Paul Lovass Topanga Beach Experience Brass Tacks Press: Los Angeles, CA, 2011, 45 pp., 1960s, 1948
Learning to Surf
[p. 1] I was born in Culver City, California in 1948, about 5 miles from the beach.
My older brother Lad surfed. He took me out a couple of times when I was 11. I wasn't very good, I'd catch a wave and just fall off. But to sit out in the water and watch these other surfers go by . . . oh, it was exciting.
Now around this time, Hollywood came out with a movie called Gidget, starring Sandra Dee as Gidget. James Darren was Moondoggie, and Cliff Robertson as the Kahuna. It was about this girl learning to surf all summer and hanging out at the beach. In the movie, the guys surfed because it was the greatest thing to do, and partied all the time, and met girls on the beach. That's what they lived for, having a good time. When you saw the movie, you wanted to do the exact same thing.
Before Gidget, there were maybe 500 surfers in California. Afterwards, there were 25,000. It really changed everything. The whole culture came in: surf music, (The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Dick Dale), surf shops, surf movies, skateboarding. Everyone wanted to be a surfer, or look like a surfer. They dressed a certain way. Bleached their hair. Wore cord Levis, J.C. Penny Towncraft white T-shirts, wool Pendleton long-sleeves, Jack Purcell smiley tennis shoes, and St. Christopher's medals.
My buddies, Don, Bert, and Ron got into it too. We made bicycle trailers to carry our surfboards out of 2 x 4s and old wagon wheels. We'd get up at four in the morning and bike to the beaches in Santa Monica because it took about two hours from where we lived. On the weekends, my mom would drive us in her Rambler station wagon, and pick us up late in the afternoon. She was great about doing this.
We'd be in the water for 4-5 hours at the Pacific Ocean Park Pier, one of the only places where you could surf all day. In the rest of Santa Monica, the life guards [p. 2] wouldn't let you surf after 10. When the surf was no good, we'd go under the pier to a catwalk, sneak into the amusement park and ride the roller coasters . . .