Surf Writing

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Lucky Al
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Surf Writing

Post by Lucky Al » Sat Jan 07, 2006 7:06 am

Given Matt Warshaw's Zero Break for Christmas, thought to post a topic along the same lines. For those of you who've enjoyed writing about surfing by various writers and like to share a passage or two.

...

On the Eve of Destruction

The weekend Watts went up in flames,
we drove from Fullerton to Newport Beach
and down the coast as far as Oceanside,
four restless teenage boys three thousand miles
from home, Bob Dylan’s rolling stones
in search of waves and girls and anyone
who’d buy us beer or point us toward the fun.
California. What a high. The Beach Boys,
freeways twelve lanes wide, palm trees everywhere.
And all the girls were blonde and wore bikinis.
I’d swear to that, and even if it wasn’t true,
who cared? A small-town kid from Perkasie,
I spent that whole long summer with my eyes
wide open and the world unfolding
like an open road, the toll booths closed,
service stations giving gas away.
What did riots in a Negro ghetto
have to do with me? What could cause
such savage rage? I didn’t know
and didn’t think about it much.
The Eve of Destruction was just a song.
Surf was up at Pendleton. The war in Vietnam
was still a sideshow half a world away,
a world that hadn’t heard of Ia Drang or Tet,
James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Black Panthers,
Spiro Agnew, Sandy Scheuer, Watergate.
We rode the waves till two MPs
with rifles chased us off the beach:
military land. ‘Fuck you!’ we shouted
as we roared up Highway One, windows open,
surfboards sticking out in three directions,
thinking it was all just laughs, just kicks,
just a way to kill another weekend;
thinking we could pull this off forever.

W. D. Ehrhart

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Lucky Al
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Post by Lucky Al » Sat Jan 07, 2006 5:00 pm

Come to think this might be more interesting and livelier if entitled 'Best Surf Writing', like the 'Best Sports Writing' anthologies we see in bookstores every year or 'Best of Tracks' used to come out every few years, so those of us with piles of old mags and vague memories of stories or essays that once inspired or delighted us can dig around and if come across at last post passages here. No need for either surf-centred or civilian literature limits, I reckon.

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Opinion

Post by Longboarder » Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:06 am

I didn't think it was that crash hot, thx for sharing tho.

Jamoe
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Post by Jamoe » Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:23 am

Lucky Al wrote:Come to think this might be more interesting and livelier if entitled 'Best Surf Writing', like the 'Best Sports Writing' anthologies we see in bookstores every year or 'Best of Tracks' used to come out every few years, so those of us with piles of old mags and vague memories of stories or essays that once inspired or delighted us can dig around and if come across at last post passages here.
it would be good to see some of those "best of" sort of articles in a collection. as a whole surf journalism is pretty trashy, poorly structured and much more suited for your "New Idea" type reader. every now and then amongst the cr@p there are some absolutely fantastic gems. can't think of any that come to mind at the moment, i'll go back and have a bit of a look see if I can dig up anything. anyone got any faves?

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Post by Lucky Al » Tue Jan 10, 2006 5:37 am

This isn't surf writing, just something I came across in the library this morning. It contains references to surfers, sort of. I've spent the last three weeks in Seattle's U. District, walking back and forth between my girl's place and the University of Washington, where she's writing her dissertation. It's rained every day since I got here. My pile of surf mags, which includes almost every issue of Tracks from 1983 to 1991, is a long way away, but I've been going to the libraries on campus and reading different things. Often for lunch we go get a burrito in Don Eduardo's on University Way.



Although L.A. hugged the Pacific coastline, the beaches were still many miles away, too far for neighborhood people to get to. There were families in and around L.A. who never visited the beach. Most of the time the barrio people from around the San Gabriel Valley went to an area along the Rio Hondo in the Whittier Narrows. We called it Marrano Beach.

In the summer time, Marrano Beach got jam-packed with people and song. Vatos locos pulled their pant legs up and waded in the water. Children howled with laughter as they jumped in to play. There were concrete bridges, covered with scrawl, beneath which teenagers drank, got loaded, fought and sometimes made love. At night, people in various states of undress could be seen splashing around in the dark. And sometimes, a body would be found wedged in stones near the swamps or floating face down. The place stunk, which was why we called it what we did. But it belonged to the Chicanos and Mexicanos. It was the barrio beach. Ours.

