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| Date/Time: |
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Friday, 4 July 2003 10:00-12:00 4th of July |
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| Location: |
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Tower 20, Santa Monica |
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| Weather: |
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Sunny and very warm. |
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| Conditions: |
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Small with a little cheese |
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| Swell: |
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n/a |
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Tide: |
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n/a |
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| Surf: |
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SB scale: Knee to Waist High SD scale: flat |
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Board: |
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6'2" |
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Comments:
My shortboarding inspiration, Mank, has been egging me on to try to master the 6'2" for several weeks. We've got ourselves so pumped up over email about shortboarding together that we decide to hit it up in Santa Monica before Blade's 4th of July party. Mank moved to San Diego from here about a year ago, and recently sent an email to the effect, "Today was the first day since I've been here where there were no waves to ride." So even when we were in Baja and I was having the time of my life, he was pooh-poohing the wave size since on the San Diego scale if was just ok.
With that in mind we showed up at Tower 20, aka "Bay Street" in Santa Monica, which was only a few blocks from Blade's new home purchase on 5th St. Mank sees the waves and wonders if we should take up skim-boarding but I'm already calling the day epic. We trunk it with some rash-guards, a liberating feeling in itself, and head out to the lineup. Since it is 10 o'clock there are already a lot of kids playing on the inside and a lot of surfers on the outside. I had no idea what to expect. I had heard of localism at the Venice Breakwater and the whole POP mentality, so I was just taking it on the down low. Turned out it was mostly beggininers out there on longboards and only 2 "locals" tearing it up.
Seeing as how I hardly surf with anybody I know, I was stoked to head out with Justin so I was a real chatter-box out there, hooting and hollering at every little wave, and continually laughing at my wipeouts. One mean local guy didn't like it, if we were having that much fun, we certainly weren't from around there. Mank took off on one left about 30' away from that guy. Mank was bogging down and that guy was coming fast down the line, and right as it was closing out, he caught up to Mank. He was sure to give Mank and I stink-eye on his paddle out, as he was mumbling something about "my dangerous friend". We blew it off.
We met a guy that was friendly out there on a longboard. When asked if he was from around there, he responded with, "Yeah, I live 5 or 10 miles inland." Mank assumed that meant he was from the valley. He was nice and it's always good to meet friendly people at new breaks. We didn't cut him off too much. About an hour into the session the lifeguard at Tower 20 went into a 10 minute monlogue on his bullhorn. He explained that all surfers must surf north of the tower and all swimmers must swim south of the tower. We were fine, as were most surfers. A few were too far south and he begged them to head north. He proclaimed that if we violated his 29th parallel that he would blackball the entire beach. Then it dawned on me. If this TC (too cool) local stink eye guy keeps putting up an attitude, I'm going to paddle south and get the whole beach blackballed. It was just an idea, I really wasn't going to do it, but it was a funny idea.
We both had a ton of waves, of which I was only able to make fun sections on a handfull of them. Mank was riding a new board he calls "the blank" because it looks like a glassed blank. The nose is about 2" thick as is the tail and the center is about 4" thick. It is crazy. I tried to ride it and it catches waves like a longboard, but it duck dives waves like you have a goodyear blimp tied to your back. Fun stuff.
We managed to not run over a single kid that was on the inside and so we headed in. It was noon now and now parking was at a premium for the 4th. We took our time changing and choose our replacement. Back at Blade's house the turn-tables were already spinning and the inflatable pool was filled.