This is a slightly edited and condensed version of "Winning and Losing in Fat City," which ran in the February 1973 issue of Surfing magazine

Official headquarters for the 1972 World Surfing Championships was the Travelodge on Harbor Island, San Diego. The events there, and at the contest site, have been succinctly described as "a nine-day acid trip."

Ray Emery, a San Diego architect, was the coordinator of the World Contest. He was also Chairman of the San Diego World Contest Committee, of which he was the sole member, five or six others having abdicated in the months of preparation, probably scared off by a sniff of impending doom. Emery was also a San Diego Chamber of Commerce member and must have at one time thought himself in a good position to successfully bring off such an Event. To host the World Contest he successfully outbid the City of San Clemente, while making assurances of the availability of ample funds and large-scale support. Eduardo Arena, President of the International Surfing Federation (ISF), and a man of good faith, accepted Emery at his word and consented to the San Diego bid last spring. Hawaii had been unable, once again, to get a bill for such a contest through its legislature. So San Diego became the first city to host a World Contest twice, the first occasion being 1966.

But a few weeks before the Event was due to begin, Emery contacted Arena and confessed that money was tight and that things didn’t look good for the scheduled blast-off. Arena duly informed all nations concerned that the contest was off. Two weeks later, Emery claimed he'd gotten things together, he and Arena came to an agreement, and the contest was back on.

From the beginning, however, it was evident that Ray Emery had 

 gotten things together. Witness Mr. Emery in the Travelodge lobby Friday evening, the 29th of September:

Emery sweeps into the lobby, a big, balding-blonde public relations sort of man, wearing a World Contest T-shirt and carrying a clipboard, hotly pursued by WSA president Kevin Summerell and his assistant Ray (Woody) Allen. One of Emery’s gorgeous assistants saunters out from behind the hotel desk, and he catches her up in his free arm.

Emery is brisk, abrupt, and defensive towards this reporter. He asks several times for whom I am writing and turns his back while answering questions. "We haven’t had enough time, help or money on this thing,” he says. “We need another six months.” Summered and Allen both nod, but their shifty eyes betray their nervousness, and they defer to Emery as they would a mad bull.

There is a meeting of officials Friday night. It is chaotic; there is the smell of panic in the carpeted hallways of the Travelodge. Tom Friend, a hepcat from Santa Cruz, staggers out: “I listened to them for half-an-hour,” he says with dismay, “and I got a cauliflower ear.” Everyone seemed to be picking up where they left off in Australia two years ago when the American team was nearly run out of that country for the illegal possession of hair.

After Emery’s chicken ran out, everyone got back to the Travelodge. Contest officials lay awake wondering about how they're going to get the contest off the ground, for Emery has revealed that he didn’t even have enough money to get the contest programs from the printer.

Meanwhile, a speed-spooked rock group was ripping apart its instruments poolside as contestants moved and grooved and trampled all the flowers and ran in wild packs through the layers and layers of identical floors in the hotel, loading up the elevators till they broke down and jammed between floors. Women ran from their rooms in nightgowns as fire alarms blared doom. Hotel managers rushed puffily down carpeted hallways, desperation and panic in their eyes, sweat streaming from their faces, as madness, that most feared of all devils, is turned loose in this tabernacle of sanity.

After two lay days, the contest is finally called on for Tuesday morning, at La Jolla Shore. The ladies are up first. Debbie Melville rides well in her home surf, Sharron Weber looks good, Jericho Poppler does her el Ballerino, and Mary Ann Hayes of Cocoa Beach looks really, really fine, climbing and dropping up the beach towards Blacks. But the surf is a bit sloppy and gets worse, things are called off before lunch. Back to the Travelodge, where Corky Carroll is playing music and holding forth. Corky is one of the few surfers who was around for the first San Diego World Contest: “The '66 event was more together,” the Cork said. “I showed up on the first day, a guy says ‘Right this way, Mister Carroll,’ and gave me a room and an envelope full of passes for the best restaurants in town. 1966 was pretty groovy. This year there’s been a few screw-ups, but I’m having a good time." Corky squinted, then continued. “The trouble is,” he continued, "surfers expect too much. They expect to be treated like heroes. But if you flow with it and take what you get, it’s groovy. I’m stoked to have a place to sleep and meals. Hell, I’m stoked to have something to do this week,” and then he laughs his motorboat laugh.

Ben Aipa at that point gets up on the diving board, strides smoothly and springs high, lands on the tip of the board, bends it like a bow, and is thrown high into the sky, level perhaps with fourth-floor windows, then touches his toes in a delicate jack-knife, unfolds and enters the water with near silence, producing only a single bubble.

