Lately |

Feb 13

postcard

Rocky beach with surf at sunset in Pacifica, California

I wrote this short essay for Wildsam Magazine to serve as an introduction to a feature on roadtripping through California’s surf towns. I have spent some time in such places, as you all know. They are a whole vibe, though each has its own flavor.

Exit West. Gas. Food. Lodging. An archipelago of towns runs the length of the California coast, connected by a tangle of freeways and yet, existing a world apart from them. Start in San Diego and follow the Pacific Coast Highway north. White sand and easy turns wild and rugged. Palm trees give way to cypress, pines, and redwoods. Each town has its own personality, but all along the way, the ocean is ever-present in all its shifting moods. Life dances to the rhythm of the tides.

In the early 20th century, Duke Kahanamoku brought surfing to California, but it remained for films like the 1959 classic Gidget to rocket surfing into the mainstream. Once there, it never left. Board maker Hobie Alter opened California’s first surf shop in Dana Point in 1954, and before long, just about every town on the coast had its own shop and local board label. With their boards tucked under their arms, Californians headed to the beach and a whole way of life evolved around their newfound obsession.

When the waves turn on, the rhythm changes. Before sunrise, the line runs around the block at the coffee shop and blocks the sidewalk outside the tacqueria that’s serving up breakfast burritos. Traffic crawls along the PCH. Heads hang out car windows, staring at the waves and searching for that elusive parking spot. Boards slide out of cars, wetsuits tug into place. Hurry, gotta get out there. Swell lines stretch to the horizon, and surfers jostle for the best waves like a pack of hungry seagulls on a bag of chips.

All too soon, the wind comes up and the tide drains out. Sandy toes slide hastily into shoes and socks, and head off to the day job. Whatever it takes to stay right here and live this life.
When the sun sinks toward the horizon and transforms the salt spray to golden haze, it all feels like a dream.

And maybe it is.

Nov 19

Profile: Matt Warshaw

Surf historian Matt Warshaw spends his days in Seattle sifting through the ruins of our strange and beautiful past time. He says he’s motivated by an effort to assign meaning to his own story and to understand why he’s spent so many hours of life obsessed with riding waves. How did he arrive here? Matt learned to surf in Venice Beach with Jay Adams, competed in the first Katin Pro/Am, edited Surfer Magazine — and that was just the beginning.

In 2022, I wrote a profile of Matt for the print magazine Emocean. The story appeared in the magazine’s fourth issue, Devotion. It was a joy to work with the crew at Emocean, who love surfing and making print media as much as anyone I’ve ever met. You can check out their current issues available at emocean.surf. Here’s the story of Matt’s life-long fascination with surfing.

When Matt Warshaw was six years old, there were three things he wanted to be: the driver of a drag racing car, a drummer in a band, and a surfer. One day his Uncle Daniel came to visit and brought his Hansen longboard. At the time, Warshaw and his family lived in the San Fernando Valley and they had a backyard pool. Uncle Daniel put his board in the pool and told Warshaw to sit on it. Then he pushed it across the pool. On the third trip across the pool, Uncle Daniel told Warshaw to stand up. “In my mind, I was a surfer.”

Sep 16

last dance

In December 2019, I made one last trip not long before Covid 19 shut down everything. Deep in the trees in the Pacific Northwest, I went to the U.S. cyclocross national championship for VeloNews, a publication that has since disappeared like so many others. It was then, a last dance for all kinds of reasons. Here’s a short story about what I saw out in that muddy field not far from Seattle.

There’s a man pedaling an ancient stationary bike and banging a cymbal with a single drumstick. Somehow, this feels completely normal. So does the unicorn piñata, the light strings hanging from the trees, and the inflatable snowman. A snow machine spits flurries. Also, there’s a bike race.

This is U.S. cyclocross racing, with its near-surreal mix of leg-breaking intensity and track-side shenanigans. My friend and I try to make sense of it. It’s what you do if road racing is too Type A, he says.

But any sport that has room for bacon and dollar hand-ups can’t be all that Type A at all. There’s space for everyone here and a giddy sort of joy. Come as you are. Make it what you want it to be.

If I’d raced bikes in a place like Seattle, Portland, or New England, this might have been my world. Road never suited me, enduro didn’t exist yet. I raced mountain bikes, but looked curiously at this sport that requires to carrying a bike on your back.

Who even does that? Lots of people, as it turns out. A good cyclocross racer is an alchemist at play. Fearless speed, bottomless aerobic capacity, acrobatic bike and running skills: It all seems like some kind of magic.

Aug 28

the map

He drew me a map, the paper torn from my notebook. We stood over the hood of his white truck, a diesel converted by hand to run on vegetable oil.

We were stopped by the side of a road running through the cow pastures. The grass gleamed green from the winter’s rains. Only the wind interrupted the silence. The fence lines marched straight until they disappeared over the crest of the hill.

There’s a climb here, he said. Then you descend a short ways and turn left. His pen traced out the switchbacks of the twisting descent and the sharp bend of the turn. In small tidy print, he spelled out the names of the roads. After the schoolhouse, you turn right.

We had driven the length of the bay. The San Andreas fault runs down the middle and pushes it wider all the time. The west side is moving, slowly inexorably, north.

As we drove he pointed out the landmarks. Here was the boatyard owned by his neighbor. Next came the oyster fisherman. There was the farmhouse dating back five generations.

The wind funnels through the narrow bay pushing up whitecaps and propelling kitesurfers. It’s no place for the faint of heart. Sharks breed in the protected water. He told me a story about bumping into a giant white in a very small boat. They only come in one size, the sharks. They’re only ever giant.

I tucked the map in the front of my bibshorts and followed the fence lines to the first winding climb. The pavement felt heavy, but I had a tailwind. When my phone stopped working, it felt perfectly right. I’d reached the end of the grid, a place where the world was as it always was. I had my precious map, I was off to seek treasure.

Jan 11

big thursday

I cruise down the beach and pass through a parking lot littered with sand and kelp, the sure signs of a high tide and a big swell. Normally, there aren’t really even waves on this part of the beach. I look out to overhead sets, brown with churned up sand. Even from the beach, I can see how the long period swell is moving water deep beneath the surface. It’s anything but playful.

A pair of guys walk down the beach carrying Wavestorms under their arms. I laugh. Where there’s a wave, there’s a Wavestorm. They look excited and optimistic. The Harvest buoy off Point Conception reads 23.3ft, 18 seconds, 283 degrees. The ocean laughs at your optimism.

“We are all the idiots,” my friend writes in a text. “We just don’t know it until our luck runs out.”

the fabulous and ridiculous adventures of surfline man

Hapless yet determined, annoying yet impossible to hate, Surfline Man loves surfing more than anything else in life. He reads every last forecast like it’s truth and he spends so many hours thinking about surfing. More, in fact, than he spends actually doing it. Surfline Man knows what’s up, and has many opinions which he’ll share with you at length. But he’s also the most stoked guy you’ll ever meet. Surfing, it’s like his favorite thing!

Yes, of course he drives a Sprinter van. And yes, he bought the red fins, because the looked cool, not because they would actually work with his board. He can’t help but buy every latest and greatest piece of gear in the hope that somehow this one thing will make his life complete. You see how it is.

Here is the full archive of Surfline Man’s fabulous and ridiculous adventures over at Beachgrit, where he was born and continues to live out his days.

***

It all began one fateful day: I did not know it was a Surfline Day, when untold hordes come crawling out from every nook and cranny. There is surf today! Everyone go surfing! Omg! And, obediently, Surfline Man and all his besties go surfing. — Surfline Man: An Anthropological Study