Friday, August 29, 2025

1930s San Diego

Aloha and Welcome to this chapter in the LEGENDARY SURFERS collection on surfing in San Diego, California, during the 1930s.




To read about San Diego's earliest surfing history, that lead up to the 1930s, please go to:

https://legendary-surfers.blogspot.com/2018/05/san-diego-surfing-1910s-1960s.html



Early surfers in San Diego were mostly lifeguards for whom wave riding was a pastime, not a dedicated activity. They were lifeguards first, surfing on heavy redwood boards modeled after the Hawaiian alaia, and greatly influenced by Duke Kahanamoku and George Freeth. Notable in the beginning were Ralph Noisat, Charlie Wright and Gilbert “Gil” Duran, riding mostly in Coronado and La Jolla.

Surfing had been a rarity in the 1910s and ‘20s. What boards there were weighed 80-100 pounds and were generally stored in lifeguard stations or boathouses. In comparison, bodysurfing and prone riding on shorter “bellyboards” were far more popular than stand-up surfing.

By the late 1920s, wave riding on solid wooden boards began to grow in the San Diego area, mostly due to contact with both Los Angeles area surfers and Hawaiian surfers – including members of Hui Nalu and the Outrigger Canoe Club – sometimes surfing San Diego for short times while visiting or working.

Also, surfboards improved slightly with the introduction of lighter redwood.

Surf spots like La Jolla Shores, Pacific Beach, and Coronado developed reputations for rideable waves.

In 1928, Emil Sigler (1910-2011) moved to Mission Beach and soon became San Diego’s most influential waterman of the 1930s. Unfortunately, his influence and accomplishments remained little known throughout his life. It was only in his last decade that his key role in San Diego’s growth and development became known to the wider world, thanks to David Aguirre and his book Waterman’s Eye, published in 2008.

After arriving in Mission Beach at age 18, Sigler discovered a surfboard near the Mission Beach lifeguard station. “It was two pieces of thick pine, bolted together. And it had an iron tip,” recalled Sigler in 2006, at age 96. He found out that it belonged to early San Diego surfing pioneer Charlie Wright. When Sigler tracked Wright down and asked if he could use the board, Wright told him he could use it as much as he wanted. “Just put it back where you found it. Lean it against the seawall.”

Born in San Francisco, Sigler had wanted to become a fisherman, and since school didn't interest him, he often ditched classes to hang out at the Fleischacker Pool. Some of the pool's lifeguards were Hawaiian, and Sigler says one day during an outing to the beach they gave him a couple of rides on their boards. That triggered his interest in surfing.

When Sigler’s family moved to Southern California and Queenstown Court, Mission Beach, he discovered that Charlie Wright’s board was similar to the Hawaiians' boards that he had ridden up north, off San Francisco beaches. But, Wright's 125-pound board “was so heavy, it was steady, real steady,” Sigler said. “It was a lot more steady than the other boards later on.” But, because it was so heavy, a rider couldn't turn in the water. Additionally, the varnish was so worn “you had to be careful you didn't get any splinters.”

Charlie Wright warned Sigler away from surfing at Ocean Beach, claiming that the outflow from Mission Bay, which at that time streamed under a bridge rather than through the present channel, could be tricky. “You could get knocked out or something, and the tide'll take you out,” Sigler recalls Wright saying.

One day while jogging on the beach, Sigler noticed a surf spot that looked promising. At the north end of Pacific Beach, just south of Pacific Beach Point, the waves seemed particularly well formed. The board was too heavy for Sigler to carry that distance, so he hauled it aboard a ten-foot wooden dory and rowed north from Mission Beach. He unloaded Wright's board at the beach that's now known as Tourmaline and caught some good waves. He never saw anyone else surf there for years. Sigler is generally considered to be the first to discover Tourmaline as a surf spot.

Emil Sigler became the San Diego area’s first serious local surfer. Some of his younger contemporaries disagreed, though. One local surfer, Lloyd Baker, said Sigler “surfed a little bit, but he was not very agile. Not that he wasn't strong and not that he couldn't have become a better surfer, but he and Don Pritchard and Dempsey Holder (two other early surfers) were never, ever stylists. They went out and tried, but when they got up it was like you never thought they were going to last for more than 20 feet before they fell off or something.”

