Lots of good spring combo surf and long sunny, glassy days to make IB surfers very happy. It is ironic that we’ve had more surf in the past couple of months than we had all winter.

I first met Barry Palmatier at MVHS back in 1978. I was a freshman who was occasionally permitted to sit at the Surfer Bench at lunch with the small but talented crew of IB surfers that included Greg Parman, Mark Ganderton, Randy Garvin, Bill Johnson, Lindy Dalmas (RIP), Roger Benham, Tim Decker, Barry Muffley, and Lester Gill among others. Barry P. who was back and forth from Del Rey, would pop in and immediately the conversation would turn to the latest Sloughs session and board design.

So I’ve known and surfed with Barry for about 31 years. Over the past few years I have enjoyed surfing with the three generation Palmatier surfing clan on surf sessions in IB, La Jolla and Coronado in addition to the great times we’ve enjoyed at the Dempsey and Kids for Clean Water Contests.

I had a chance to talk story with the Palmatiers at the Kids for Clean Water event a couple of weeks ago. The family is head up by longtime IB surfer Ken and his lovely wife Midge. Barry has three children, Catalina (9), Andre (10), and Natalia (12). Both Andre and Natalia are integral members of the growing IB super grom squad.

Ken and Midge met back at Chula Vista Junior High when they were 13. Ken started surfing in 1956 when he was at Chula Vista High on a Buzzy Bent surfboard. He first surfed the Sloughs in 1957 with Eric Carlson, Jack Breese, and Bill Marshall. “Midge and I got married in 1960 and moved up to Cardiff. But we moved back to IB and decided to stay because of the Sloughs. I missed the power of IB,” said Ken.

Ken on the Sloughs, “During my first session in 1957 I got one wave, ate it and swam in. In ’58 I surfed it but it was huge. Too big and I almost drowned. In ’59 I rode it big. The biggest I rode it was in 1969, but it was big in 1970, 1974-75 and in the 90s we had some big days. I rode the Sloughs with Dempsey for 10 years and surfed with Mike Richardson and Jim Barber. J.B. would sit way outside and wait for the largest wave. He was a power surfer, a real good surfer.”

Barry started surfing in 1964 at the age of four; “My first board was a Mudpie Maker a logo design from an iron-on t-shirt transfer I got from the Rexall at 9th and Palm. The board was a Richard Jolie template. I started surfing the Sloughs in the 6th grade. My dad, the Duck and me surfed middles. I was on a 7’2” Plastic Fantastic. It scared the living hell out of me. It was hollow and acting like IB—throwing out. By the time I was in high school I was charging it. My friends and I would paddle out and I surfed with John Emory, Richard Cacanindin, Mark Meister, Kelly Kraus, and Mike Kelly. In 1978 I rode the biggest surf at the Slough outside way past 3rd notch. I was riding an 8’6” gun made by the Duck. It was too small and I was airdropping the drops.”

The Palmatiers spent lots of time surfing in Baja at what is now 38s (or 38 1/2 as some old-timers call it). Ken said, “We called it Outhouse and then it became 38s. There was a rock in the lineup at 38s so Geoff Logan took a sledgehammer out at low tide and knocked it down. That rock was like a fence post. What is now Gaviotas back then was called 41s. The Gaviota developers ruined the wave when they bulldozed the cliff, totally changed and destroyed the spot.“

“One day my dad pulled me out of school and said, we’re going to Mexico,“ said Barry. “It was so good, offshore, eight foot and makeable. 38s was closed out.”

The Palmatiers are an integral part of the Coronado Avenue Regulars and I look forward to surfing with them for many, many years to come. Thanks for sharing your memories!

IB surfers thanked President Obama for canceling the $70 million Army Corps sand dredge and fill project that would have involved dredging an area near the border sewage outfall pipe that was also used as a WWI gunnery range. According to The San Diego Reader, the city has so far spent $450,000 on sand studies and lobbyists. Congress still might revive the Corps project. Another $166,000 bill is now due for a SANDAG sand project that would in theory be carried out at the same time as the Corps project. Funds spent on sand studies, junkets and lobbying could have been used to build a very nice skatepark for our children or help to resolve our coastal problem—beach closures caused by pollution from Mexico.

And congratulations to IB resident Josie Hamada and Chula Vista resident John Willet for receiving Cox Conservation Hero awards last week. Josie planted a 9-11 Cherry Tree Peace Grove at Beyer Elementary. John, a WWII veteran who turns 88 this year is the grandfather of the wonderful Otay Valley Regional Park. Congratulations to Josie and John for improving our communities for our children.

