tide and what board, and how to paddle out, and where to sit … There are many factors that will reward the experienced and punish the neophyte. Ocean Beach is self-regulating. This is one of its great appeals … to those with the fortitude (hence the stairs!).

Paying dues and finding comfort on the taxing shores of San Francisco’s

OCEAN BEACHBy Dean LaTourrette

60 T H E S U R F E R ’ S P A T H T H E S U R F E R ’ S P A T H 61

Paying dues and finding comfort on the taxing shores of San Francisco’s

Above - Ocean Beach, four-five times overhead and raging. A bigger board might be the go – good luck with the paddle out.

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The Beach“The Beach tends to take care of itself,” says Pete Reich, who lives on the Great Highway, the beachfront road. “People that really want to surf here, they’ll try hard, and maybe they’ll make it out … and maybe they won’t.” And that suits the eclectic mix of people who surf here just fine.

Just as San Francisco is nicknamed as “The City”, so this place is called “The Beach.” Its grandeur is enough to warrant the title, to beg the question, “Which other beach could you possibly mean?” If the The City is, as Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner once said, “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” then Ocean Beach is a three-mile-long strip of fantasy and delusion resting upon the literal and metaphorical fringes. For years, few people believed it even existed at all … at least in a surf sense.

“Thirty years ago, everybody thought we were crazy because there was no surf in San Francisco,” says Bill Martin, longtime OB surfer and now chief meteorologist at KTVU Channel 2 News. “People thought it was a joke. I was going to Berkeley, and I’d drive over, and people thought I was a kook. They’d be, like, ‘Ocean Beach? There’s no waves there.’ At that time, everybody was focused on Southern California and Santa Cruz.”

San Francisco’s western shoreline was for years quite possibly the only real estate in the country where prices dropped the closer you got to the ocean – even in one of the most popular cities in the world. Instead of welcoming visitors to The City’s shores, signs lining The Beach still shout DANGEROUS SURF! and NO SWIMMING! and PEOPLE HAVE DROWNED HERE! It’s as if The City itself wants to warn people to keep away.

For surfers, that began to change in 1987, when The Beach played host to an event on the PSAA US Pro Tour, the first-ever professional surfing contest held in San Francisco. “It was a great week of surf,” recalls Martin, “and they came up for the contest, and the weather was perfect and the swell was like 6-10ft. VFWs (named for the beautiful old Veterans of Foreign Wars building on the north end of the beach, now a brew-pub) was breaking perfectly.” The hot pros discovered that there was surf in San Francisco, and they went ballistic in the heaving beachbreak barrels. Pictures from the contest ran in the magazines and … slowly … the fog that enveloped San Francisco’s surf began to burn off.

Bob Wise (of Wise Surfboards, The City’s only surf shop in those days) was famously reluctant to draw any unnecessary attention to San Francisco shores. “The ironic thing is that Bob and some others actually helped bring those guys up here,” says Martin. “I mean, he gave them a bunch of shit, too, but he also helped them. But none of us knew what was going to happen at the time.”

Thanks to its temperamental disposition, it would take several more years before Ocean Beach was firmly established on the California surf map, and even then it was largely ignored except for a dedicated crew of core surfers. The City was a place where you came to party or to dine in fancy restaurants, not to surf.

In the early ’90s, a certain big-wave break near Half Moon Bay was introduced to the world. Turned out a small group of Ocean Beach surfers, including Mark “Doc” Renneker and Grant Washburn, had been quietly surfing Mavericks for several years.

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In the media onslaught that followed, people took more notice of the obscure beachbreak that had spawned such big-wave bravado. Whereas many of the Santa Cruz-based Mavs surfers had accumulated years of big-wave experience on Oahu’s North Shore, San Francisco surfers had prepared for their Mavericks assaults on big days at Ocean Beach.

“I grew up surfing on the Jersey shore, so before I moved here I had never seen ‘proper’ surf, I didn’t know what big waves were,” laughs Grant Washburn who, like a majority of San Francisco-based surfers these days, moved to Ocean Beach from elsewhere. “I got here in the summer, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is great. There’re waves every day, and big waves by East Coast standards.’ Then I ran into some guys I knew in the water, and they said just wait until the big waves come, and I was like, ‘You mean it’s going to get a lot bigger than this?’ They just rolled their eyes at me and paddled away.”

CrowdsDoesn’t anybody work anymore? At least that’s what I’m thinking as I paddle out at mid-morning on a beautiful October Tuesday. The waves are head-high, offshore and hollow, and judging from the pack in the water, you’d think it was a national holiday. I weave in and out of various obstacles as I make my way into the line-up: a 30-something beginner on an 8’ fun board; a longboarder paddling aggressively for any ripple in sight; an attractive woman who’s having difficulty getting into the wind-slowed waves.

I paddle around in search of a familiar face but find none. Who are all these people? Finally, I spot my friend Brian a few peaks down and work my way towards him, finally catching a speedy left that deposits me a few meters from where he’s sitting.

“Crowded,” I say to him in greeting, and he just shakes his head.“I think the entire city is out here,” he replies. I look to the

north and south. Surfers stretch in both directions as far as the eye can see, like a weaving chain of Christmas tree lights. This is the reality of surfing modern-day, small-wave Ocean Beach.

Despite the crowds, a peak pops up right in front of us, and Brian jumps on the left while I slide into the shorter right. A minute later, we convene back at our spot. We repeat this cycle for three more waves, until a rip current begins funneling straight through our peak and forces us to disband.