This one time, to celebrate Clavo's coming back, we decided to go instead to what we recognized then as the Gabacho beaches, or white people's beaches. Why not? It was an important occasion.

Chicharron, Wilo and I were in on this trip. We invited a few of the homies, including Black Dog, who was called that because he was so dark. He was known to be trouble, but he had just bought a 'bomb' and we needed the ride. And we invited rucas. There were the Acuna sisters, Herminia and Santita – pretty and shapely girls who lived just below the Hills. We invited Canica and La Smiley. And they brought Elaine Palacios and Corina Fuentes. We gathered at Garvey Park, two carloads full. We scored on cases of beer and some grifa. A few colies. Everything was ready.

We caravaned to Huntington Beach in Orange County –'white bread' country – which was a straight drag south on the San Gabriel River Freeway, the 605, then a spell on Pacific Coast Highway. The sun bore down on our rides. We opened windows and drank and toked and laughed. Already the dudes without girls were scoping out who they would be with.

Crowds filled the beach area. Chicharron knew of a place called 'The Coves', further down, less peopled and scenic. To get to it we had to park away from the beach and walk down rocks and boulders. The water came up to the rocks, a sandy area nearby. Chicharron buried several six-packs in shallow water to keep them cold. Black Dog began to roll reefer and pass it around. Wilo and Rita lay on a blanket in the sand, beer and chips nearby. The rest of us decided to play a loose game of football.

The girls and guys split up into teams. We threw the ball around. A few of us got tackled. Then we threw the girls around, mostly into the water. None of us had bathing suits or trunks. We had cutoffs, T-shirts and sandals. Chicharron and Black Dog picked up the girls as if they were sacks of masa harina and threw them into the bursting waves.

Strangely, we were all alone there on that short stretch of beach. Black Dog brought out some mescaline. Felix took a hit and before long he was tripping, falling all over the sand and bumping his head on rocks. Canica and Smiley took some hits too. Black Dog maneuvered Canica over to a cave in the rocks. Wilo and Rita lay back on the blanket and enjoyed the sun.

In the afternoon, we spied a van of white dudes parked above the coves near our rides, looking like surfers in their sunny beachwear and eye shades. They stared in our direction. Chicharron stood up to see them better.

'What's with the paddies, man?' he yelled out to me.

'Que se yo? Maybe waiting for a bitchin' wave.'

Then we heard the white dudes shout.

'Fuck you, beaners!'

'Mexicans suck!'

Black Dog emerged from the cave. He looked at the white dudes, and then yelled back: 'Putos, come get some of this,' as he squeezed his crotch.

The white guys challenged us to go up there. It didn't take much to get us going. Chicharron took off his belt, Black Dog picked up a bottle. Everyone followed them.

There were about six white dudes, and as we got closer we saw they weren't teens but grown men.

'Come on, greasers,' one tall dude said. 'Who wants to go first?'

'Fuck you,' Black Dog shouted, and charged them. But what should have been a good old ass-stomping turned out to be something completely different.

The white dudes pulled out guns, and one of them flashed a badge.

'Everyone line up. This is the Huntington Beach Police Department.'

'Puta madre,' Chicharron said, as the cops turned him around and had him place his hands against the side of the van. The rest of us, even the girls, were forced to kneel and keep our hands on our heads. Corina started to sob. One of the cops radioed in some information. Another proceeded to harass us.

'Tough guys, eh? Gonna take us on. You don't look so tough now.'

They had us squat there for five, ten, fifteen minutes. We couldn't stand up, kneel or sit. One of the cops came up to the parking area with Wilo and Rita. They brought the beer cans.

'This is a violation,' a cop said.

Then another cop turned around smiling. He had Black Dog's jacket and had found caps of mescaline and some joints.

'All right, now we got some felonies.'

Ecstatic, the cops dragged us handcuffed to the local jail…

(From Always Running: la vida loca, gang days in L.A., by Luis J. Rodriguez)

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