According to Baker, he and his pal Dorian Paskowitz and a handful of other teenagers from Point Loma and La Jolla were the first true San Diego surfers.

Born in San Diego, Baker and his family moved around California in his early childhood, but in 1934, when Lloyd was 13, they settled into a house at Portsmouth Court in Mission Beach. Dorian Paskowitz lived a couple of blocks away. In the years that followed, “We went to school every day together,” Baker says. “We swam in the morning before school. We ran together. We dated together. We did everything together.”

Their school was Point Loma High, which they reached by riding the streetcar that ran south on Mission Boulevard and over the bridge to Ocean Beach. That bridge was later torn down when the Mission Bay jetty was created. "On the other side of the bridge, we'd get off and take a bus up to school."

And school was where, in their sophomore year, they built their first paddleboards.

Paddleboards had been invented in the late 1920s by Wisconsin native Tom Blake who had found his way to Hawaii and become fascinated by the ancient Hawaiian boards in Honolulu's Bishop Museum. In an attempt to devise something that would work like the old planks but be lighter, he had come up with a design that was essentially a surfboard-shaped hollow box. Dubbed a cigar box or a kook box, paddleboards became popular with lifeguards for rescue work, but they could also be used to ride waves. Baker and Paskowitz copied this design and learned to stand up on the boards in the surf that sometimes formed at the entrance to Mission Bay. “Those boards probably lasted a year, year and a half,” Baker estimated.

Although nearly half as heavy as the boards they had been riding, Blake hollow boards were unwieldy and "were a pain in the ass, because as soon as they got just a little warped or they got in the sunshine or whatever, why, they started leaking," Baker says. When the era's best Californian surfer, Pete Peterson, moved to San Diego and got a job at the Mission Beach Plunge, he brought with him a couple of square-tailed solid-wood Hawaiian boards. These were studied by the locals with interest, as they realized their options on board designs were increasing.

Redwood/Balsas expanded the options even further.

By the mid-1930s, Los Angeles-based manufacturer of prefabricated homes Pacific Systems Homes had diversified and started to build surfboards as a sideline. Although the company used solid redwood at first, it later began importing lightweight balsa from South America for use in both home-building and surfboards. 

The balsa "was beautiful stuff!" Baker recalled. "They had it all milled, and it was very pretty." But a surfer couldn't simply order a finished board. He had to request that a block of wood be manufactured to the shape and dimensions he specified. "They'd put it together in any configuration you want," Baker says. "You could actually go through their bins and pick out the pieces you were going to have them glue up." Some pieces were harder, some softer; they also varied in weight.

"You could pick them out so the board balanced. You'd pick out redwood pieces with pretty grains of wood." If you wanted a stringer of redwood glued down the middle of the board to stiffen it or along the sides (the rails) or tip (the nose) to protect the softer wood, you could order that too. You drove up to L.A. to pick up your order, then took it home, where with woodworking tools you shaped the simple geometry into a board that planed over water with power and speed. Or if you had a friend who was good at shaping, you might press him into service.

Baker was one of those who became known for his skill at shaping Pacific Systems Homes boards. For a few years in the late 1930s, he worked on probably 40 or 50 boards; boards for Paskowitz and for the small gang of Ocean Beach and La Jolla boys who had started surfing, as well as others. He did it for free. "We were happy to do the work and pass the board on to somebody that would use it." Because they were lighter, weighing 45 to 65 pounds, the balsa/redwood boards were more responsive in the water, and with the addition of a fin (introduced by Tom Blake in 1935), they became more maneuverable.

Kimball Daun, one of the Ocean Beach boys, doesn't remember when or where he met Lloyd Baker, but he says it didn't take long to realize they were kindred spirits. Born close to the ocean, Daun remembers wandering over to the water, unsupervised, when he was six or seven, and teaching himself to swim. Not long after that, he became friends with another kid named Skeeter Malcolm, who lived a few blocks away and shared his love of the ocean. By the time they were eight or nine, they were bodysurfing on "the big beach." They heard that Duke Kahanamoku had once surfed the Mission Bay channel back in the 1920s, and that piqued their interest in surfing with boards.