Under the RadarDespite the occasional crowding, The Beach prefers to stay out of the greater public eye. This has as much to do with the local surf community’s media-shy nature as it does with the fact that the area is difficult to photograph, at least from a surf standpoint. The mere mention of any publicity – including this story – can send local surfers into a bit of a panic. Sure, there’s the obvious fear of adding to growing crowds in the line-up, but it runs deeper than that. It’s as if the fascination and allure surrounding this dynamic spot are difficult to share, the sacrifices so great that the thought of anyone coming in and by chance reaping the benefits without having endured the heartache is just too much to bear.

“All the old guys, they hate all the changes,” says Dave

Alexander, a longtime manager at Wise Surfboards and one of the few outsiders able to infiltrate the tight-knit group of Ocean Beach surfers in the late ’70s. “More than hating that it’s crowded, they hate that they didn’t assimilate into the culture. Instead of trying to fit in, they just made their own little group. And now you hear all the grumbling: ‘God I went surfing today, and I didn’t know a soul.’”

“Eight or nine years ago, I started to get a bad attitude,” says Bill Martin. “There were all these new guys coming in, and it started to get crowded for the first time. But when I first started surfing here, the older guys then weren’t happy with us coming in either. That’s always how it’s going to be. And you know what? People are nicer now. They actually talk to each other in the line-up. It’s a lot more social than it used to be. They also can surf a hell of a lot better than we did in the old days.”

In the past 15 years, two published stories raised public awareness of Ocean Beach: a Surfer’s Journal piece written by Ben Marcus in 2000, and a marathon two-part essay by William Finnegan that appeared in the New Yorker in 1992 and was hailed as the finest article ever written on surfing. Both stories revealed a fixation surrounding surfing Ocean Beach. In Finnegan’s case, he was driven to question his motivation for and commitment to surfing, finally precipitating a move to the East Coast. In the Ben Marcus article, writer Matt Warshaw, a prominent figure at The Beach, divulges an addiction bordering on the unhealthy. Now married, Matt lives in Bernal Heights, a sunny San Francisco neighborhood ten minutes from the water, reportedly glad to no longer have Ocean Beach staring at him through the window.

Opposite - Peaky, offshore inner-bar days tend to draw a few more surfers into the water.

Top left - The Cliff House, Seal Rocks, and the fabled Kelly’s Cove, for your viewing pleasure.

Below left -A windmill, facing west – not always the best sign for a west-facing beachbreak. Spring and summer onshores are part of the penance at Ocean Beach.

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“People Swimming Have Drowned Here”

I’m driving the Great Highway on a cold, overcast, burly-looking November morning. It’s days like these when The Beach can seem the loneliest spot on earth. Double to triple-overhead sets are pouring in, little reprieve between them. I scan the ocean, and I don’t see anyone out. Why would anyone subject themselves to this? But then, outside at Pacheco Street, I spy one lone spec on a board almost a quarter-mile offshore. I pull to the side of the highway and train my binoculars on the solitary figure just as a huge set is approaching.

The surfer is stroking hard towards the horizon and barely makes it over the crest of the first wave of the set, a solid 15ft face. Three larger waves are set to unload, and he’s caught hopelessly inside. I cringe as I watch him bail his board and dive for the bottom ahead of the first one. Apparently his leash snaps because, just like that, his board is bounding towards shore, herded ahead of the churning whitewater. I silently give thanks that I’m not him,

facing a decidedly long, cold, and lonesome swim back to shore, and then I drive on.

“Anybody that’s surfed Ocean Beach for any length of time and in any of the more serious conditions would be lying if they told you that they’d never been afraid,” states Mark Massara, an attorney who moved here in 1984 to attend law school at the University of San Francisco. “I’ve had so many near-death experiences, I can’t even count them anymore.”

People do perish along The Beach each year, usually from drowning. Just this spring a surfer washed up in the shorebreak at Sloat Boulevard; lungs filled with water, board nowhere to be found. Normally, it’s unsuspecting tourists and beachgoers who get swept into the icy surf and can’t make it back to shore, but sometimes it’s an inexperienced surfer who got in too deep.

“I was out there surfing with a friend a few weeks ago,” says Massara. “We’re out there paddling around, and this board goes floating by. Just the full mystery surfboard, it was incredible! We never found the surfer it belonged to. The only thing you’re going

What Makes Ocean Beach The Beach?

The Bars – Extending south from the mouth of San Francisco Bay, Ocean Beach is

not so much your standard beachbreak as the world’s largest rivermouth break. Sand

and silt deposits from currents rushing in and out of the Golden Gate form a network

of sandbars up and down the beach. “These are probably some of strongest tidal

currents in the world for an open-coast beach, because of the proximity of the mouth

of San Francisco Bay,” says Patrick Barnard, research geologist for the US Geological

Survey. “It’s really complex.”

Depending on the time of year and who you ask, there can be anywhere from

two to four tiers of sandbar extending from the beach out into the Pacific. Most often

there are three: the shorebreak or inner bar; the outer bar, some 200 yards from

shore, and the giant San Francisco Bar, located several miles offshore.

According to Peter Mull, a local surfer and project manager for the US Army

Corps of Engineers, the offshore San Francisco Bar is one of several factors that

make Ocean Beach truly unique. “The shape of the offshore sandbar is essentially a

giant horseshoe,” says Mull, “that both focuses waves and causes them to refract. So

it works a lot like a magnifying glass.”

