San Onofre Salute

San Onofre Salute

by Sam Bleakley

 California surf salute 1961 – photo Allan Grant

While we watch the world’s finest female and male shortboarders compete man-on-man in the WSL at Trestles, San Clemente, California, throwing their lightweight sticks around by constantly working the rails with uncanny timing and anticipation, it’s a good time to celebrate the anti-thesis to the high octane performance wave: San Onofre. Just south of Trestles, San Onofre is a kelp-groomed, cobble bottom peeler, rolling right and left, left and right, all the way to the rocky beach. The Point, Old Man’s and Dogpatch present a series of historic easy-to-ride waves that remain a beating heart of Southern Californian surf culture. The carpark scene is classic and possibly the friendliest place to rock-up in the surf-world. This is where you see old salts like Mickey Munoz, noseriding legend David Nuuihwa, Linda Benson, multiple World Longboard Champion Colin McPhillips, and the gregarious Baxter family (father son Jackie and Josh have been 1960s and ‘90s longboard heroes).

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s San Onofre was the most important place in the early development of a growing Californian surfing scene. Regulars like Tom Blake built palm-fond and grass shacks and lit fires at sundown while they played slack key guitars and rejoiced in the smooth peeling waves. San Onofre became ‘San O’ and a subculture sparked. In The Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships between 1938 and 1941, fifty contestants surfed together for two hours, scoring a point every time they connected a ride angling left from an outside to an inside buoy. Quite simply, long rides won the day. Pete Peterson was the stand-out.

San Onofre 1950 - photos Loomis Dean

Sixteen-year-old Kathy Kohner (the inspiration for the character Gidget) Malibu 1957 – photo Allan Grant

Malibu 1957 - photo Allan Grant

Malibu 1961 - photos Allan Grant

In the 1950s the Californian performance surfing epicentre shifted to more challenging waves at Malibu and Windansea. San O kept its soul, and would become more about surfing families than surfing fashions. The postwar boom of the sport offered a step over the final frontier towards the place of the setting sun, into the Pacific, signifying a new freedom, and offering a rogue identity. The subtext is clear – humans conquer death, or control the world where the sun sets. So the ‘dead’ Californian desert was brought to life through irrigation, and the sun was harnessed in a lifestyle of eternal light. But surfers were outsiders, agitators, who somehow instinctively knew the rules of nature and could openly call themselves ‘royalty,’ following what was preserved for kings and queens in Polynesia. They followed a different path to corporate America. Where the mainstream embraced the Hollywood myth of eternal daylight, by never wanting to drop into the underworld with the setting sun - and then became a cosmetic culture - surfers were prepared to take the drop. They craved adventure and danger, to tame the dangerous Pacific and remain on the fringe. Their collective initiation was the dark descent to the undersea in the now worn-out word ‘wipeout.’ But even surfing would be absorbed into the Californian mentality as it became heavily commercialised. A labour-intensive industry, using environmentally toxic materials, developed as the dark side feeding the light freedoms of ‘shooting the curl’, ‘walking the nose’ and ‘hanging ten’. But surfers in general still turned their backs on corporate California. While advertising and marketing persuaded the majority to look into the refrigerator for a cold beer within the confines of the domestic space, surfers had their backs turned to the land, looking out to sea for the next swell. And when it arrived, it was predictably perfect, mirroring the climate.

Laguna Beach 1988 with my Brian Bulkley just before heading to San Onofre 

Surfing in California in 1988 I remember the pungent smell of kelp drawn out by a searing sun as I waded into the pebble-bottom shallows at San Onofre. I was nine years old and I normally surfed with my dad pushing me into the waves at home in Cornwall, UK. At San O, I went solo, paddling out beyond the whitewater. I turned my head to shore. The morning fog had wholly burned off and dad’s face lit up. Fellow Cornishman and close family friend, Paul Holmes, had loaned me a 6’ 0” channel-bottomed board shaped by Hawaiian Brian Bulkley. To me, a gangly kid, it was perfectly crafted and totally ‘magic’. Paul was the then editor of Surfer magazine, considered ‘the Bible of the sport.’ He had an injured shoulder from a trip to Bali, and watched from the beach. Outback, Dad and I shared the ocean with pelicans and a host of locals. I saw the thick frown of an approaching set spoil the otherwise calm skin of the sea, paddled further out towards it, swung back around and stroked into that wave alone. It turned green, peaked, and as it broke I took off, angled and found trim. Groomed by the cobbles, the wave unfurled further than I could see. Light bounced back off the face, which turned to a wet glare. I rode its entire length, locked in the pocket. The feathering frown became a big smile, Hollywood-style, white teeth showing. Dad and Paul hooted proudly. That wave was a defining moment – I was finally a surfer. Paul gave me the board and I took it home to Cornwall. It set me up for life.

Years later when I returned to San O in 1998 it was not quite as I had remembered it on that formative wave, where I paddled alone into my first peeling beauty while my family was on an academic exchange in America. Of course, my eyes were a little more open - the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station that was built in 1968 no longer looked NASA-like, but scarred the wrinkled sandstone skin like a huge whitehead pimple. Army choppers flew overhead and I was shocked by the enormous military training ground, Camp Pendleton, right behind the beach. But I also felt the great sense of community that grew because of it. In 1952 San Onofre Surfing Club was formed purely to keep access alive when the Marines took so much of the nearby land. San O became a deeply symbolic and special place for so many surfers, with access solidified by the 1973 California State Parks system. The wave is so easy to ride that many learn here and there is a hard core of older locals who simply want a mellow time cruising on heavy longboards at the roiling peak called Old Man's. In 2008 San O hosted the World Longboard Championships. Perfect waves welled up in the kelp beds, spending their energy in long rights and lefts. In the busy, family orientated line-up the searing Santa Ana offshore winds blew away a sea haze, and eight-year-old girls shared rides with eighty-year-old grandmothers. 

When a huge explosion went off at Camp Pendleton, one regular commented: “That’s the sound of freedom for ya!” 

Wet glare hang ten at San Onofre in 2008 competing in the World Longboard Champs - photo Sylvain Cazenave