Their first attempt at following Duke's example involved a paddleboard owned by an older teenager named Bob Sterling. "He would take it out on the ocean, usually on calm days, and paddle round on it," Daun recalled, adding that Sterling would also lend his board to the younger two. Daun says he and Malcolm took it to an area of Ocean Beach where they didn’t have to worry about swimmers. They took turns pushing each other into the shore break, and while the nose would sometimes take a dive and the board come to an abrupt halt, at other times the board surged forward. Then whoever was on it would pop up into a crouch, balancing for a couple of seconds before tumbling off.

They couldn't steer it at all, but they had fun on Sterling's board, Daun says, until the day one of them caught a good-sized wave and nosed in hard enough to hit the bottom. "All of a sudden, the board was just sunk, which was unusual." When they got it onto the sand, they realized "four feet of the plywood bottom of the board had peeled off and was just hanging under it. We thought, 'Oh my God, this is ruined.'”

Sterling was a big guy and they dreaded the thought of what his reaction might be. So, they loaded the busted board on a wagon and hauled it to Daun's house. "I said, 'Well, we gotta glue it,' but we didn't have any glue. So we went on Green Street, which was the next block over, and dug the tar out of the cracks in the street. We put it in a can, melted it, and poured the seam all the way around. We scraped off the excess and nailed it down with the tar in there. When we got finished, you could see the black here and there." It seemed to hold, though, and Daun and Malcolm never pressed their luck by borrowing the board again.

A bit of larceny enabled them to get a board of their own. This happened one night when the boys were walking home from high school. "Out around Coronado Avenue, someone was building a new house," Daun recalled. On the building site, they spotted "six magnificent redwood boards that they were using for the window frames. They were about 12 feet long. No one was around, and in those days no one stole anything."

Daun and Malcolm hoisted the boards on their shoulders and headed down the hill for the home of a friend who had a big basement. He refused to harbor their plunder, so they continued on to Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. "The boards would bounce because of the distance between us. We were walking along, and a couple of Ocean Beach cops drove around the corner, and oh my God, I thought we were going to die right there. I said, 'Don't look, don't look, don't look!' " The police slowed down but didn't stop the boys, who reached the safety of the garage adjoining the café and barbershop on Voltaire operated by Malcolm's parents.

Later, "Skeeter told his dad that my father had bought the wood, and I told my dad that his father had bought it," Daun says. The only problem with this was that "when my dad went down to get a haircut, one of us always had to be in the damn barbershop to keep the talk away from the surfboard."

Somehow that worked. Three-quarters of an inch thick, the boards were far too thin to be made into a solid wooden surfboard, so Daun and Malcolm set about building another box with cross-members. For this they needed screws and plywood, which cost little – but more than they had.

"But Skeeter got 20 cents a day for lunch money, which was unheard of for me," Daun says. "I had my mom make three sandwiches for me, and I'd take two and give Skeeter one. That way he could save his lunch money." They earned a bit more from chores. "We finally got the board built, and at 11 feet long, it was slow in turning, just like all big boards. But for a hollow board made at minimal expense, it was easy to catch waves."

Daun says he and Malcolm later graduated to boards fabricated by Pacific Systems Homes; balsa/redwood blanks shaped by Lloyd Baker. So did three other Ocean Beach friends of theirs.

Many of their surf sessions were impromptu. Baker could look out from his music-appreciation class and assess the surf conditions. If the day looked good, he would sweep through the building, poking his head into the other boys' classrooms and catching their attention. They'd get up and leave. Someone always had an old Model A or some other vehicle they could pile into. "The teachers didn't like it," Daun acknowledges. "But that's how much we were into surfing." Every minute of their waking lives, they were either doing it or thinking about doing it.

The weight of the boards limited the choices of where these first hardcore surfers surfed. "See, in those days, those boards were nose-heavy," explains Bill "Hadji" Hein, who by the late 1930s had joined the small band of regulars at Mission Beach. Because of the boards' tendency to "pearl" (or plunge beneath the water), "You had to be selective in where you could go. You had to have a wave at least four to five feet high, and it had to have slope in front of it, not a curl," he said. In San Diego County, the most reliable places to find those conditions were San Onofre, Windansea (in La Jolla), Pacific Beach Point, Sunset Cliffs (south of OB), and Imperial Beach.