Serge Dedina is the Executive Director of WiLDCOAST. Contact him at info@wildcoast.net.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Park Toll Road Plan Rejected in California

Like the millions of Californians who love San Onofre State Beach Park, we were dismayed by the Guvernator’s support for the TCA toll road that will destroy a large portion of San Onofre Beach State Park. But the Los Angeles Times said it best in a recent editorial,

Maybe Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was trying to make up for planned cuts to state parks. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what could have led to his recent support for the Foothill South toll road.

In announcing his change from neutral on the highway that’s proposed to take traffic pressure off Interstate 5 in San Clemente, the governor said the project was “essential to protect our environment” and could be built in a manner “that will enhance and foster use of the coast.” This is environmental doublespeak. As planned, the toll road would cut through a wilderness preserve in eastern Orange County and then traverse the length of a narrow, pristine canyon that makes up most of San Onofre State Beach, one of the most popular California state parks. The governmentSchwarzenegger heads is suing to stop the project.

Perhaps the $100 million offered by the Transportation Corridor Agencies as environmental mitigation — to be used for improvements in other state parks — enticed the governor at this vulnerable moment when he’s proposing to close 48 parks temporarily as a budget fix. But the mitigation money could not begin to make up for the damage the road would cause. It wouldn’t buy more parkland. What makes all this especially paradoxical is that the wilderness preserve and the campgrounds at San Onofre were themselves created as mitigation measures for other developments.

Both metaphorically and geographically, the Foothill South tollway would lead the state down a bad route. As proposed, it would go where few are interested in heading — eastern Orange County. Commuters on the I-5 are generally headed toward the central county; the toll road agency is betting that to beat the traffic, motorists will pay a substantial toll to drive out of their way, a strategy that has failed before.

The best that can be said is that the toll road agency worked hard to find the most environmentally acceptable route among an environmentally unacceptable set of options. It doesn’t have to end there, though. Agency officials have been loath to consider widening the I-5 with toll lanes through the congested area. This would be considerably more expensive and involves eminent domain proceedings. But toll lanes along existing freeways have proved popular. And eminent domain was used successfully to widen the I-5 through central and northern Orange County. When the California Coastal Commission meets Feb. 6 to consider the Foothill South proposal, it should disregard the governor’s attempt to make environmental degradation sound good and insist on a better path.

So join us on February 6th at the Del Mar Fairgrounds for a meeting of the California Coastal Commission that will decide the fate of one of Southern California’s last coastal open space preserves.
Serge

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

NOAA announced new regulations to restrict the use of PWCs for tow-in surfing at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. While many of the professional tow-in crowd are upset about this, it is clear that jet-skis and tow-in surfing have no place in a federally protected marine sanctuary. The irony here, however, is that the Monterey Sanctuary is about the only place in the U.S. where the Bush administration has been strictly enforcing attempts to regulate the use of recreational machines (e.g. snowmobiles and jet-skis) in federal protected areas. Even in La Jolla, they have actually encouraged humans to assault marine mammals. Monterey is an excellent example of what federal resource agencies can to protect our natural heritage if they choose to. But surfers who are angry at the restrictions would be correct about pointing out the double standard of a ban in Monterey and the willful ignorance by NOAA of assaults on federal ecosystems and protected species in other parts of Californa such as La Jolla.

Restrictions on tow-in surfing will impact a very tiny minority of the surfing world. The reality is that there are still plenty of places to carry out this sport. But the lesson is clear that the tow-in community needs to either come up with a set of guidelines for self-monitoring or agencies around the globe will also begin to restrict activities on their own. Having watched last year as people towed into 6-8′ beachbreak in Mexico or as idiots tried to town in bodyboarders into 3′ slop in Imperial Beach I know that the emergence of hordes of copycat wannabees create a massive set of problems for everyone. Serge

 

 

 

VOICE OF SAN DIEGO

Día de los Muertos

An elegy for Costa Azul and Harry’s

By Serge Dedina

It is only fitting that on this Día de los Muertos I write of the visit by revolutionary Mexican leader Sucomandante Marcos to the Sempra-Shell Costa LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminal in northern Baja California. The Sempra site is an open grave — a death shrine that represents a new phase in the way that multinationals export dangerous projects designed for U.S. markets to lesser-developed countries to escape or regulatory framework and acute American NIMBYism (let’s be fair — no one in their right mind would ever want a LNG terminal in their backyard).

In a deal signed off on by President-elect Felipe Calderon when he was Mexico’s Minister of Energy, Sempra destroyed one of Mexico’s most pristine coastal ecosystems to build its LNG terminal. Costa Azul, located between Tijuana and Ensenada (just north of Salsipuedes), was the home to globally endangered coastal sage scrub habitat, a fish camp, and an underground big-wave surf spot called Harry’s.

