Surfing from Oceanside to I.B. – San Diego Reader

Posted On: August 15, 2020

Scripps beach. The first few waves are delicious. We slide across the water, belly down, whooping in delight.

I Finally Got Skip Frye to Make Me a Surfboard
This story begins ten years ago in the year 2000. My transition from Northern California to San Diego, specifically Pacific Beach, specifically one block up from a great surfing beach, was complete. The beach is called Tourmaline Surfing Park, and it was the first officially designated surf park in California. No swimmers or bodysurfers, and no Boogie boarders, either.
By Russell Goltz, Oct. 13, 2010

Skip Frye on a 50th-year gold board. Most of the PB regulars (everyone is in his 50s or older) have known Skip for 10 to 40 years,

Tammy Murray

Mushballs!
Contrary to popular belief, there is surf to be had off New York City. Just as one can purchase a bagel (or passable facsimile) in San Diego, one can ride a wave off Queens. It’s not the six-foot, sun-kissed, dolphin-dappled roller found on the West Coast, just as the California bagel is not a boiled, hand-stirred circle of dough imbibed with centuries of Talmudic mumblings as are those on the Upper West Side. But it is a wave. A short, choppy ride with a fat lip to get over — one the upper echelon of surfers can carve to pieces with fantastic results — but the thrill is there.
By Rosa Jurjevics, Feb. 16, 2006

Surfing Rockaway once put wave riders in serious legal danger. “They’d actually send the chopper in once in a while.”

This Selfish Pursuit
Caleb Crozier hates school. At ten years old, he’s already been deeply afflicted with the surf-bug, a potentially irreversible illness that destroys tolerance for time spent on fifth-grade fractions or capital cities. As far as Crozier’s concerned, the only activity worth pursuing when not surfing is skateboarding, and that holds a distant second place.
By Elizabeth Salaam, Oct. 3, 2012

Crozier family. Caleb: “My brother does steezie stuff on the longboard. I’m more of a radical, like, ripper-shredder.”

Photo by Howie Rosen

Surfer Girls
Some women have always surfed. Three hundred years ago, Hawaiians of both sexes rode the waves, and when the sport moved beyond the islands, when the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku in 1915 traveled to Australia to promote surfing, historians say his first pupil there was a 15-year-old girl, who passed on what she learned to others. Decades later, when surfing began to shape a Southern California subculture, most of the participants were men. But not all. Even in the 1950s, there were women in San Diego County who loved surfing so much it consumed them.
By Jeannette DeWyze, July 3, 2003

Margaret Wiesehan and Debbie Melville Beacham. “When Highway 52 finally went through all the way to Lakeside. All of a sudden, all those people from Lakeside and Santee had a straight shot to the Shores.”

Photo by Dave Allen

90 Years of Curl
There’s a good chance Ralph Noisat caught the first wave in San Diego. He died in 1980, and as he wasn’t a man to brag, his pioneering role might have been lost were it not for his board. He made it himself when he was a boy, and it was still in the Noisat family home in 1998 when Ralph’s daughter, Margie Chamberlain, was preparing to sell the Mission Hills residence. Chamberlain realized the heavy wooden board might have historic value, so she called the California Surf Museum in Oceanside. No one there knew anything about Noisat, but the museum staff was thrilled to accept the board when they heard what Chamberlain had to say about her father.
By Jeannette DeWyze, Dec. 14, 2006

California Surf Museum. According to Jane Schmauss, director of the California Surf Museum in Oceanside. “Those guys didn’t care about who was the best surfer. But they were curious about each other’s boards and techniques.”

Elemental, Little Fish
It is 8:00 a.m. The first day of surf camp. At 22, I’m the baby of the group — a surprise, but not unusual — the only recent postgrad among vacationing professionals. Adrenaline hums through my morning grog. I’m excited but dodgy, unsure if my Queens sea legs will carry me. The waves are different beasts here, I am certain, not the occasional, clumsy rollers of Far Rockaway. My on-again-off-again year of lugging my nine-foot monster onto the A train for an afternoon of paddling around may not suffice in a place where some kids can surf before they learn to read. But as the old adage goes, ready or not… Here I come.
By Rosa Jurjevics, Nov. 16, 2006