This allows for peaky surf that rarely closes out, regardless of how big. “The

wave rays crisscross as they bend around the bar, and it’s at the point of crossing

lines where you get a concentration of energy,” he says. “By contrast, at a place like

Huntington, where the beach profile is more linear offshore, the waves come in as

straight lines, and they don’t necessarily get concentrated or broken up into peaks.”

The Swell – Facing due west and directly toward unobstructed Pacific swell, Ocean

Beach is as exposed as any pale-skinned, tattooed urban dweller who comes down

to sunbathe on a rare sunny day. The Beach picks up nearly all swell directions, save a

steep south, and any north, northwest, or west swell will likely be amplified by several

degrees here. Swells march in raw and blunt, blasting the three-mile strip of sand with

astonishing power.

The Wind – Situated on the western edge of the San Francisco peninsula, the wind

at Ocean Beach both giveth and taketh. During the spring and summer months, hot

weather inland creates an onshore wind flow that rarely lets up. Cool ocean air being

sucked through the Golden Gate can create winds so hard that sand dunes finger out

onto the Great Highway like snow drifts.

During fall and winter, however, high pressure can settle in over the state,

creating delightful northeasterly winds akin to the Santa Ana winds of Southern

California. When this happens, it’s a beautiful thing to behold, as the offshores groom

and soothe The Beach’s otherwise choleric personality.

The Tide – Ocean Beach surfers monitor tides like few others. Hung on every surfer’s

wall and stashed in every vehicle are various tide calendars, charts, and data. Height,

direction, and amplitude are vital in coordinating surf sessions with optimal conditions.

“There’s an enormous effect here from the tidal prism coming in and out of the

Golden Gate,” says Mull. “It creates a huge amount of energy and current.” These

strong currents can help or hinder the surf. “As waves go into an opposing current,

they will shorten in wavelength and steepen. At Ocean Beach, on an outgoing tide the

waves go more or less against the current, so they shoal more and jack up higher.”

The Sum Equation – Pull all the complex factors together or, more precisely, be

fortuitous enough to be there when they unite, and you might find yourself in a

deep state of surf ecstasy. But at times there is seemingly no rhyme or reason

to conditions. Swell, wind and tide can appear perfect on paper, sending surfers

running giddily to grab boards, only to arrive at the top of the sand dunes to

nauseatingly horrible conditions.

Conversely, the various elements can be exceptionally misaligned, causing you

to write off the surf completely and focus on work, family, life – only to hear your

friends talking about the day you missed – “the best day of the year” – for the rest of

the season.

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to be certain of when you paddle out at The Beach is that you’re going to get a great workout. And if you don’t panic, you probably won’t drown.”

Dr. Benjy Darrow, a local chiropractor, Beach charger, and frequent Mavericks surfer, relays a recent rescue story. “On the day of the Mavericks contest, I was out at Sloat, and I had to save this guy,” he explains. “The ocean went mental – channels disappeared and peaks were converging into giant close-outs. I was way outside and still kept getting caught inside by these monster sets. The guy must have lost his board on the outside. I climbed my leash to the surface following a huge wave, and just as I was getting back onto my board, his board magically materialized out of the foam and drifted directly into my left hand, like it was meant to be. But the guy had gone completely blank, just fully detached from the situation. I screamed at him twice that I had his board. but he didn’t move. Somehow I finally got into his head, and he came to, grabbed his board and paddled it in. Later he came up to me in the parking lot and said I had saved his life.”

Paddling ability, not actual surfing ability, is the true competitive advantage at Ocean Beach. Not only are those who can use their arms like oars able to squeak out through relentless whitewater thrashings when others cannot, but their wave count rises considerably, whether it’s big or small. With all the moving water, shifting peaks, and strong currents, the strong paddler rises quickly to the top of this Darwinian water field.

“I think it’s tough to get good at Ocean Beach,” says Pete Reich. “There’s a lot more paddle time versus ride time, compared to a place like Santa Barbara or San Diego where it’s less intense to get to the surf and ride it. So it’s difficult to learn and progress here, although you do of course learn how to deal with big waves.”

On bigger days, the outside take-off zone can literally stretch for 50 yards or more. As a result, a cat and mouse game is often played – an inside-outside folly of wave roulette. Sit too far out, and you could spend your entire session chasing peaks, your number never quite coming up. Sit further in, and you increase your wave count at the risk of getting caught inside. The solution? Unfortunately, there is none, unless you just don’t mind taking repeated beatings, in which case you’d probably be one of the happiest surfers at The Beach.

Ryan Seelbach, one of a select few San Francisco surfers invited to compete in the annual Mavericks Surf Contest, seems to be one of the happy ones. “The Beach is never not challenging,” he says. “It always has something going for it to keep me entertained. This morning was a classic example: it was double-overhead and really lumpy and disorganized, and we were getting swept down the beach. If you want to go out and tackle that, it’s all yours.”

Roots of a Surf CultureThe history of Ocean Beach is an odd one, given that in the first half of the 20th century, the San Francisco shoreline was an extremely popular destination for tourists and locals alike. Sutro Baths, the Cliff House, Playland-at-the-Beach, Golden Gate Park, and Fleishhacker Pool lined the beach from north to south, attracting hundreds of thousands of beachgoers – all non-surfers – to The City’s shores. This peculiar collection of attractions seemed strangely misplaced,

luring people unwittingly into the harshest, coldest weather The City had to offer.