Yes, this was the beginning of San Onofre’s golden era. Sometimes compared to Waikiki in Hawaii, San Onofre began luring Southern California surfers as early as 1934, a surfer named Bob Sides “discovered” it.

San Onofre soon became known not only for its waves, but its parties, too. According to Emil Sigler, the location's remoteness encouraged some at the all-male gatherings there, to swim naked. This was at a time when men wore bathing suits that covered them from neck to knee.

Soon, the Pacific Coast Surfriding Championships – the first organized surfing contest in the world, at that point; having begun in 1928 – were being held there. The competitions were not fierce, Jane Schmauss, the director of the California Surf Museum in Oceanside, noted. "Those guys didn't care a feather or a fig about who was the best surfer." But they were curious about each other's boards and techniques, and the San Onofre gatherings – organized or not – provided an opportunity to compare notes. "We had campfires and luaus," Hadji Hein recalls. "It was the Hawaiian Islands spirit."

San Onofre was too far away for most surfers, excepting on the weekends. So, San Diego surfers surfed other breaks more often; like Tijuana Sloughs when it was up, Mission Beach, Sunset Cliffs, Windansea, Pacific Beach Point and Tourmaline.

Imperial Beach – near Tijuana Sloughs – was just an average beach break. But in the winter, in the late 1930s, when the surf came up at Tijuana Sloughs, "Then [Imperial Beach lifeguard] Dempsey [Holder] would call, and we'd go down." It might happen only three times a year, Baker recalled, "usually for three to four days. Then there wouldn't be any other surf for a month or so. And the beach surf [in Imperial Beach] wasn't any different than the beach surf at Mission Beach or anywhere else."

Waves off Sunset Cliffs were excellent year-round, although access to them wasn't easy. A fellow could make the long paddle south from Ocean Beach or approach from the cliff top or the Theosophical Society. "We used to take our surfboards and just leave 'em in the brush and carry them down the little trail and surf there day in, day out," Baker says.

At Windansea, the reef causes the swell to break abruptly, creating powerful waves that often have a tubular shape. But no one rode Windansea until 1937. That year, a young glider pilot named Woody Brown, riding a homemade hollow board, and a handful of other young men from La Jolla "found great surf at Bird Rock and Pacific Beach Point, where we rode 20-foot waves, taking off right on the edge of the kelp," Brown recalled in a 2000 Surfer's Journal article. He and his buddies then ventured out at Windansea. After that, Ocean and Mission Beach surfers began joining them, at least on occasion.

Most, however, considered Pacific Beach Point "the absolute best for us," according to Kimball Daun. "You always had a long right slide. When the surf was really big, you could actually ride all the way over to Tourmaline." As at Sunset Cliffs, access to the water off the headland wasn't easy. "You had to drive up La Jolla Boulevard and jump the curb," Hadji Hein recalls. Japanese-American farmers were growing fruits and vegetables on the bluff, and the surfers would drive through an opening in their fence and down a mud road leading south to a canyon. They'd park their jalopies there and walk the rest of the way to the beach. "There were beautiful oleander trees all along there," Hein recalled. The surfers would pick the blossoms, bring them home to their girlfriends, and they would make leis. "That was the spirit we had in those days. We'd play Hawaiian music and all that sort of thing."

One way at least a few kids reached Tourmaline Beach was via a City of San Diego lifeguard truck. By 1935, Emil Sigler had overcome the handicap of being blind in his right eye (the result of an early childhood accident) to come in second on the city's lifeguard-screening exam. He wound up working at the Mission Beach lifeguard station, which had an old Ford Model A. Sigler says he would often rise early and load up a couple of the local kids like Baker and Paskowitz with their boards. He would drive north along the sand, going under Crystal Pier, to Tourmaline Beach. The group would surf, then return in time for Sigler to start his work shift by 9:30 a.m.