On Wednesday, Tropical Storm Joanne begins pumping waves into the Southern California coast. They bombard the shore everywhere but San Diego. The contest is moved to Oceanside’s North Jetty, a nice, point-like wave, where it is six-feet. When a boat is swamped in the Oceanside Harbor and beaten to death by the waves, Gerry Lopez and a few others dive in and makes a spectacular save of three old men.

Reno Abellira glided and punched and won his elimination heat. Jeff Crawford ripped for the U. S. of A., and Lopez casually carved his way around the fat sections. All three Japanese representatives surfed beautifully: Michio Degawa, Mikio Kawai, and Doji Isaka gave the first indications that the land of the Rising Sun is becoming a very advanced surfing area. John Paarman of South Africa looked excellent, Purpus ripped, Bertlemann drove, Cheer rebounded, Ben Aipa carved, Mike Ho exploded, Dru boogied, Jeff Hakman aimed it, and Dobson, according to Lopez, was “King of the Mush.”

Everyone surfed so well that it is difficult to say who was most outstanding. In fact, the surfers were more closely matched this year than ever before. Then again, many would-be World Contest favorites were off on their farms or in their home tubes. Nat Young, Lynch, Farrelly, Keith Paull, Russell Hughes, and other Australians stayed home. Mike Doyle, Rolf Aurness, Mike Tabeling, and many other worthy American's were absent. Hawaii has so many good surfers that most of them have to stay home every time.

When North Jetty blew out in the afternoon, the teams receded, like the tide, back to the Travelodge. Because of transportation hassles, many surfers had to pay for rental cars to make it to the contest site each day that it was held at Oceanside. That’s around $20 a day from San Diego.

Thursday it was on at Oceanside Pier: fair sized and peaky, but kind of flat-faced and nearly tubeless. The rest of the men’s eliminations were held. Just as Ocean Beach has its scene, so does Oceanside Pier. It’s sort of a down-coast Huntington Beach, another interpretation of the coastline disaster syndrome in California, replete with greasy spoons, parking meters, Marines, and a general pallor reminiscent of a tubercular miner. You would not venture to Oceanside for your honeymoon. If you were born there, you would run away from home as soon as you reached the age of reason. And the waves are mushy.

Joanne kept pumping, and reports from up the coast began filtering in: Malibu eight-feet and offshore, the Ranch ten-feet and perfect, Trestles eight-foot plus and holding shape, Newport doing a Pipeline imitation from 19th Street to 56th. Even Doheney was six-foot and grinding while the best surfers in the world floated down the sagging faces at Oceanside.

Friday, Oceanside Pier again, except slower, mushier, and smaller. And this is the point where the whole thing just sort of died. San Diego was flat. Contest officials wore expressions of grim despair. Day after day, Lord James Tally-Ho Blears, father of Jimmy and Laura Blears, announced the heats and tried to upgrade the waves with some trademark Talley-Ho patter, but it was growing increasingly obvious that the 1972 World Contest had missed the boat. The timing was off, the karma was negative, and there was little energy anywhere, certainly nothing sufficient to pull it all together in the face of the final weekend and a dying swell.

But I promised myself that I would be positive about this business. The WSA and ISF and Emery finally got enough funds together to get the programs out of hock, and some T-shirts to sell, so a bit of concession money began to come in. The surfers got meals at Shakey’s Pizza, the Nordic All-Ye-Kin-Eat Smorgasbord, Love’s BBQ, and The Chart House, the latter of which makes a blizzard-like Chi Chi.

When the waves weren’t happening, there was water polo and mania in the pool, chess in Hakman’s and Lopez’ room, and color TV to watch. There was even an occasional snow flurry to break up the weather pattern in the hotel. That’s in-talk for nose-gay.

On Saturday, the contest was back at Ocean Beach. Slop though it was, the Event still drew a large, litter-bugging crowd. Between heats, I asked a few of my favorite surfies why they were here in San Diego for the festivities.

"I really don’t know to tell you the truth,” said Gerry Lopez. “Maybe because I was asked to go. If I wasn’t in it I wouldn’t be here (laughs). Actually, I’m anti-social and don’t really like being around all these people. Maybe it’s kind of a subconscious ego thing, but I want to do well in the money contests in Hawaii this winter, so this contest is sort of a training thing.”

“I like to be with all the people,” said J. Poppler. “Plus, if I could win it, I wouldn’t have to surf anymore.”

David Nuuhiwa: “I guess I want to win it like everyone else, because I’ve never won it before. I’ve had so many shots, and I really want to win it this year.”

Reno Abellira: “Because I want to win; because it’s indirectly related to my way of living. It’s a pinnacle of athletic excellence. You can feel you’re good, and you can prove you’re good.”

Mike Ho: “Just to be surfing against people, if there’s not much hassles.”