Fleishhacker Pool was particularly bizarre. At 1,000ft long and 150ft wide, it was the largest outdoor swimming pool in the United States. In order to fill it, saltwater was pumped in from the ocean across the street; lifeguards used kayaks to get from one side to the other. By most accounts the water was cold, the weather colder, and so much sand used to blow in from the nearby beach that they’d have to close the pool each year to remove tons (literally) of the stuff from the bottom.

Despite these inherent shortcomings, in its heyday the pool was très hip, attracting its share of international celebrities. It also attracted the waterman talents of Hawaiian lifeguards, Clifford Kamaka and Eddie Eukini, and it is to them that the roots of surfing at Ocean Beach can be traced. The Hawaiians would run over to the beach during their breaks at the pool and bodysurf in the frigid waves in front of Sloat Boulevard, mentoring a whole generation of lifeguards and future surfers in the process.

“We were mostly bodysurfing back then,” says Jack O’Neill, who moved to Ocean Beach in 1949 and later opened his first surf shop out of his garage on the Great Highway. “There was Cliff and Eddie down at Fleishhacker – they were helping us, showing us some things. Cliff was really good.” There were early experiments with boards by some of the Fleishhacker lifeguards in the 1940s, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that The Beach was surfed with any regularity.

Shooting the CurlA surfer by the name of Rod Lundquist is widely credited as being the first regular board surfer at Ocean Beach, beginning in the early ’50s. By 1960, a small crew of vagabond surfers were hanging out at the north end of The Beach at Kelly’s Cove.

“These days, everybody surfs up and down The Beach,” says Mark Ruegg, co-producer and editor of the upcoming San Francisco surf documentary, Great Highway, and whose father Bud was a member of the early Kelly’s crew. “Back then it was Kelly’s

Above - Occasionally, it all comes together. Pick a good line and go, and for God’s sake don’t catch a rail.

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Cove, Fleishhacker [Sloat Boulevard], or Pacifica, and that was it.”

“I remember around 1956, my friend Chuck Klebora and I started kicking around the idea of getting boards,” recalls Bill Hickey, an early Kelly’s Cove surfer who can still be found cruising The Beach today. “One afternoon we were at Kelly’s – we had been bodysurfing, and we were leaning up against the wall to get the heat out of it – and some guy comes walking down the stairs with a style of board that we had never seen before. He knee-paddles out, and we had never seen that before either. It was relatively small, but he takes off at an angle on this wave and walks up into trim and shoots the curl! We looked at one another, and we knew at that moment that we had to get boards. That night I went home and wrote a letter to Hobie [Alter] and ordered two brand new balsa wood boards. Mine cost $75 and Chuck’s cost $85, plus tax and shipping.”

PART TWO: BEACH ANTHROPOLOGY – PETER PAN MEETS LORD OF THE FLIES

Sweet San Francisco Medley

Ocean Beach is where refined city meets wild and untamed Pacific blue. And not just any city. This is San Francisco – a sundry collection of tripsters, hipsters, techsters and yupsters. From Barbary Coast tawdriness to Haight Ashbury love to Burning Man passion, it remains the most tolerant and diverse city in the US. It’s no wonder this collision of cultures gives birth to eccentric surfers: the quirky academic, the medical doctor, the

reclusive writer, the surfer cum environmental lawyer.The Beach is also home to more than its share of Peter Pan

types. I can say this because I am unquestionably one of them. This is a place where the adult surfer in his 30s, 40s, even 50s can maintain a beach lifestyle of endless waves, house parties, and flip-flops while holding down a button-up job downtown. And nobody down at the cube farm has to know you enjoy a little spleef after a day of chasing 8-10ft dredgers.

Much like the city it borders, The Beach is a melting pot, a hodgepodge of eclectic wave-riders thrown together into a blend that can be smooth and buttery, with a flavor that borders on the sublime … or ragged, even downright bitter, with personalities clashing and tempers flaring. But The Beach itself usually overshadows any individual personalities, and altercations tend to get washed away as quickly as a surfer caught by a clean-up set in a five-knot current running parallel to shore.

The House That Jack Built

It was the chilly waters

of Ocean Beach that

provided inspiration, or

perhaps desperation,

to Jack O’Neill, driving

him to develop the

neoprene wetsuit. “I just

started working on ways

to stay warm,” laughs

O’Neill today. “I found

some unicellular foam

at a surplus store, and I

started out with putting

the foam underneath

Sutro Baths bathing suits.

You could get a bathing suit for a 25-cent deposit, but it was a bun-hugger!”

In 1952, O’Neill opened one of the first surf shops in California out of his garage

on the Great Highway in San Francisco. He named it, appropriately enough, “Surf

Shop”. At the time, O’Neill actually registered the name “Surf Shop” and technically

could have sued all the subsequent surf shops that followed, but he’s philosophical

about it. “So many guys started using the name, but I didn’t have the money or time

to worry about it. Plus, most of them were [O’Neill wetsuit] customers anyhow!”

The Surf Shop was the first of its kind, incorporating multiple surfing products.

“I was making balsa wood surfboards and experimenting with suits,” says O’Neill.

“Phil Edwards really helped me a lot. I’d blow some blanks, and Phil would come up

and show me how to shape, and he would shape some boards himself.”

O’Neill was part of an early crew of surfers and beachgoers at Kelly’s Cove and

remembers hanging out around the fire. “There used to be a group of old guys who

would gather driftwood, and they’d build a fire,” he says. “On the way to the beach

we’d stop at the gas station and get an old tire, so when you came out of the water

you’d throw the tire onto the fire. You got enough out of the surf that you didn’t mind

the cold, but you still wanted to warm up afterwards.

