WHERE SURF CRASHES INTO NOSTALGIA

Film maker Hal Jepsen rode a killer wave of applause, toasts and cheers into the Kahuna Surf Bar on Tuesday night. He almost lost his balance when two awesome surfer girls in midriffs and grass skirts ran up and planted kisses on his cheeks.

He righted himself in time to shake hands with the rising tide of well-wishers at his feet, most of them wearing surfer T-shirts and thongs.

He nodded hello to the row of stringy-haired surfers who kept shouting his name from their bar stools, and he warmly embraced a couple of local surfboard shapers he hadn’t seen in years.

Then someone slipped a quarter in the jukebox. As the opening of “Wipeout,” the great surf-rock instrumental by the Surfaris, flowed from the sound system, the wave finally broke. Jepsen was at last able to make his way into the back patio for a quick bite to eat with another old friend, Jacobs Surfboards owner Steve Jacobs.

To the worldwide surfing community, Jepsen is one rad dude. Since 1969, he has chronicled the surfing life style, both on and off the water, through seven feature films and dozens of TV specials, music videos and commercials.

His cameras have captured the highest waves from Maui to Malibu. They have immortalized some of the biggest names in surfing and documented some of the sport’s most memorable moments.

As Surfer magazine recently wrote: “Jepsen doesn’t make surf movies, he is surf movies.”

Jepsen’s newest movie, “Surf It U.S.A.,” is scheduled for June release. It is a six-figure documentary that focuses on the American side of surfing. Action shots will be filmed throughout California, Hawaii and the East Coast.

The movie also will feature new surfing techniques, segments on the latest high-tech boards and fashions, a history of surfing, and a recounting of the longstanding rivalry between long-boarders and short-boarders.

To capture some of surfing’s lighter, out-of-the-water moments, Jepsen aimed his cameras right at the Kahuna Surf Bar in Pacific Beach.

“Two months ago, I came into this bar with Hal on the advice of a friend,” said Jacobs. “We took one look around this place and said to each other, ‘We have got to film this bar.’ ”

Wise choice. The bar, which opened in August, is a monument to Southern California surfing culture.

The facade is a colorful collage of painted waves, surfboards and palm trees. Inside, five television sets and a pair of widescreens show ‘round-the-clock surf movies, seven days a week.

Suspended from the ceiling are more than 30 vintage surfboards, including such rarities as a 1926 redwood-and-pine longboard, a solid teak surfboard used by the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team during World War II, and one of the first all-fiberglass boards, made in 1961 by Dick Woodward.

The walls are plastered with surfing photos, posters and even an oil painting. Just inside the front door is a mechanical surfboard, as hard to ride after a few beers as the mechanical bull of “Urban Cowboy” fame.

The jukebox offers a musical history of surf tunes, from Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles” to the Astronauts’ “Baja,” the Surfaris’ “Surfer Joe,” and just about every hit the Beach Boys ever had.

The crowd of regulars who congregate there after a hard day’s surf includes many surfers whos hang 10 days are long gone.

Jack McPherson, 49, learned to surf in La Jolla on a heavy redwood-and-balsa plank almost 40 years ago. Today, his surfing adventures are confined to annual sojourns to the Baja California coast, but he still drops by the Kahuna Surf Bar at least five nights a week to reminisce.

“Most of us old-timers who come here like to watch the surf movies,” McPherson said. “We get in here and talk about the waves, but mostly we lie a lot.”

Bob Clark, 37, started his own handyman business seven years ago “just so I could take time out to surf whenever I like.”

He hits the waves off Black’s Beach and South Mission Beach virtually every morning, and, like McPherson, the Kahuna Surf Bar is his five-night-a-week hangout.

“Everyone here has the same view of life as I do,” Clark said. “We would rather surf than work, and if the waves aren’t right, we like to watch surfing videos.”

The owner of the Kahuna Surf Bar is Billy Baxter, 43, a native Californian and longtime beach-area activist.

Three years ago, Baxter ran for president of the Mission Beach Town Council and lost, even though he promised free beer for anyone who voted for him.

In September, his campaign tactic worked: He was elected chairman of the Mission Beach Precise Plan.

But his political interests, he said, are secondary to his love of surfing--and his desire to provide his surfing buddies with a place to hang out after the day’s waves die down.

“There’s so little of our culture left in San Diego,” Baxter said. “Everywhere you look, there are East Coast pizza joints and bagel shops. More and more of our beaches are becoming off-limits to surfers, and we don’t even have a major surf contest.

“And yet, we have some of the greatest surf in the world here in San Diego. So with this bar, at least, those of us who surf can be with people who share the same culture, the same language and the same love of the beach.”