An incident with that truck resulted in the Ocean Beach boys getting their group nickname. As Kimball Daun recalled it, Sigler had driven up to Crystal Pier and stopped to chat with Daun, Malcolm, and a couple of their Ocean Beach friends. When Sigler started the engine to drive back to the lifeguard station, "Well, Skeeter and I were going to have to walk down to Old Mission Beach," about a mile south of the pier. "So we jumped on the back of the truck. It had handles to hold on to. When we did that, the truck bottomed out." Sigler yelled at them. "So we jumped off and Emil worked the thing out of the sand, then we'd jump on again. Pretty soon it was 'You goddamned vandals!' He picked up big rocks and started flinging them at us! That was the first time we were called the Vandals."

The friends now calling themselves The Vandals were not a surf club, just guys who surfed together. But, these Mission Beach surfers formed the first formal association of local wave riders around 1938, with the support of a city councilman named Fred Simpson. Lloyd Baker was the first president, and the group held meetings in a little room on the north end of the bathhouse that was located at the Mission Beach seawall, near Queenstown Court. But the club "dropped into oblivion when the war came along," says Hadji Hein, who was one of the first members. "Everybody had to go into the service, and it just went kaput."

As for Emil Sigler, he remained stateside probably due to his eye injury. At some point in the 1930s, he and Bill Rumsey rowed to and from Catalina Island, becoming the first two to do so. There are other Sigler stories, too, but they’re lost in the deaths of those who knew him who could recall.

What we do know is that in addition to lifeguarding, Sigler became recognized as a professional diver in search and rescue. After his lifeguarding years, he supported his family as a commercial fisherman, eventually owning and operating his own fishing vessel and plying the West Coastal waters between Baja and Alaska.

Towards the end of his long life (101 years), he finally got the recognition that he deserved when he was featured in Waterman’s Eye, his biography by David Aguirre (2008). Unfortunately, it is long out-of-print.

Emil Sigler’s honors include: 2004: Pioneer Waterman Award from the Surfrider Foundation; 2006: Honoree at the California Surf Museum; 2008: Subject of the biography Waterman’s Eye; and 2011: Finalist for "Best Biography Award."

Obituary reflections remembered Emil as a humble, strong, and inspirational figure who helped shape the surf culture and water safety identity of San Diego beaches.



Links

Emil Sigler Obituary: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2011/10/23/emil-sigler-pure-waterman-dies-at-101/



Notes

Unless otherwise indicated, most all quotes are from “90 Years of Curl” by Jeannette De Wyze for the San Diego Reader, December 14, 2006.



Emil Sigler, Mission Beach
San Diego Lifeguard Collection



Photo taken in 1935 of Emil Sigler, Don Pritchard, Dorian Doc Paskowitz and Bill "Hadji Hein surfing Tourmaline.
Photo from Emil's private collection "Waterman's Eye”


Emil Sigler
San Diego Lifeguard Collection


Lifeguards Emil Sigler, left, and Bill Rumsey after they completed a 200 mile dory trip from San Diego, up the coast and over to Catalina Island in the 1934.
Photo/San Diego Lifeguard Collection

Friday, August 15, 2025

Tom Curren (1964-present )

"Santa Barbara-native Tom Curren championed athleticism in surfing with his emergence on the ASP World Tour in 1983. Highly regarded for his humility and integrity, Curren has served as one of the most inspirational figures in the surfing community. On the 25th anniversary year of his film Searching for Tom Curren, Tom sits down with Jamie Brisick [in Season 2, Episode 8 of The Surfer's Journal's Soundings series] to talk about his infamous double-pump bottom turn, music, and releasing himself from the confines of competition after winning back-to-back world titles."

https://youtu.be/K-nC3zeLmOo

Tom Curren
Photo by Tom Servais


Sunday, August 10, 2025

Long Beach, California

Aloha and Welcome to a short look at Long Beach, California, in the mid-1930s.


Long Beach, California?! Yes, before World War II and before the breakwater was extended, Long Beach had decent waves and surfing contests were held there regularly. Doc Ball and the Palos Verdes Surfing Club swore that on the right swell, Long Beach's Flood Control was one of the best breaks in Southern California.



Flood Control, mid-to-late 1930s

Photo by Doc Ball




A review of Long Beach newspapers during the mid-to-late 1930s tells Long Beach's story:


In summer 1933, at one of the most popular surf beaches at the time – Long Beach – City Ordinance No. C-1195 went into effect, restricting surfboard riders to certain areas of the beach. If surfers failed to obey, it was possible that they could be fined $500 and put in jail for six months. The June 16th edition of the Press-Telegram gave the lowdown:


“An emergency ordinance, proposed by the Municipal Lifeguards… [has] become City Ordinance No. C-1195. Henceforth, timorous bathers need not dive in terror to the bottom of the sea in hope of avoiding being cut in twain by a speeding Hawaiian surfboard. The surfboard riders either will mind the new P’s and Q’s or will go to jail.


“Certain lanes of the surf will be reserved for bathing, and other lanes will be legal highways for riders of the booming wave. The maximum penalty for offense is a fine of $500, six months in jail, or both.”[39]


At the beginning of the following summer, the Long Beach Press-Telegram declared that “Surf-Riding” was now a “Popular Sport.”


“For beginners there are always plenty of little crumble waves, easy to ride on a two-bit surfboard. The experts ignore such ripples and ignore such surfboards; they ride a ‘comber’ or none at all, and they use either an Hawaiian board or none at all.


“There are several approved methods of wave riding. The simplest for the beginner is to repose oneself upon a thin five-foot plank and to place oneself, plant and all in the path of a wave. With fair luck the wave then will carry one, plank and all, on a speedy scenic voyage to the beach.


“The second variety of wave riding in the board class is much more spectacular. It requires strength, courage and skill. Furthermore, the participant may crack his skull or break his neck, before reaching the safe degree of expertness. The rider paddles seaward on a surfboard nearly twice his own length and equal to his own weight. Away out in the breaker line he about-faces and waits for a ‘big one.’ Pretty soon a toppling wall of green sea water approaches. The rider paddles; the wall scoops him up, board and all, almost to the point where board and rider would spill. Precariously he rights the board and as it is driven shoreward in front of the breaker’s crest he stands upright, aloof, conqueror of board and breaker. Or else, with a precipitous and ungraceful leap, he loses balance and disappears in the water.


“Of body surfing, as the lifeguards call it, there are two varieties. In one, the arms are extended beachward while the rider moves along in the lather of a wave. This type is juvenile; this type is taboo among the tanned gentry of many beach seasons. They prefer the second and more spectacular way of body surfing.


“This latter way is to clamp the arms against the sides, push the shoulders forward and stick the head down, and to ride the wave face-downward. The bathers who survive the rigors of learning this are in heavy surf become expert at ‘taking the drop’ with a crashing breaker and riding part and parcel with it until it casts itself upon the sand. Occasionally on the swift shoreward voyage they take a breath by raising the head, with jaw pugnaciously forward; barracuda-fashion.


“The experts in advanced surf riding have a right to strut on the beach. They have challenged the ocean’s mightiest breakers and have looked Old Man Neptune squarely in the eye.”[40]


Two years later, in September 1936, the Long Beach Press-Telegram featured a surfer by the name of Steve Skinner who assured the newspaper’s reporter that the “Thrilling Sport of Riding Surf” is “Easy to Master.”


“‘Hold the surf board in a horizontal position, the end against the middle of your body. Turn a little cornerwise to the breakers, so that you can see the rolling water over your shoulder. When the wave gets to you make a swing straight for the shore. Lay the board flat on the water and slip both hands to the center of the board at full arms length.’


“It’s Stephen ‘Steve’ Skinner speaking, and Steve should know. He not only rides a surfboard himself, but has taught a thousands others to do the same. Friendly, smiling and burned a mahogany color by the sun, Steve spends his spare time between Silver Spray Pier and Rainbow Pier swimming, riding a surf board, teaching others to ride, chatting with tourists. He is a one-man Chamber of Commerce, teaching enjoyment of water sports and making friends for the city.


