Filling the Gap Between Generations

It was good to be hip, young, tanned and tattooed Sunday at the Bluetorch Pro 2000 Surfing Championships at Huntington Beach Pier.

It was even better to have a skateboard and a puppy in your bag. Red hair? Great. Purple hair? Even better.

deviate industries. izone.polaroid.com. swivel fin. epitaph. nirve. bikes and boards. lethal skateboards.

The Bluetorch 2000 was a lower-case event. Capitalization didn’t count but capitalism did. Periods weren’t needed unless there was a dot.com to be advertised.

Lower-case products for sale, lower-case waves on display.

There was nothing to be done about the baby waves the Pacific Ocean offered Mick Campbell, the long-haired blond from Australia, and Sunny Garcia, the short-haired, brown-haired one from Honolulu.

The announcer tried and tried to get the crowd into it, get the crowd clapping and whooping and hollering when Campbell, 26, and Garcia, 30, paddled out for the final showdown in the men’s event.

For 35 minutes, the two floated more than they surfed. If you wanted to lie back and get a tan on your board, Sunday afternoon was a good time to do it. A baby could have stood up on a surfboard. I could have stood up on a surfboard. Not for long, but for a moment I’m sure. Campbell won, finally, but even then the applause was small, lower-case if you will.

Passive as the ocean was, it was still not possible to diminish the event.

Nothing could take away from the scene, the feeling you got by walking out of the parking garage on Main Street. A deep breath brought the smell of SPF 35.

A serious listen brought the sounds of people who were just happy to be holding hands with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Dads with spiked hair were carrying on their shoulders sons with spiked hair and sharing the secrets of wax and the perfect wave just as their own dads had done.

Don Craig is 51 years old--”52 next week,” he said--and he had just finished an exhibition contest in honor of Jack Haley, the surfing legend who died this year. Some of the more veteran surfers were invited out to the water in front of the crowd.

“You don’t hear applause much anymore,” Craig says. “This was fun.”

Craig is 6 feet 4. It used to be a good thing to be big and tall and strong in the old days. The boards were big and heavy and strong then. But the tricks weren’t so spectacular. Craig was taught to surf by his dad, Doug. He was a legend, too, Craig says.

Doug built Don’s first surfboard in the family garage. Then Doug built another and another. Don was hooked, and now he works for a company that distributes surfing equipment. Don also has a collection of surfing memorabilia. It is stored in two rooms of Don’s San Clemente home and it has just grown by one emotional piece.

A few weeks ago Don was at a surfing collector’s show. He stumbled across an old board, a balsa board. There was a drawing of a man surfing on the board. Don looked at his friend and said, “That used to be my board.” Don’s friend didn’t believe it, but Don proved his case, showed off the drawing. Don paid way more for the old board then he ever could have imagined 30 years ago when he sold it and moved up to a better board. “But I had to have this one back when I saw it,” Don said.

David Nuuhiwa surfed in the Jack Haley Memorial, too. Nuuhiwa has long, white hair and said he hadn’t surfed in a year before Sunday afternoon. Yet there he was, carving up the waves with strong turns. Nuuhiwa is 52 and works for Greyhound Expo, a company that sets up trade shows and is helping set up things for the Democratic Convention.

Craig said he surfs every day and laughed when he heard that Nuuhiwa hadn’t surfed in a year. “Don’t believe it,” Craig said. “He beat me all the time when we were younger and he would have beaten me today.”

L.T. Richards, who won this event when it was called something else back in 1963, something with lots of capital letters probably, is 60 years old now, and he surfed with Nuuhiwa and Craig too.

“This brings back lots of old memories,” Richards said. “I attended Jack Haley’s funeral and I was honored to be asked to be in the memorial. You know, I have a lot of great memories and I look around today and things seem the same. The equipment is different but the people are the same, the beach is the same.”

The beach is the same but it isn’t.

A man, a boy really, hands you a flyer for something called “air butt.” It is “the ultimate landing pad.” You can “protect your behind,” because “sometimes we take it to the max, and when we dump, our behinds take the brundt!” Oh, yes, and “one size fits all.” Hmm. A walk around the beach makes one wonder about that claim.

There is a booth for a company called Mars. Mars makes golf equipment. There is a set of golf clubs that have the heads painted black with red flames. “We want to make a more radical product,” a spokesman says. “We are looking for a different kind of golfer.” The surfing golfer. The golfer who doesn’t stay home and watch Tiger Woods on TV. The golfer who might need the “ultimate landing pad.”

Craig and Nuuhiwa and Richards all said that they are good friends with the young surfers. They all trade secrets and good wishes. That will never change.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected]