Surfing and Place

by Dina El Dessouky, Kurungabaa, Volume 1, Issue 3, December 2008 > Download PDF

[Image of Jack Moore, Sam Maugeri, and Bill Grace surfing Indicators, from Santa Cruz Public Library]

Two guys from the action sports network, ‘Fuel TV,’ are in town covering the Fourth Annual Pleasure Point Night Fighters St. Valentine’s Day Massacre Surf Shoot-Out. As one of eight women to enter the ‘no kook cords,’ pre-1980s boards contest, they politely ask if they can interview me for the event feature. The first two questions they ask focus directly on an issue that seems synonymous for many surfers with the name ‘Santa Cruz’: the ‘local.’

‘Which side do you represent?’

Uh, the transplant-side…somehow I bypassed the contest entry pre-requisite of ‘Locals Only.’ I suspect that my having a vagina – and there being only enough interested ladies to scrap together one motley ‘shlongboard’ (1) heat – helped seal my invitation to participate in this small community event. But, as with any genuine invitation, I appreciate and gladly accept the offer!

But that’s not how I answered.

‘Well, I’m not a real local, but I live on the Eastside.’

‘Ok – can you tell us more about the boundaries between the East and West sides?’

Hmmm…should I really be answering these questions as a recent addition to this place?

***

Our connections to places define and distinguish us. They connect and compel, create and complicate our relationships with one another. Being ‘born and raised’ and being able to trace that back in generational units is the basis for many real local identities: for asserting legitimate rights to a place, for being able to represent it, for feeling like an original part of it.

But who is really original to Santa Cruz? I wonder how many people – local, resident, or visitor – know the names and stories of Santa Cruz’s first people, and what they called this meeting of hillsides, forests, and coastline. Do their traditions live today, and do their descendants? Why is it so difficult to find out which indigenous tribes preside(d) over our now beloved home of ‘Santa Cruz’? (2)

A lot of people – from Santa Cruz or not – can’t answer these questions, but as Santa Cruz continues to grow, they can tell you that the issue of who and what is ‘local’ is still very important to maintaining a tight-knit community identity around town.

***

Everyday, before and after I paddle out to my most reliable break in the Pleasure Point neighborhood, I usually pass by a group of guys ranging from 17 to 40, sitting on the rail or on one of the few benches built into the bluff by East Cliff Drive, watching the waves, enjoying the sun, heckling each other or someone in the water, or just talking story. When I first moved to Santa Cruz, these guys intimidated the hell out of me. They looked tough, in their big groups of shirtless or hooded, periodically tattooed across the chest/shoulders/back, flat-billed hat-wearing male bodies. When I walked by to check the surf, they would make conversation with me or just stare quietly, and I was always very guarded in my responses, and cautious in the degree of my eye contact. The sensational stories that I’d heard about locals going ‘ape-shit’ on you for dropping in on them (or for questioning their right to drop in on you!) hold some validity – but I have to admit that under extenuating circumstances that usually involve fair weather and insincere, unfamiliar faces, I too am tempted to snap on the perpetrators. Over time, these generally tall tales gave way to new insights: these guys love the Point. They don’t just spend time on the cliff to intimidate non-locals or ward off potential wave-robbers; second not even to the rooms they sleep in every night, this cliff and these point breaks are their homes. The Point’s stretch of protected ocean constitutes metaphorical and literal backyards and front porches, a basis for getting to know each other better, for feeling like a part of something bigger, for knowing who you are. Establishing this is no easy or clean task, and feeling at home in your own community, place, and life demands intense commitments.

These challenges approach us in different ways; having migrated across oceans, continents, and regions in my own life, there are a few recurring questions that I am constantly working through to respectfully establish my own ‘place’ among places. What have you given back to the place(s) that give(s) so much to you? Have you taken the time to hear its many voices, and learn of its human and non-human histories before opening your own big mouth? Have you acknowledged your position in the histories and future of your place? For those histories that included the destruction or desecration of a place’s peoples, species, or resources, have you taken responsible steps to prevent that from happening again? How have you nourished and helped cultivate that place while respecting its right to keep strong its original essence and culture? Somewhere within the overwhelming, self-reflective web of questions and searching, your connection grows.

But who really wants to go through the daunting labor of figuring out who the hell you are and where you belong, confronting your complicity in someone else’s misery, and finding ways to protect your life and rights without totally screwing over someone else’s, to top it all off?

Fortunately, those of us who engage with the at once clear, nebulous, bounded and open ocean – through surfing, for example – have ample, customized opportunities to travel, search, change, and adapt through the natural and supernatural elements around us, whether we open ourselves to them or not. While beaches and breaks are grounded in local particularities, the ocean is also a fluid realm whose currents can push you from place to place, and whose dynamism reminds you that even as a small and vulnerable particle in a huge, unpredictable expanse, you can participate in a power balance. In the ocean, you are always part of something meaningful.

Thinking about it this way, the stakes are very heavy; lose the ocean and you risk losing yourself. But anyone who has been caught inside of a huge set knows that panicking rarely helps. Riki de Soto, founder of the Surfrider Foundation’s Puerto Rico chapter, provides insight and hope that can help us further contemplate ‘place’ in our lives (and in this issue of Kurungabaa!):

Surfers are an impacted species – they are an indicator species of contamination, pollution, and everything that is happening on the coast and the beach. We’re the first ones out there, so you gotta respect your breaks, you gotta protect the environment in which you enrich yourself. So, surfers should be like samurais or knights; their mission is the protection and enjoyment of the beach and the coast. At least be aware of that. Localism? That’s real localism: taking care of your beach.3

Taking care of the water, air, and soil that we are all – surfers or not – commonly reliant upon is a basis for learning to take care of each other and of ourselves.

***

In case you were wondering, I didn’t give the Fuel TV guys a conclusive response about our town’s East/Westside boundary; I suggested they speak with several different local people at the contest who had told me their own versions of the Eastside/Westside story. I can’t speak for Santa Cruz’s local people and history. But I love Santa Cruz. It is part of my family; my heart is at home in its beaches, hills, forests, and town, and I can’t imagine it not being in my life. Its beauty and allure tests the limits of our greed and the strength of our commitment to it, and the spirits of this land push me to be a better person here and quickly keep me in check whenever I start to stray. I don’t ever expect to be identified as a local here, but my love for this place opens up greater possibilities for all that I can offer it in appreciation of all that it gives me.

– Dina El Dessouky

(1) Shlongboard, in case it isn’t clear, is a combination of ‘shortboard/longboard’.
(2) Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my official education about the Ohlone people was limited to a brief local history unit centering on where they fit into the Spanish missionary project. In writing this article, I finally began to research the different peoples (Awaswas, Rumsen, Mutsun, Muwekma and more) who are now often grouped together as Ohlone, and I learned that although many people don’t realize it, there are in fact living Ohlone descendants – living in this region and elsewhere – who are still seeking Federal recognition as a Native American Indian Tribe.
(3)This quote is from a short Frontline documentary by journalist Sachi Cunningham and her team called ‘Samurai Surfers’. The documentary follows Puerto Rican surfers in their struggle to protect a local reef break – Arrecibo – from US Army dredging. The documentary is available to stream online at: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/08/samurai_surfers.html