“‘When I first came to the coast from Wichita, Kansas, fourteen years ago I didn’t know how to ride a surf board,’ he recalls. ‘I had a friend who did. I would ask him how he did it. ‘Just like this,’ he would say, and he would ride in with the wave and I couldn’t see what he did. I asked Henry B. Marshall, the umbrella man, how to ride a surfboard. He showed me the way I now teach others. I went out and rode in. It’s simple when you know exactly what to do, and riding in the first time is the greatest thrill in your life. I’ve had tourists come up to me on the beach and say: “I remember you! You taught me to ride a surfboard six years ago” or “You taught me to ride a surf board. Now will you teach my wife and children?” I’m always glad to do it. I’ll go back in the surf any time to teach anyone how to ride a surf board.’”[41]


In 1937, what Long Beach lifeguards and city fathers had feared might happen finally did, only it was not an injury caused to a bather by a surfer but rather self-inflicted upon the wave rider. The Press-Telegram reported: “Woman, Hurt by Surfboard July 5, Dies of Injury: Fatality First of Kind Ever Recorded in History of Beach.”


“Mrs. Phyllis Hines, 19, whose riding of breakers here July 5 came to an abrupt and painful stop when her own surfboard jabbed her in the abdomen. She died last night from effects of the blow.


“While the autopsy surgeon’s report was awaited today, lifeguards here said that the young woman’s death was the first surfboard fatality of which they have heard. ‘Sometimes a bather has received an injury from a surfboard, usually because he tried to lie too far forward on the board, forcing it into a nose dive under water,” Lieutenant Henry P. Coleman of the Municipal Lifeguards said this morning. ‘Usually the injury is only a bruise or a bump on the head.’ A city ordinance requires surfboard riders to stay away from the surf immediately in front of lifeguard stations, where the boards might imperil swimmers.


“Police reports of the accident to Mrs. Hines indicate that a wave drove her own surfboard against her while she was in the surf with hundreds of other bathers.”[42]


The following year, the local paper gave a rundown of contest results from the “Southern California surfboard relay championship”:


“Surfboard riding, ancient sport of South Sea Islanders, gave a crowd of several thousand beach visitors a thrilling show here yesterday in Southern California championship events in the Salute to the States water circus beside Rainbow Pier.


“More than thirty expert surfers competed in the races. They represented surfing clubs of several beach cities. Their spectacular rides and frequent spills proved to be the most popular entertainment on the 4 1/2-hour water circus program. Five husky swimmers of the Manhattan Beach Surfing Club won the Southern California surfboard relay championship from the Hermosa Beach Surfing Club. The Venice Paddleboard Club finished third. Each member of a competing team raced from the beach to a marker a quarter-mile offshore and returned to the beach riding on a breaker, passing his surfboard to the next member of his team.” [43]


Following this regional paddleboard contest, Long Beach hosted the first National Surfing and Paddleboard Championships on Sunday, November 13, 1938. It was the first countrywide paddleboard title event held in the United States. More than 140 of America’s finest surfers competed for the mammoth silver trophy presented to the winning team and for the gold trophies presented to individual winners.


The main event started with a half-mile paddleboard race through the surf. Women as well as men competed. It was broadcast live over radio station KFOX while 20,000 people crowded onto Rainbow and Silver Spray piers and the beach in front of the Pike to view 140 competitors. Pete Peterson and Mary Ann Hawkins of the Del Mar Surfing Club won in the national paddleboard division.


In conjunction with the paddle boarding event, there was also a surfing competition scheduled. However, lack of heavy surf postponed the surf contest until December 11, 1938. Not wanting to disappoint the crowd who had come to see them perform and the radio audience who were listening, the surfers held a trial open surfing event, with John Olson of Long Beach winning the competition, James McGrew of Beverly Hills placing second and Denny Watson of Venice third.[44]


“Preston Peterson and Miss Mary Ann Hawkins of Del Mar Surfing Club yesterday were crowned national paddle board champions,” reported the Long Beach Press-Telegram, “in the first annual national surfing and paddle board contest at Long Beach. Competing were 140 members of twelve organizations.


“Lack of a heavy surf made necessary a postponement of competition in the surf riding events and the highly anticipated initial interclub clash for possession of the Dick Loynes perpetual team trophy until December 11.


