Hanging 10 on the Wall : New Santa Cruz Surfing Museum Rides Crest of Enthusiasm

The art museum coordinator toured the exhibits and offered a running commentary on the color shades, angles, shapes and historic perspective of each work. Then he stopped at the last exhibit and slowly ran his hands along its borders, smiling with satisfaction at the clean lines and perfect symmetry of the work.

“This is a red hot stick--a three-fin thruster with hard rails that bites into turns, a slight rocker that keeps you out of chop, wings to break the water flow and a needle nose that doesn’t dig into the face.”

At the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum, a surfboard is seen as an objet d’art, a hydro-sculpture worth rhapsodizing about. When patrons discuss structure at the museum, they are referring to the design of a surfboard; when they discuss form, they are referring to the configuration of a wave.

But museum coordinator Dan Young, who was dressed in Hawaiian shirt, swim trunks and beach sandals, insisted that a museum dedicated to surfing is as legitimate as a museum dedicated to sculpture or painting. Surfing is an art, he said, a “dance on a wave.” And surfing culture has permeated the nation’s consciousness, Young said.

“You go to a high school in Wichita, Kan., and they’re all wearing surf prints,” he said. “All the Valley Girl talk, that’s just a bastardization of surf talk. And look at all these wine coolers they’re selling. Those were invented by surfers who first mixed Red Mountain wine and Wink.”

After recounting numerous other cultural contributions to society made by surfers, Young declared that 1986 is the perfect time for a surfing museum. Surfing, he said, has come of age.

“Surfer magazine has a circulation of over 135,000; a surf contest here is offering a $55,000 purse; wet suit companies now have yearly marketing plans. Surfing has grown up.”

California Trends

The surfing museum, the only one of its kind in the world, Young said, opened Memorial Day weekend and was an immediate success. Attendance--about 1,800 a week--is greater than either the city’s fine arts or natural history museum.

At the base of a small lighthouse, the one-room museum, with less than 1,000 square feet of exhibition space, is at the confluence of a number of California trends. Surfers frequently walk by on their way to nearby Steamer Lane, the area’s best-known surf spot; dozens of wind-surfers dot the cove just north of the lighthouse; roller skaters cruise by all day; meditators sit cross-legged on the grassy knoll in front of the museum, studying the play of light on the waves.

Inside the museum, tourists examine old redwood boards and 1960s surf movie posters, some talking in the hushed tones usually reserved for more renowned repositories of culture. They follow the chronology of surfing in Santa Cruz, from the 1930s when the famous Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku rode an old redwood plank in one of the city’s water shows, to the era of Gidget movies and Beach Boys songs, to today’s short boards and “slash and tear” style of surfing.

Just as the surfing culture has “grown up,” so have today’s surfers, said Young, 32, a fast-talking hipster who frequently tosses out terms like “stoked” and “killer.” Young, a board designer at a Santa Cruz surf shop, said most of his young customers are not the “drugs and rock ‘n’ roll types” of past decades.

Surfers today, like youths throughout the country, have become more conservative, Young said. Most “hot” young surfers, he said, are interested in making money on the pro tour and snagging lucrative contracts to sponsor surfboards and beach clothing.

“These surfers are like Republicans the way they’re all businesslike and money-oriented. . . . They have the full-on MBA mentality,” Young said, shrugging and shaking his head at a generation he has difficulty understanding. “It’s almost overboard. They don’t want to drop out and go surfing; they see surfing as a means to a career and want to get ahead as fast as they can.”

Marcel Soros took a break from an afternoon of surfing and, stretching out on a bench above Steamer Lane, agreed that the image of the surfer has changed.

Soros, a 20-year-old full-time surfer, has a business card, a surfing school and a leather portfolio filled with pictures of him that have been published in magazines. He is paid by a surfing company to wear their wet suits, and he receives a salary from a surf shop for sponsoring their boards.

“The ‘70s surfer was more of a radical dude,” said Soros, a five-time district Western Surfing Assn. champion. “Surfers now have more of a preppie-style. If you don’t have money these days, you’re more or less groveling. My goal is to sustain a comfortable life style from surfing, to be able to support a family, have two cars, be middle-class, the whole bit.

“I’m kind of a surfing entrepreneur, and some people in Santa Cruz don’t consider that cool. I’m too amped out for them. But they’re living in the past.”

Professional surfers support the idea of the museum, Soros said. The sport needs more positive publicity, he said, and the public should be aware that surfing has a rich tradition and is not dominated by derelicts.

‘Like a Surfing Kiwanis’

The idea for the surfing museum came from members of the Santa Cruz Longboarders Union, “a group of older guys who are coming back to the sport, like a surfing Jaycees or Kiwanis,” Young said. After city officials agreed last year to sponsor the museum, Young wrote what he called a “killer” press release. His announcement was picked up by newspapers throughout the country.

People began calling the city and offering surfing memorabilia, said Sally Legakis, the museum’s registrar. A woman from Missouri, whose brother had surfed in Hawaii and California, donated three antique surfboards. A Santa Ana man sent in a 50-year-old surfing club T-shirt. A retired Santa Cruz fire captain donated a series of old surfing pictures. The owner of a Santa Cruz surfboard company offered a 1950s foam and plastic wet suit, the forerunner of the modern neoprene version.

Soon there were enough items to display, and four months ago the grand opening was held, featuring seven antique “woodies” (vintage station wagons with wood paneling) parked in front of the museum that is a branch of the city’s natural history museum.

While proud of the museum’s accomplishments, Young does not intend to get complacent; he has ambitious plans for the future. He hopes, one day, to hold weekend meetings at the museum, featuring seminars with famous surfers, surfboard shapers, oceanographers and wet suit designers.

“There’s a lot of people out there who are getting reacquainted with the sport and would be interested in things like this,” Young said. “Like this older guy who had not been in the water for a while and just sat there for two hours watching his kids surf. He finally said: ‘Forget that.’ The guy--a yup-ette--stopped by the surf shop a little while ago, pulled out the plastic and bought a board. He missed that aloha life style.”