“I spent a lot of time down at Kelly’s,” he continues. “I’d go there, and it was my

therapy for working downtown. I was trying commercial fishing, and I had other jobs

around town, but I’d always come home and jump in the ocean.”

O’Neill later opened up a second

shop in Santa Cruz and soon moved the

entire operation there, where there was

a larger surfing community and warmer

weather. But he still reflects fondly on his

days in San Francisco. “That cold water

at Ocean Beach inspired me,” he says. “I

don’t think I would have ever developed

the wetsuit if I lived down south. It was

something about the degrees up there; it

was very, very invigorating. When you came

out of the water in San Francisco, you knew

you’d been in!”

Above - Fleishhacker

lifeguards, late 1940s. Hawaiians Eddie

Eukini and Clifford Kamaka, center,

were among the first bodysurfers along San

Francisco shores.

Below - Jack, still stoked

at 83.

Below right - Jack’s kids Cathi,

Mike, and Pat O’Neill in front of the original

Surf Shop.

Opposite bottom - Mark Massara,

an environmental and OB advocate.

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The HostPete Reich reigns over the ultimate surf shack on the Great Highway: a three-story, three-unit, wood shingled house overlooking Ocean Beach that’s been passed down from surf generation to surf generation. While the vastness of The Beach tends to divide the surf community into numerous subcultures, there is nary a surfer west of Twin Peaks that hasn’t spent time between the walls of the Reich residence over the last 15 years, often in various states of intoxication.

The place oozes NorCal surf culture from its salt-encrusted pores, from the Brewer guns slung in the rafters, to the numerous big-wave shots lining the walls, to the lingering sounds of the Mermen and other surf bands that have played here over the years. When Tom Curren passes through town, this is where he stays.

Pete’s a quintessential Ocean Beach surfer. A big guy who doubles as a nationally recognized lacrosse player, he’s remarkably nimble in the surf, but prefers larger waves to the head-high-and-under days. He keeps a ten-foot-plus gun at the ready for the occasional Mavericks session, but generally sticks to large Ocean Beach.

We’re having a beer one night at his place, warming ourselves by the fire after a particularly chilly surf session, listening to reggae tunes and talking about the changes at The Beach over the last ten years. A transplant from Southern California, Pete is quick to point out that, like many others who end up here, he’s not a “local” in the strict sense of the word. “The people who come here and stay here are usually the ones who really love it,” he says. “They’re willing to put up with the elements and the strong surf and the cold water. More than anything else, they just love surfing.”

I ask Pete about his propensity to entertain. “It comes pretty naturally, I’ve always been a highly social person; I love to throw parties,” he says. “My house is in an ideal location, right in the middle of the beach on the Great Highway, so I really consider myself lucky to be here in this spot and to be able to do that for all my friends in the surf community.”

This natural tendency is plainly evident as I rest my beer on a platform beneath a large stripper pole that’s bolted down in the middle of his living room. “Left over from my last New Year’s party,” he laughs. “But to any woman who asks, remember, it’s a dance pole, not a stripper pole!”

The ActivistMark Massara, an environmental attorney and Director of Sierra Club’s Coastal Programs, lives a few doors down from Pete. Mark became famous in surfing and environmental circles when, in the early ’90s, on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation, he fought and won a groundbreaking settlement from two ocean-polluting pulp mills in Humboldt County, California. With blonde hair streaming well past his shoulders, a preference for flip-flops, and a style that can only be described as loose, Mark befits his reputation in the media as the “surfing lawyer.” And at age 43 (“28 if any women ask”), Mark is also in the midst of his Ocean Beach prime.

“When I first came to San Francisco, I couldn’t believe it,” says Mark. “I just could not believe how impressive Ocean Beach was. For being an urban environment with a million people, it represented wilderness to me in the same way that I think Yosemite grabs climbers.”

The waves at The Beach, unlike most surf spots, are noticeably absent of youth, and for good reason. “It can be a very frustrating surfing experience if you’re under 25 and lack a lot

of years of build up and preparation,” Mark says. “Most people start surfing young, at 10 or 12 years old, and by the time they’re 25, it’s over! But for a much smaller percentage of people, the attraction of surfing grows as they get older, it becomes more of a lifestyle. For people who are truly committed to surfing, who want the thrill and power of larger waves, Ocean Beach is a natural graduation point. It’s no surprise that a lot of us 40-somethings have ended up here.”

Like others, Mark reveres the power and challenge of The Beach. “Ocean Beach is like a kind of violent meditation,” he says. “I mean, I do

“If The Mind Can Conceive The Body Can Achieve”

Beginning in the 1930s and continuing for several decades,

well-known health nut and exercise guru Jack LaLanne swam

at Ocean Beach regularly as part of his training. LaLanne would

swim by himself, often starting at Kelly’s Cove. “It was really tough

out there,” he recalls. “It was just me and the seals. The water

was damn cold, I’ll tell you.” Apparently, the waves, cold water,

and currents weren’t enough. “I had a boat, and I used to tow the

thing behind me, up and down the beach for a couple of hours.

That’s how I’d practice for my swims.”

LaLanne was famous for his grueling workout routines

and crazy fitness displays. On several occasions he swam from

Alcatraz Island to San Francisco – in handcuffs and shackles

– sometimes towing large boats behind him. Perhaps it’s fitting

then that LaLanne chose Ocean Beach as part of his training

regimen. The vast field of large surf, strong currents, and frigid

water was perfect to prepare him for his punishing stunts.