“Riding the small waves, John Olson of Long Beach won the open surfing event with James McGrew of Beverly Hills second and Denny Watson of Venice third. In the most thrilling event of the day, a five-man team from the Venice Surfriding Club, nosed out the Manhattan Club at the finish of a relay event entered also by Long Beach and the Surfriders.” [45]


40,000 onlookers watched sixty-five surfers compete in team and individual competitions on that cold December day in 1938. The Santa Ana Band led the participants, whose boards ranged in length from eleven to eighteen feet, to the edge of the surf between Rainbow and Silver Spray Piers where the water temperature was 52 degrees. Newsreel, magazine and newspaper photographers were also there taking pictures of the event.


The Press-Telegram reported on the following day:


“Forty thousand onlookers yesterday watched one of the most thrilling aquatic demonstrations ever staged when nature provided thundering rollers for the third annual Mid-winter Swim coupled with the National Surfing Champions.


“Postponed from a month ago, the National Surfing Championships provided the greatest action, with sixty-five surf riders participating. The Manhattan Surfing Club won the 44-inch silver perpetual team cup. The Venice Surfing Club placed second, Santa Monica third, Palos Verdes Surfriders Club fourth, and the Del Mar Club fifth. The open surfing championship was won by Arthur Horner of Venice, with Jim Kerwin of Manhattan Beach coming in second, and Don Campbell also of Manhattan Beach third. Medals were given to Chuck Allen, Palos Verdes, fourth place; Tom Ehlers, Manhattan Beach, fifth place; Kenneth Beck, Venice, sixth; Bob Reinhard and John Lind of Long Beach who placed seventh and eighth.”[46]


So successful was this first national Surfing and Paddleboard Championships, a second was held the following year off Rainbow Pier – again during the winter swell season – on December 3, 1939.


“A three-man team representing the Hermosa Beach Surfing Club yesterday won the Dick Loynes perpetual trophy emblematic of the national surfing championship in an event in the fog-shrouded waters off Rainbow Pier.


“Booming out of the fog blanket on the crests of curling breakers that saturated onlookers, the Hermosa Beach men nosed out the defending trophy holders of Manhattan Beach by 10 points. Venice Surfing Club was third and Long Beach, fourth. Gene Smith, member of the Hawaiian Surfing Club, which traveled here from the islands, competed alone against the teams after his two teammates A.C. Spohler and Jack May withdrew in the face of the unusual weather conditions. He finished fifth against the heavy odds.


“Individual surfing honors went to Long Beach Surfing Club members John Olsen who finished first, Alvin Bixler, second, and Bob Rhienhardt, fourth. Gene Smith of Hawaii came in third.” [47]


The second was the last. There would never again be another national surf contest held in Long Beach for two reasons: war and the breakwater. World War II broke out in Europe and it was not long before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was drawn into the war. The Long Beach breakwater was extended during the war when the U.S. Navy came to Terminal Island and made it their home. After the war, the surfers who returned from battle would find that there were no more waves in Long Beach to ride. The breakwater had seen to that. But love of surfing still continued, and shapers such as Ernest Guirey still made Long Beach their home.



ENDIT



For more about surfing at Long Beach in the 1930s:


Laylan Connelly, Orange County Register, April 23, 2023:

https://www.presstelegram.com/2023/04/21/long-beach-a-beach-town-without-waves-recognized-for-a-rich-surfing-history




FOOTNOTES


[39] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Surfboard Riders Must Watch Areas,” June 16, 1933.
[40] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Surf-Riding Now Popular Sport,” May 14, 1934.
[41] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Thrilling Sport of Riding Surf Easy to Master,” September 13. 1936.
[42] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Woman, Hurt by Surfboard July 5, Dies of Injury: Fatality First of Kind Ever Recorded in History of Beach,” July 14, 1937.
[43] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “States’ Celebrants Take to Surfboards, August 8, 1938.
[44] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Dozen Clubs in Surf Contests,” November 14, 1938.
[45] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Dozen Clubs in Surf Contests,” November 14, 1938.
[46] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Surfriders Watched By Big Crowd,” December 12, 1938.
[47] Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Surf Event Is Won By Hermosians,” December 4, 1939. This was the contest Tarzan had originally won entry to but had been initially denied. It would appear that he managed to be sent, after all, along with A.C. Spohler and Jack May. See chapter on Tarzan.