WiLD Blog

Redefining and remembering community for SoCal surfers.

On a recent surfing trip to the wild Pacific coastline of southern Mexico, I met a group of surfers who are so committed to their vision of community that it made me reevaluate my own notion of surfing as sport. For members of the Black Surfing Association, in whose company I was lucky enough to spend two mornings surfing a remote left point break, surfing is, in the words of BSA’s Rick Blocker, about, “teaching, mentoring.”

In between multiple surf sessions (it stayed offshore until 1p.m.) and watching BSA member Rusty White rip the head high perfect lefts, I chatted with Rick and Will Lamar about their passion and the history of black surfing in Southern California.

Rick and Will are some of the most interesting and perceptive surfers I’ve met. Rick is the BSA historian and according to Wetsand.com:

In the early ’60s, Blocker and friends Max McMullin and Marc Thompson began skating streets and banks all over west Los Angeles. Rick’s childhood “play cousin”, Marty Grimes, close friend of the Dogtown crew and perhaps the first black professional skateboarder, credits Rick with introducing him to the surf/skate lifestyle. A few years later, a friend of Rick’s mother took him surfing for the first time, at Malibu. Rick was instantly “stoked just being in the water, seeing the sights, seeing the perspective.” Rick began commuting by bus from inner city LA to Santa Monica, where he kept an old board in a “board locker” at the pier. In 1968, when he was 13, Rick saved up enough money ($150) to buy his first new stick, a Dewey Weber longboard.

Will was shooting video for a documentary and discussed how African Americans were a key part of the Southern California beach scene in the early part of the 20th century — but were physically barred from using the beach after the first black surfing resort, Bruce’s Beach, was destroyed. This history of Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach is an ugly chapter in the often sordid history of Southern California, in which racism is a neglected theme in the often Disneyfied accounts of our past — especially as it relates to what some geographers call “Surfurbia.”

According to the City Project, from whose executive director, Robert Garcia, I had first heard about Bruce’s Beach:

When Manhattan Beach was incorporated in 1912, a two-block area on the ocean was set aside for African-Americans. Charles and Willa Bruce built a black beach resort there, the only resort in Southern California that allowed Blacks. Bruces’ Beach offered ocean breezes, bathhouses, outdoor sports, dining, and dancing to African-Americans who craved their fair share of Southern California’s good life. As coastal land became more valuable and the black population in Los Angeles increased — bringing more African-Americans to Bruces’ Beach — so did white opposition to the black beach. The black beach was roped off. The KKK harassed black beachgoers. The City of Manhattan Beach pressured black property owners to sell at prices below fair market value and prevailed in the 1920s through condemnation proceedings. Bruce’s Beach and the surrounding black neighborhood were destroyed. Black beachgoers were then relegated to the blacks-only section of Santa Monica beach known as “the Inkwell.” Manhattan Beach tried to lease the Bruce’s Beach land to a private individual as a whites-only beach, but relented in the face of civil disobedience organized by the NAACP. Bernard Bruce has spent his life telling people about Bruce’s Beach, the beach resort that his family owned. No one believed him because they did not believe black people owned beach resorts. This is why it is important to tell the story of Bruce’s Beach.

On March 31, 2007, the city of Manhattan Beach renamed its ocean front park Bruce’s Beach Park in memory of the pioneering African American community there. At least in Los Angeles, there is an awareness of how to redress the racist wrongs of the past. In San Diego, when it comes to the racist heritage of coastal exclusion (in such enclaves as La Jolla), we are in total denial.

The spirit of Bruce’s Beach lives on in the BSA and in surfers like Will and Rick, who are attempting to build a inclusive surfing community in Southern California rather than one that includes a select few.

– SERGE DEDINA

If you think your investment in megaprojects in Mexico is protected because American businessmen are in charge of it, think twice.

Michael E. Kelly was arrested last December by the FBI with charges of fraud for more than 400 million dollars against thousands of American retirees who invested in Kelly’s hotels in Mexico. Promising juicy dividends in a short period of time, Kelly convinced thousands of Americans to enter in a pyramidal scheme in which the last beneficiary was Kelly and his family. Kelly lured a lot of Americans by inviting them to Cancun, all expenses covered, to special parties with Mexican government officials (including the governor of the state of Quintana Roo) to check the lifestyle they could enjoy if they invested their money in his megaprojects.

In Cancun, Michael E. Kelly “reactivated” a project in Puerto Cancun, which has had a history of corruption scandals with Mexican and European corporations involved. Even at the time that Kelly obtained the concession for Puerto Cancun in 2003 by the Mexico’s National Trust Fund for Tourism Development (Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo, FONATUR), the Mexican government received tough criticism from authorities in the United States that were already investigating Kelly’s investments.