In 1958, at age 44, LaLanne “maneuvered” a paddleboard

from the Farallon Islands to San Francisco, a 30-mile, 9-1/2-

hour trip. Incredibly, LaLanne left the Farallons at midnight,

making most of the journey at night on an 11’ Jack O’Neill balsa

paddleboard created specifically for the trip.

Although LaLanne would later surf with the likes of Duke

Kahanamoku at Waikiki, as O’Neill tells the story, LaLanne

wasn’t the most accomplished on a surfboard at the time. “I was

amazed, because I know Jack hadn’t paddled much,” he says.

“I took the board up to him, where he was living on a boat in

Oakland. He was all enthused and put the board in the water and

jumped on, and he immediately fell off the other side! He didn’t

really know how to lie on the thing. I was just shocked that he

was able to do the paddle. He didn’t look like he’d ever been on

a surfboard before!”MA

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LaLanne, always the showman, at the KGO-TV studios after the paddle.

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yoga and all that, which is great, but nothing beats The Beach for the ultimate mind and body workout.” As for the frustrations, Mark conveys a hint of masochism as he rationalizes: “I tell people that you either grow to like the beatings or you’ll never have a good time over the long haul here. Just like old-time boxers like to be hit – you know, it just wakes them up and gets the adrenaline going – Ocean Beach is kind of the same way for the surfers here.”

The SageYou’d be hard pressed to find a kinder surfing soul than Bill Hickey, 69. Hickey was one of the original Kelly’s Cove miscreants, and one of the few shapers to ever come out of San Francisco. He is perhaps Ocean Beach’s longest-standing and most respected surf citizen.

“Surfing is what you do when you go to the beach,” he says, recalling values from

another era. “I’m a beach person. I go to the beach, and I surf. Beach is the focus; that’s where it’s all happening. And that’s not

only when the waves are good, but all year round.”“He’s a hero,” says Massara of Hickey. “That guy is just a

champion – so much goodwill, someone who will always put everyone before himself.”

Hickey still shapes, and his boards are coveted collector’s items, with their custom artwork and handmade fins. “Today’s surfers don’t spend much time at the beach,” Bill laments. “Usually they just drive up, check the surf, go out, and then split. They’re not beach people.”

In his early surfing days, Hickey bailed off a wave at Kelly’s and drove his head into the sand, fracturing three vertebrae in his neck and knocking out several teeth. “I was in the hospital, in traction,” says Hickey, “and Jack [O’Neill] came to see me, and he says, ‘I’m going to open up a surf shop, and I want you to come work for me.’ I said, ‘Jack, who the hell is going to buy the stuff? There’s only ten surfers in the whole Bay Area!’ Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a prophet. But I did go to work for him, and I ran the shop for him for a few years until I opened my own shop in ’64.”

The AceWhen you ask who the most skilled and revered surfer is at Ocean Beach, all fingers point to a soft-spoken, unassuming carpenter named Bill Bergerson. Formerly known as Peewee Bill (he was

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One surfer admires the view from the channel,

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someone’s little brother), Bergerson is a surfer’s surfer, one who’s humbly performed amazing feats in big and small waves for the better part of four decades. He’s a son of San Francisco’s Sunset District, educated in The City’s public school system from kindergarten on through college, and one of the few surfers who has made Ocean Beach his home for his entire surfing career.

“When I was a kid, I thought surfing big waves was crazy,” laughs Bill. “I remember in high school, going to surf movies and thinking, ‘Why would you want to ride a big wave, all it is is a drop. You can’t do anything on those waves!’ Once I started surfing The Beach, though, it became more of a challenge, and I started surfing bigger and bigger waves.”

Stories of Bill’s big-wave exploits are legendary. There’s the time in the mid-’80s when he jumped off the end of a temporary pier south of Sloat Boulevard to get out in raging, triple-overhead conditions. Or his solo sessions on huge, ugly days at outside Taraval Street. Or that big, clean day back in 1977, one Bill calls 10-12ft [he measures waves by their backs], when he was out at VFWs with two other surfers and they watched a giant set break on the outer bars a few miles offshore. “We were like, ‘Okay, get ready!’” he recalls. “The first wave I let go by, and it was a full freight train, but it never sectioned. The next one came, and it was just so intense. Bones, my friend who charges hard, was like, ‘I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you go on this,’ and I said, ‘I don’t even need the hundred bucks, I’m going anyways!’” He managed to paddle into the wave, but somewhere between getting to his feet and getting to the bottom, he went airborne and cart-wheeled down the face. “That ate me up for years afterwards,” he says. “I didn’t think I’d ever have an opportunity for a wave like that again.”

Incredibly, in 2001, nearly 25 years later, he got a second chance, when a similar swell hit The Beach. “I went out at VFWs again, and there were people out, but they didn’t really want any part of those waves that day,” he says. “One of the exact same sets came in, it broke way out on the outer bars, and I got into position way away from everybody else. I had seen this before, I knew it was going to swing really wide. And then there it was, the exact same wave. This time I caught it, made the drop, and I was just flying down the line for the longest way, going so fast. It finally sectioned on me, but I was like, ‘That was it, that was the wave of my life,’ and I came in.”

The GromAt 26 years of age, Andy Olive still qualifies as a grom at Ocean Beach. In typical surf culture fashion (but rare in The City), Olive was raised on the shop floor of Wise Surfboards. “Andy is a sweet kid,” says Dave Alexander. “We started him off when he was like 14 – he used to hang around and sweep the floor and just wanted to be part of the gang. One day we just said, ‘Why don’t we pay you? You’re always here anyways.’ He’s not really a kid anymore, I guess, but I still think of him like that.”

