The article below was published in a 1961 Sunday edition of the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, four columns wide, above the Berlin refugee crisis story, above the upcoming Virgil Grissom spaceflight piece, above the Press-Telegram banner, even. Other news outlets picked it up—the Pasadena Star-News titled the article "Cult of the Surf: Beatniks Trouble the Waters." The writer was Dial Torgerson, who later became the Los Angeles Times bureau chief for Mexico and Central America. He didn't think much of surfing. He never actually tried it, and clearly isn't the type of writer to wax lyrical about the attraction the sport might hold for others. From the opening line, he goes deep on scorn. Hobie Alter gets a pass, but otherwise we're in for a feature-length Jack Webb-voiced dressing down. The Press-Telegram editor, for emphasis, prefaced the article thus: "The Pacific is washing up new troubles on the West Coast—the surfboard riders. Some are carefree sun and sea worshippers, but others are scum who won't let property, pretty girls or [your] breakfast patio stand between them and their fun."

SURFING: NEW WAY OF LIFE FOR CALIFORNIA YOUTH

Call him Flippy. He's 15, just getting husky, a natural athlete.

He'll never graduate from high school. They rarely saw him there last semester.

He spent most of the spring at the beach, waxing his surfboard, learning to drink cheap wine, waiting for a set of big combers to come booming in toward the sand.

There are 20,000 surfers in California, and riders of surfboards are apt to differ as much as riders of streetcars.

But for some—like Flippy—it has become more than a sport. It is a way of life. Newspaper writers have given a name to their bizarre code: "The cult of surfer."

It is the so-called cult-followers that Southern California educators and law enforcement officials are worried about. In some towns, in some schools, and in some police stations, "surfer" has another meaning: "beach bum." Lawlessness, truancy, teenage drinking, sex parties—these are the things charged against surfers by many police and property owners.

Property owners have built tall fences topped with barbed wire to keep them out of some beaches. The surfers usually rip the wire and break through.

Yet making and selling boards is a million-dollar-a-year business and still growing. Twenty-thousand surfers obviously can't all be bums. Even those who detest the breed admit the troublemakers are in the minority.

One high school principal from Los Angeles spends every summer. when he can afford it, surfing in Hawaii with his son.

You’ll see them every summer day now at their favorite surfing spots from the Mexican border's Tijuana slews (a corruption of slough), north to San Francisco’s Steamer Lane, where they wear skin-diver suits, and the waves break for out in blue water where the liner's pass.

Some have new sports cars laboring under board-loaded racks. But most surf wagons are ancient, expendable and cheap. Old hearses are highly prized. So are war-surplus ambulances and old station wagons. You can sleep in them.

"We've got some bad apples," says a surfer spokesman, “they’re the ones that give all surfers a bad name.”

Talk to Sgt. Jack Pease, juvenile officer at The Los Angeles County Malibu Sheriff's station, and he'll tell you about bad apples.

"Any time we see crowds of surfers," he said, “we know there's going to be trouble. Trespassing. petty theft. truancy, underage drinking. Vandalism.

"You see the same guys, day after day. They don't work. What can they do here, anyway? It's just a small town with a lot of beach. You want to know how they get the money to stay on the beach?"

There are different kinds of surfers the sergeant never meets. Take Hobart "Hobie" Alter of Dana Point.

Hobie, a husky, thirtyish chap who has won prizes in Hawaiian surfing contests, probably works more hours a week than Sgt. Pease. He owns California's biggest surfboard manufacturing firm ($150,000 worth of business last year).

Hobie sponsors a surfing club and is fighting to "clean up" the troublemakers. He thinks he has already seen some improvement.

Youngsters become part of the surfing crowd by the social pressure to join and conform. Many own a board, as a symbol of membership, but don't know how to use it. The symbol, incidentally, comes high: about $100.

One girl explained recently that there are three group in high school, the surfers, the ho-dads, and the socs.

The ho-dads, also known as ho-daddies, are the hot-rod and car-club enthusiasts: They like well-oiled Elvis Presley-type pompadours. boots, jeans or pegged slacks, drive pickup trucks or cars with souped-up motors and flames painted on the hood, and go for rock 'n‘ roll.

The socs—pronounced, for some tribalistic reason. as "so-cees"— are the "society types," the one who belong to campus clubs and get good grades. Surfers and ho-dads have another name for them: “Kooks."

Some people think the older surfers are the ones who infect the younger boys with an ambition not to have any.

Maurice (Red) Guyer, the head coach at Laguna Beach High School, has a bitter distaste for older surfers—the kid ruiners.

Guyer knows all about the case of Flippy. His older brother won honors at Guyer's school and went on to get top grades at college.

"That boy, Flippy (incidentally, that's not his real nickname), he should be playing baseball now, or going out for football. Most of my kids here surf—but when summer ends, they put their board on the garage rafters and start football practice. Not Flippy. He's down on the beach. These older kids are teaching him to cuss and drink wine. Maybe to steal. Him go to college? He'll never finish high school.

"He already lies and cheats. He’s getting shifty-eyed.

"CULT OF THE SURFER" - BIG COMBERS, CHEAP WINE, SEX PARTIES (1961)

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