Marcos visited the Sempra site, just south of the Baja Mar Resort, a couple of weeks ago as part of a long bus tour of Mexico. Covered in his black cap and face mask and dressed in army fatigues, Marcos looked over the project site and declared, “This project is an example of how the new government of Calderon will exploit Mexico’s resources for the profit of foreigners.”

In Mexico, the faded promise of post-revolutionary regimes such as that of Lázaro Cardenas to harness natural resources for national development ended a brutal death at Costa Azul. There, Calderon and Fox opened up their country for a project that has little benefit for Mexico and represents a dramatic change in energy policy for Mexico.

As the United States commences construction of a Berlin Wall to keep Mexicans from crossing the border in order to accept the jobs that American corporations cannot wait to give them, Mexico continues to accept American industrial projects that provide little benefit for its own citizens. Once again the U.S. wins and Mexico loses. But in this case the blame rests entirely with Mexico and Fox’s PAN regime.

Meanwhile, north of the border, activists throughout California recently carried out a massive protest paddle in Malibu against various LNG terminals planned for Southern California. Protesters included Pierce Brosnan, surfing legend Laird Hamilton, Halle Berry and Cindy Crawford.

On November 8-10 Zeus Development Corporation will hold a conference on the future of LNG Development in the Pacific in San Diego and host a tour of the Sempra-Costa Azul facility. Sempra is planning to expand the Costa Azul site to include a second LNG facility.

Last year, Jason Murray and I took our own tour of the Sempra LNG site. Jason is a brilliant surf photographer and “Concussion Magazine” editor who photographed the big waves surfed at Harry’s by Greg and Rusty Long and Brad Gerlach — now the site of Sempra’s LNG jetty. Oddly, Sempra didn’t provide juice and cookies during our tour.

As Jason and I hiked the dirt road through a run-down fish camp to the Sempra construction site, we watched giant trucks dumping boulders on a pristine reef that according to Jason was, “The sport formerly known as Harry’s.” Just prior to Sempra security guards chasing us off the site, Jason turned to me and said, “I feel like I’m going to a friend’s funeral.”

So, on this Día de los Muertos, in honor of Subcomandante Marcos and Jason, I will light a candle for Costa Azul and wish Sempra the worst of luck in all of its endeavors such as the Sunrise Power Link and expanding its LNG operations in Mexico.

Viva Mexico. Viva Día de los Muertos.

This is the best article so far that connects the insane Sunrise Power Link proposed by SDG&E to the Costa Azul LNG Plant in Baja. This originally appeared in the Voice of San Diego.

The Sunrise PowerStink Project
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:58 AM PST
By Cory Briggs

I love KPBS, but I get nauseous every time I hear its announcers promote Sempra Energy and liquified natural gas (LNG). KPBS gives Sempra an air of credibility that it definitely does not deserve. Under pseudo regulation by the California Public Utilities Commission — real regulation presupposes that the regulators are not beholden to the firms they regulate — Sempra is working hard to screw ratepayers and the Earth…legally. It’s an environmental/economic double-whammy. (Other energy companies are lock-step with Sempra in working over their ratepayers. I’m picking on Sempra today because it’s a San Diego company that doesn’t give a damn about what’s in the best interests of San Diegans.)

To understand the double-whammy, first you must understand what Sempra has in store for us. It has built an LNG facility on what used to be a cherished surfing spot in Baja California, where even generous estimates don’t show enough Mexican natural-gas demand to sustain the facility for at least 20 years.

So how does Sempra benefit in San Diego from LNG in Baja California? That’s where the Sunrise PowerStink proposal comes into play. (I know it’s called “PowerLink,” but the project stinks so much that I’m taking some poetic license.) Sunrise is supposed to transmit electricity through the very beautiful Anza-Borrego State Park to San Diego from renewable energy sources in the Imperial Valley. Meanwhile — and this is a key point — Sunrise will also be connected to natural-gas-burning power plants outside California (e.g., in Arizona and Mexico).

Guess where the gas-burning power plants outside California are going to get their fuel? That’s right! From Sempra’s Baja California facility! Sempra is going to send its natural gas to those power plants through a pipeline from Baja California, and those power plants are going to burn the gas to make electricity that they will send (along with a little bit of renewable energy) to San Diego.

In sum, the Sunrise PowerStink project is a scam designed to help Sempra generate revenues to pay for an LNG facility in Baja California that otherwise could not pay for itself. You and I will have to pay for it through higher natural-gas rates and through enormous, potentially irreversible environmental destruction.

– CORY BRIGGS