“Wise was a huge learning experience, just a positive-role-model space,” Andy recalls. “It really helped me grow up … those guys were so cool to me. In general, we look up to the older guys because of the stuff they’ve been through, the primitive wetsuits and equipment they used to surf with. The stories those guys have … half of them have been in jail before. They’re just gnarlier than we are.”

Andy leads a group of young chargers who congregate around the more performance-oriented waves of Kelly’s Cove, at the north end of The Beach. “Down at Kellys, there’s just so much diversity,” he says. “Super-hardcore gangsters, kids fresh out of San Quentin (prison), guys on Harleys, graffiti artists, skaters … a whole mix. So you go out and surf there, and then you come in to this unreal setting, but everyone’s friends.”

Andy & Co. are featured in one of the only modern surf videos to ever come out of The City, San FranPsycho: Wet and Wreckless, which chronicles in colorful fashion the surf debauchery that revolves around Kelly’s Cove today. The film showcases a renaissance of San Francisco surfing youth that’s emerged in the last few years, calling to mind the Kelly’s crews of the ’60s.

Is This Fun?It’s a weekday morning in early December, and I’m eyeing the outside bar at Rivera Street. It doesn’t look huge, maybe 6-8ft faces with a few bigger sets, but the wind’s offshore and I spy some inviting peaks out the back … and there’s no one out.

I grab my 7’6” and race down to the shore, excited to drop into a few empty walls. The inside is an unholy mess of churning whitewater and swirling currents, and as I wade out towards the shorepound, my first realization is that the paddle out is going to be a little more difficult than I had anticipated. In the shallows, the water is rushing towards shore like a river, and I can barely walk against the current, let alone paddle. Consistent chest-deep walls of whitewater repeatedly blast me towards the beach, and every time I try and jump on my board to sprint paddle through the shorebreak, I make zero ground. In fact, I move backwards.

I resort to the embarrassing but sometimes effective crab crawl, ditching my board with each surge, diving underneath the wave, and crawling along the bottom like a crustacean, hands and feet clawing into the sand to hold ground. I struggle like this for more than 20 minutes, but still make no progress. God, I hope no one’s watching me. Finally, when I’m just about ready to give up, a ten-second rip appears out of nowhere, sucks me out, and, just like that, I’m through the inside.

The middle zone between inner and outer bars is deep water, giving me plenty of time to plot my navigation through the outer bar artillery zone. My next realization, as I approach the outside R

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bars, is that it’s bigger than I thought: 10-12ft faces easy, with the occasional 15ft bomb. I begin to understand why there aren’t many people out. The ocean goes seemingly calm so I paddle deep and fast towards the outside. I’m now into the impact zone and know I could start taking hits at any time. If a well-defined reefbreak such as Uluwatu or Backdoor is like a laser-focused rifle shot, the outer bars at Ocean Beach are more akin to a shotgun blast scattering buckshot everywhere. You never know where it’s going to hit.

Sure enough, as I paddle west, a large set begins to stack up in front of me – three, maybe four waves deep – and I’m directly in the line of fire. There’s not a lot I can do, save continuing to paddle. So I keep stroking and hope for the best. I barely clear the first wave, duck-diving my board through at mid-face, and I know what’s waiting for me even before my head pokes out the back. The next wave is already feathering, getting ready to unload right in front of me.

I should note at this point that, although I enjoy challenging myself at Ocean Beach, I’m no big-wave charger. I don’t wake up in the morning frothing when the San Francisco buoy has jumped up ten feet overnight, nor do I live to paddle out on the biggest, scariest days. I’m normally a bit skittish on the larger days, dodging clean-up sets and keeping a keen eye on the horizon. There are plenty who surf The Beach, however, who do live for those days – the days that send mere mortals such as myself racing for more sheltered ground.

The lip on the second wave begins to throw out directly in front of me, and I scramble off my board and swim down, as deep as I can get on such short notice. It’s not quite deep enough.

The wave explodes above me and pulls me back and upward into the middle of the swirling chaos. Lungs aching, I scramble through the turbulence towards a desperately needed breath of air. Breaking through the foamy surface, I breach just in time to fill my lungs and face another 15ft wall of water axing down on my head. I dive down but only make it a few feet before the plunging lip crashes down on me with a thunderous roar. This time, I’m tossed around and dragged for what feels like minutes, while the churning wave releases all the pent-up energy it’s been saving up – seemingly just for me – during its 3,000-mile journey across the Pacific.

Disoriented, I ineptly struggle again to the surface as the whitewater loosens its grip. Thankfully, I’m spared a repeat performance, and I slowly draw in my overstretched leash to collect my board, while attempting to regain my senses. A strong rip current now shuttles me out past breaking double to triple-overhead waves – a blessing on a big day like this. Or is it? A familiar feeling of dread pervades my thoughts, as I realize I now have to actually turn around and drop into the jaws of one of these unruly beasts … and risk going through the entire process all over again. Do I really want to make it out the back on a day like today?

Baghdad by the BaySan Francisco has long attracted and inspired great writers – Mark Twain, Jack London, Dashiel Hammett, Jack Kerouac, Herb Caen … the list goes on. Similarly, Ocean Beach seems to have inspired its own culture of surf literati, with the likes of

Above - Andy Olive slips

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Thinking Man’s Beach

Ocean Beach probably has more graduate degrees per square mile than any other stretch of

surfing coast in the world. Strange then that this same intellectual power doesn’t translate into

a more rational avoidance of beatings. One would think a higher educational level would lead to

more rational behavior, yet the opposite seems true.

