I hadn’t even heard of him. At least not until I noticed his name spray-painted on the wall. His name was Mickey Dora and back in the late ’50s and early ’60s this guy was “the man.” Of course, if you didn’t surf you probably wouldn’t know that. And back then I didn’t surf.
The crowds are here now. The traffic on PCH can be maddening. The water surely isn’t as clean as it was then and the sea bottom is no longer crawling with lobbies. (Well actually it is, but don’t tell anybody.) But the wave at Surfrider is still perfect. Set right in throbbing L.A. County is an enduring wonder of nature, a gift from the gods. When a south or west swell rolls in from the outer edges of the Pacific, the waves still peel off First Point in machine-like precision, offering the skilled longboarder a not-so-virgin canvas to carve his art. I know because in the last year, that little section of beach just above the pier has become my slice of heaven on earth.
I took up surfing a year ago, last spring. The reason is obscure even to me. Something inside just clicked and I decided I had to learn. Surfing was part of our culture and I couldn’t do it. That was a sacrilege. I bought a longboard and headed to the waves.
First stop, Sunset. By that I mean the gentle break just below the Gladstones’s parking lot. The place is a surfers’ bunny slope. The waves are gentle, slow and mushy, and filled with “newbies” and surf-dorks, like myself. It’s a great place to get it together before venturing up to the ‘Bu, where the real surfers hang.
It was there, just below the retaining wall that separates PCH from the sea, that I rode my first wave. It was difficult at first, exhausting even. Though I prided myself in being in shape, I wasn’t in shape for surfing. There was more to this game than brute strength. There was timing, placement and balance only acquired by trial and error, and more error. The learning curve was steep.
But it didn’t matter. I was hooked. Waves crowded my consciousness in the day and floated through my dreams at night. My life had found new meaning. After a lifetime of career obsessiveness, I had finally found my “inner dude.”
Ready or not, it was time to hit the ‘Bu.
Not.
My first sessions at Malibu were, at best, exercises in futility and isolation. No one would talk to me. Only begrudgingly would anybody in the lineup return a greeting or even, for that matter, smile. I was radioactive. After paddling out, I’d straddle my board outside the lineup and watch with envy, as the regulars would pick off wave after wave. The good ones would drop in beyond the lifeguard stand and make the sections all the way past the showers before they’d kick out inside the cove. Then, in a heartbeat, they’d knee-paddle back out and swipe another right in front of me. On the good days, when the big southerlies would roll in, I’d watch as the Alpha-dudes would make it all the way from First Point to the pier.
Man, I wanted that.
So, I took my place at the bottom of the food chain, just outside the lineup, content to live off the scraps. As I gained confidence, I was able to angle myself into the fringes of the lineup and maneuver into ever more frequent rides.
But with more rides came the collisions, the dinged boards and cuss-outs. The thrashing was a rite of passage. The insults tossed my way were an initiation. If you took it personally and got angry, you were a fool. If you backed down too easily, you were a wimp. The trick, I soon learned, was not to take the surf opera too seriously. Know your place, and keep on coming.
At First Point a crude sort of justice prevails. Behind the veneer of chaos is order. The code was simple. If someone was in a wave before you, stay the hell out, unless of course he knew you. Then it was probably OK. It didn’t matter who you were on land, once you stepped in the water you were judged by one thing: can you surf? If you could get waves, the regs would give you the nod and, maybe, after awhile, throw you the stoic, “Hey, man.” If you couldn’t get waves, you were floating debris. You didn’t exist. Unless, of course, you were a cute chick, then the experienced surfer might peel out of the lineup and volunteer himself as your private instructor.
Those were rules I could live with.
This spring it will have been two years since I first surfed the ‘Bu. Although I may not yet be a bona fide “regular,” I have become, at the very least, a familiar face. The real regulars say hello to me. And the old-timers who hang in the pit, the guys who have seen everything, the guys who surfed with Dora back in the day, now throw me a nod when I pass on by the wall. One guy even remembered my name. That was enough to make me glad.
Mickey “Da Cat” Dora had the poor luck of getting pancreatic cancer and passed to the other side a little more than two years ago. He was 67. I never knew him. I never saw him surf Malibu. But now that I ride those waves, I feel that, in some weird way, I have.