The "bad element" was scolded on the regular in American surf mags during early '60s. Editors spooned out the pontification like castor oil. Open wide and swallow—it's for your own good. And it wasn't just the hooligans getting lectured; the rest of us were on the hook too. "It is your responsibility," a 1961 SURFER editorial said, "to continue the 'clean-up' campaign within our sport." 

What, or who, exactly, needed cleaning up? Surf bums. Troublemakers. Gremlins, and hodaddies. The UGLY SURFER, as all-capped by John Severson himself. To further make the point, Severson brought in Robert Gardner, Orange County judge and "acknowledged authority in the field of delinquency." Gardner got right to it. "There, standing just outside the [surf contest] area, were three caricatures wearing long hair and oversized trunks. Typical examples of nature's inadequates, physically, mentally, morally, and personality-wise, who simply do not have what it takes to get along in life . . . who are now embarrassing surfing [with their] long hair, baggy trunks, and boorish beach behavior. All legitimate surfers wish these people would go away—that they would cut their hair and turn in their baggies."

So long hair and oversized boardshorts aren't my thing either. But Gardner's looking at style errors and seeing Wehrmacht helmets and Klan robes.

Was this coming out of left field? Not completely, no. Surfing had been restricted at some beaches, and barred altogether at a few more, partly due to surfer-generated misdemeanor lawbreaking. Lightweight stuff. No weapons or violence. Definitely no political agitating. But hundreds of pressed hams along PCH and a million empty Schlitz cans on beaches between Mission Jetty and Secos. Parents and council members and city fathers were irritated. Of course they were. You survive the Depression, rout the Nazis, and end up getting trolled by the neighborhood kids—that'd be fucking annoying. And confusing. As Greg Noll later put it, "The vice-principal called me to his office once and said, 'What exactly do you guys 

 down there at the beach?' He understood the wave-riding part, but not the rest of it. We had 'em a little worried. And so we made a game of it."

Still, those old anti-hodad editorials never fail to play a cheerful riff on my funny bone, and here's why. First, the idea that the "bad element" in surfing was small—just a few punks messing things up for everybody else. Hey all you 70-something geezer surfers who were running the beaches during the Kennedy years! Hold up your hand if you drank on the beach, pissed in the ally, trespassed, said "Fuck" like a Merchant Marine, threw the brown-eye, and engaged in casual surf movie anarchy. Right. Thank you. That's what I thought. Seventy-five-percent, and the rest of you will answer to God for your lies.

The second thing that makes me smile is the breathtaking two-facedness among the top surfers of the time. Here's Butch van Artsdalen, the original Mr. Pipeline, boozer and brawler, described by one of his Windansea pals as "just one small step ahead of being an outlaw," telling 

 in 1963 with a straight face that "rowdy members of the gremlin group" are "tearing the sport down," and that 

 surfers are "polite." And here's Greg Noll, SURFER coverboy and surfboard industrialist, spray-painting a swastika on his car door just to tweak the squares, having second thoughts, and rushing back outside to put a matching swastika on the passenger door as well.

I'm looking at a SURFER article on Seal Beach, from 1963. Hmmmm. Trouble with the city council about to shut down local beaches due to "gremmyism and undesirable conduct," among "transient surfers and out-of-towners." Bad apples! Not like local surfer Bill Fury, featured on the opening spread head-dipping at 13th Street, or resident Mike Haley, shown hanging ten at Ray Bay like the West Coast Champ he was. No, these Seal Beach boys are clearly good apples.

 piece from a few years back. Great old bleached-out photo of the Seal crew lounging in the sand at 13th Street in 1959. And there's a kid in a white T-shirt sneering at the camera and flipping the bird! And next to him . . . that's Mike Haley, not only flipping the bird 

 Bill Fury talks about how Seal Beach do-gooder and future 

 star Robert August liked to wear a woman's jacket for the morning surf check, and how the gang took beachside target practice on wandering cats and dogs with their BB guns. "Our antics grew in size in scope," Fury added.

Maybe a good apple can have a wormhole or two.

And you know who should have understood that better than anybody? Better than John Severson, better than Butch van Artsdalen? The Most Honorable Robert Gardner. Turns out the judge spent his Prohibition Age teen years on the Balboa wharf giving signals to drivers in nearby black sedans as soon as the bootleg skiffs pulled into the harbor. "We flaunted our bawdy, sinful ways," Gardner later said, "and profited from them."

Surf hero or hodad. County judge or bootlegger. Occasionally the distinctions are clear. But usually you wouldn't want to live on the difference.


THE HODAD IN THE MIRROR

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