These cerebral surfers are educated, intellectually curious, and seek mental and physical

challenges. They might have a doctorate in geology, or a degree in law, or treat cancer patients,

or write novels. What they share in common with their peers is a fascination with solving difficult

puzzles … and an apparent tolerance for cold-water drubbings.

A bio on the locals here reads like a Who’s Who list of masters and PhDs. Why then,

aren’t they in a classroom teaching somewhere? They seem intent instead on continuing their

own education – getting schooled if you will – at The Beach, the ultimate brainteaser for San

Francisco’s surfing intelligentsia.

Matt Warshaw, Dan Duane, Ben Marcus, Matt George, Evan Slater, Steve Hawk, and others answering the call of The City’s icy waves over the years. Perhaps the vast scale of The Beach gives rise to the poetic dreams and dark nightmares that stir a writer’s soul. Or, maybe the intellectually curious are simply drawn to the constant challenge it provides.

“I really moved here [to San Francisco] for everything else about being here,” admits Dan Duane, author of Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast. “But I fell in love with The Beach, and now I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” As for its challenging nature, Duane finds it to his liking. “I remember throwing up my hands a few times and just saying, ‘Fuck this place. I hate this place!’ because of the struggle to get outside. Or, it’d take me a half hour to get out, I’d spend 40 minutes dodging bombs, then finally get a wave, and it’d close out on me, and I’d get blown to the beach and have to start all over again. But that all kind of suits my temperament, to tell the truth. I don’t know, maybe it just takes a little bit of imagination to love it here.”

Imagination ... or masochism? That might depend on the eye of the beholder. “I love that wild, unpredictable, ever-changing aspect,” Duane continues. “I like having to fight my way to get out there. It’s like back country skiing or something – you earn every ride.”

DenialI’m standing in the parking lot at Sloat Boulevard with several others on a large day in January. Sloat tends to be a congregating point on the bigger swells, as much for its social commentary and colorful spectating as for its theoretical advantage in allowing for an easier paddle out. There is a small handful of surfers who have made it out the back, but most are getting categorically denied. The Beach is littered with dejected surfers trudging back up the sand after being repelled by relentless walls of whitewater.

Various “oohs” and “ahs” are uttered in response to waves attempted out in the line-up, as observations are shared on the currents and progress of different paddlers. While mockery is part of the game, it’s normally conveyed in a respectful, light-hearted manner. Everyone knows they themselves could easily be the paddlers so abused. In fact, everyone has been one of the paddlers!

I flash back to a surfing art exhibit I attended a few years ago. I’m standing in the midst of the hallways of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco, transfixed by a video installation. On screen a lone surfer is stuck in the shorebreak at Ocean Beach, being mercilessly pounded by row after row of whitewater. The surfer has given up trying to paddle, has abandoned his board, and is attempting to dive and swim under each wave, dragging his tethered board behind. The clip is running over and over as an endless loop, but the surfer’s struggle might as well be in real-time.

That looks like me! I lean closer, and it indeed could be me: black wetsuit, white board, the hapless way the guy keeps diving … over and over … reminding me of numerous times I’ve been exactly there. Did somebody catch me on video?

I scan the room, as if to be sure no one identifies me as the pathetic aquanaut, and notice several other surfers are mesmerized as well, and I realize they’re all wondering the same thing: Is it me?

Shangri-La?It’s mid-February, and Ocean Beach is having one of its rare, sustained periods of organized swell and clean conditions. High pressure dominates most of California, and northeast winds are screaming over the Oakland hills and out into the Pacific, blowing straight offshore at The Beach from dawn ‘til dusk, as a moderate-sized, long-period swell marches in from a distant storm in the northwest Pacific.

After an extended surf session, I wander down to Java Beach Café, one of only a few commercial enterprises along the entire length of The Beach. The neighborhood is full of giddy, sated surfers who look like they’re riding a weeklong heroin binge. They display the telling signs, which (along with high worker absenteeism) are the earmarks of an honest-to-goodness Ocean Beach run: suspiciously tanned faces, red eyes (from strong offshore spray and possible post-surf celebration), tired arms.

But as quickly and surely as elation sweeps the collective psyche of the San Francisco surf tribe, so too will come the painful withdrawals amidst the ensuing weeks of howling onshore winds, disorganized swell, too much swell, not enough swell, tides too high, tides too low … in other words, shitty surf. Surf so bad, it can cause even the most optimistic surfer to sink beneath the onslaught.

This is the heaven-and-hell dichotomy that drives many away from Ocean Beach. Yet it is in the very midst of this turmoil that some are able to seek and find their surfing salvation. The Beach is many things to many people: a wilderness, an escape, a nemesis, and, yes, at times, possibly even a savior. As Mark Massara says, it’s “the ultimate violent meditation.”

Perhaps Ryan Seelbach sums it up best. When asked what he loves most about surfing here, he mulls it over and says this: “There’re so many things that piss me off on a daily basis out here: the wind, the fog, the dreariness, the volatile surf. But that’s also what makes it what it is. I guess then the attraction of Ocean Beach to me is its beautiful ugliness.”

What’s not to love about that?

When not taking sets on the head at OB, Dean LaTourrette writes for numerous publications and runs a small press called Leisure Team Productions (www.leisureteam.com). He recently released his second book, Time Off! The Upside to Downtime, which is all about how and why to take breaks from work – a topic most surfers know something about.

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