Jeff Hakman: “I don’t really know.”

Boardwise, the only really inventive thing this year was the Fish, a double-pintailed twin-fin found to be excellent in slop. Surf leashes and velcro foot pads [for traction] were voted out before the contest started.

Local San Diego surfers were generally not too stoked to have the World Contest back in town. The Sunset Cliff Dwellers vibed from five miles away, and the Windansea gremmies were especially vocal.

Sunday morning, the last day of the contest, cars filled the Ocean Beach parking lot before dawn. Immediately police were on the scene and began writing up tickets. A cop car showed up, handed each motorcycle cop six books of tickets, and they were writing like crazy, sensing a bonanza.

At daybreak, we noticed a strange apparition hung from the Ocean Beach Pier. One of Nuuhiwa’s surfboards, stolen a few days earlier, hung from a rope, nearly broken in two, with a large knife driven into it and GOOD LUCK DAVE inscribed on its skin. The act was rumored to be some sort of retaliation for David’s use of the Fish design.

The morning surf was two-foot and glassy, and the small wave sliders made headway. Mark Sedlack, Larry Bertleman, Jon Paarman, David, Purpus, Blears, Ho, and Cheer all looked good, considering.

The south wind came up just in time for the women’s final. It was close between Mary Ann Hayes and Sharron Weber for first, but Sharron held on to the title she won at Johanna two years ago. Evie Black was third, Laura Blears was fourth, and vivacious Debbie Melville, the local girl, was fifth.

The men's final was held just before sunset. The crowd followed the contestants down to the beach where they were photographed and encouraged. Peter Townend of Australia, Larry Bertleman, Mike Ho, and Jim Blears of Hawaii, waited at water’s edge for the big send-off. David Nuuhiwa waited up on dry sand with his father, nervous but confident too. He looked out over the crowd at the two-foot chop, the sagging concrete pier, the oppressive gray sky. He glanced around at the ticky-tack beach cottages and the streets full of traffic, at the faces of the people who wondered what was happening.

Then the five surfers entered the water and rode what there was to ride. David was the only one to gain speed over white water, the only one to surf across the dead spots like a skater. Everyone surfed well, but David surfed the best while Jim Blears got the good waves towards the end of the heat when the judges tend to score higher. Although the judging was neither consistently good or consistently poor, it amazed me how much concentration the judges had. One of them even listened to football games on his transistor radio while judging and never flinched. What can one expect of human beings anyway? Blears came in first, David second, Townend third, Bertlemann fourth and 15-year-old crowd favorite Michael Ho was fifth.

The winners were announced as sun ducked beneath a ceiling of clouds and gave one piercing stab of beauty as a good-night gesture. Then everyone tore up their parking tickets and split.

The Last Supper was held a couple of hours later, down the street from the Travelodge at the Sheraton Hotel. Heaps of trophies, donated by Coca-Cola, lay on the floor. Eduardo Arena lay beside them, posing for an Instamatic photo.

Ray Emery, an eye on the budget, informed all surfers they could eat whatever they liked so long as they kept it under three dollars.

After dinner, there was a party in Rooms 103 and 104 at the Travelodge, and great relief was felt by all that it was over. Asked what he thought about the events of the day, David Nuuhiwa said, “I want to get drunk and forget about it.”

I sit in the lobby of the Travelodge before checkout, listening to my mind propose that the next World Contest should be more flexible, in the spirit of Mohammad going to the mountain if the mountain won’t come to Mohammad. It might be nice to approach these things from the consciousness of the surfers involved, instead of the contest promoters. A World Contest should happen in the surfing world, not in the heartland of the great Amerikan beer belly, for Chrissakes. I mean, thanks to the Travelodge and all, but where is Harbor Island for the love of God?

And let’s screen these judges more carefully while we’re at it. No more transistor radios on the judges’ stands, all right? And maybe get a bigger advance from the promoter so no one has to be hurt, huh? And let's get rid of the Shakey's Pizza and Love's BBQ, and have some protein smoothies instead. And grass shacks and golden ladies lying on warm sand with pineapple and coconut and perhaps even a six-foot wave or two. Okay?

This man and his wife in front of me checking in at the Travelodge desk—they don’t know about any of this. They’ve got their Master Charge card and this is Disneyland and they’ve come here to get away from life. This is their place, and that’s fine, so long as they don’t get greedy and reach out and grab 

I don’t know. I guess I don’t understand World Contests. It seems they distract us from the swift performance of our appointed rounds. It seems that again and again they split us in their attempt to heal us. Maybe next time, though, it’ll be the game it should be and not the collision of consciousness that it was in San Diego.

"A NINE-DAY ACID TRIP!" DREW KAMPION REPORTS FROM THE '72 WORLD TITLES

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