To avoid early prosecution, Michael Kelly kept changing the names of the corporations used in his fraudulent scheme. Some of the companies used were Resort Holdings International, Galaxy Properties and Yucatan Resorts.

Puerto Cancun is only the tip of the iceberg of the millions of dollars of fraudulent investments that Kelly made in Mexico: Hotel Boutique Baccara, Avalon Bay, Avalon Grand, Avalon Reef Club, Odyssey Sporting Club, Avalon Excalibur, and The City Disco, among others.

The FBI in Chicago has an investigation open (file number 312-421-6700) and a phone line available to add names to the list of naive Americans, who thought their investment was safe.

This is a cautionary tale. Think twice before investing in megaprojects in Mexico: they are bad for the environment and for your pockets.

Saul

Note  that in BCS more than likely late tropical storm activity has had a big impact on increasing dengue rates.  

November 6, 2006
 Francisco Cardoza, Secretary of Health of Baja California Sur, reported that the increase in dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever cases in Los Cabos, BCS, Mexico, that total 63, requires strengthened epidemiological measures. The state agency has sent 70 additional workers to support the 40 who are working to lower larvae indices of the mosquito that transmits dengue fever and to control the outbreak.

 In Acapulco, Guerrero, authorities report a rise of 166 dengue cases in just six days, in both of its manifestations, which brings the total to 1,156 cases in this tourist destination. The Secretariat of Health has invested [US$1.4 million] in the fight against the transmitting mosquito.

 The incidence of dengue, that in its hemorrhagic fever form is life threatening, remains at high levels in the states of Veracruz, Guerrero and Quintana Roo, where 10,757 cases and five deaths have been recorded this year due to the resistance of the people to collaborate in official prevention programs, and in programs to fight the mosquito that transmits the disease.

A big thanks to Fay Crevoshay and Aida Navarro and of course our gran amigo Jorge Campos for launching this spectacular campaign today in Acapulco with the heroic sea turtle defenders of Mexico. Serge 

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE 

Jorge Campos launches campaign to save marine turtles
 The Associated Press

Published: October 27, 2006
ACAPULCO, Mexico. Mexico’s former star soccer player Jorge Campos, teaming up with environmentalists in this Pacific coast resort, launched a campaign Friday to protect Mexico’s endangered marine turtles.
 
 Campos, who was the assitant coach for Mexico’s 2006 World Cup team, called on President-elect Felipe Calderon, who takes office Dec. 1, to dedicate more resources to protect marine turtles along the coast of Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located.
 
 ”Turtles are worth more alive than dead,” he said, adding that the turtles could draw millions of tourists to the region.
 
 Mexico is a major nesting area for several species of sea turtles, which are protected by law. Harvesting or selling their eggs is a criminal offense, punishable by up to nine years in prison and fines.
 
 Still each year, officials seize thousands of turtle eggs at Mexican markets. The eggs are considered a delicacy.
 
 Fewer than 1,000 adult female leatherback turtles are left in Mexico’s Pacific range, down from an estimated 70,000 to 90,000 in 1980, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The Los Cabos area is the one of the most urricane vulnerable regions of North America. But you wouldn’t know if from the incredible amount of flood prone development there. There  is a reason the Spanish created missions uphill from floodplains. The Los Cabos and Baja California Sur government by permitting so much bad development in so  many flood prone areas has increased the risk of flood damage  and the loss of life. Serge

TROPICAL Storm Paul lashed Mexico’s Baja California peninsula with rain and winds today while high waves washed a US tourist from a beach resort.

The military, police and civil protection workers began evacuating some 1500 people from poor housing as the storm took aim at the Los Cabos resort, popular with foreign visitors for its golf courses, yachting and sports fishing.

A large wave swept away a US tourist from Washington state who was walking on the beach at Los Cabos.
“He is considered missing. It would be very difficult for him to be found alive,” said firefighter Gabriel Garcia.

Paul faded to a tropical storm from a hurricane, with winds near 75km/h.
The storm was about 210km southwest of Los Cabos and was expected tomorrow to sweep close by the resort, made up of the towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, before moving across the Sea of Cortez and hitting the mainland state of Sinaloa.

Authorities shut the Cabos San Lucas port, frustrating sports fishermen who converged on the resort this week for a major competition involving up to 200 boats. The resort escaped serious damage from two hurricanes earlier this year that veered away at the last moment.

Mexican residents of the Tierra y Libertad shantytown district followed the news, concerned the dried-up creek bed where they live could be drenched by flash floods as often before in storms. “It’s scary,” said resident Maria Mariano Reyes, who lives in a flimsy shack.

“Water comes in from both sides of the house and we’re stuck in the middle,” she said. Police drove around endangered areas asking people by loudspeakers to leave their homes and go to shelters.