SURF COUNTY, USA : O.C. Riding Crest of a 50-Year Wave

When Ronald Blake Drummond, now 83, paddled out at Doheny in the 1930s, he was one of the first to surf the break in southern Orange County. His 100-pound redwood board was shaped in a garage. His swim trunks were homemade.

No one else was there. Surfers were so scarce in those days, they would stop to talk if they spotted each other’s cars on coastal roads. It didn’t matter whether they knew each other, but chances were they did.

In the half-century that followed, hundreds of thousands of surfers have followed Drummond into the breakers along the county’s 42 miles of coast. Redwood has given way to lightweight polyurethane foam, canvas trunks to phosphorescent fabrics and neoprene wet suits. Mellow has been replaced by aggro-- surfer parlance for an aggressive attitude.

The water is getting crowded.

Surfing, with its roots firmly planted here, is no longer the pursuit of a few eccentrics and rugged individualists. It has become a mainstream sport with enormous popularity and a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry behind it.

And in fact, Orange County has grown up with surfing. Today, it might aptly be nicknamed Surf County, U.S.A.--the nexus of a thriving surf-wear industry, headquarters of the two biggest surf magazines, one of the most prestigious stops on the premier professional surfing tour, home to several top surfers, the place where surfboard foam used worldwide comes from, and home base to surf fashion labels such as Ocean Pacific, Quiksilver, Maui and Sons and Gotcha.

Through the years, the nation has been amused by California’s sunbaked culture--with surfing embodying the fascination with brawn, blondes and beach fun. But these days, even to the landlocked masses, surfing is no longer a celluloid fad featuring Gidget and Moondoggie.

“We are an increasingly understood segment of society,” said Steve Pezman, 49, publisher of Surfer Magazine in San Juan Capistrano. “In the ‘50s, when you said you were a surfer, people said, ‘What’s that?’ In Mexico, when people saw you with a surfboard, they thought you were somehow connected with fishing. Now, when you say you surf, people just say, ‘Oh.’ It was more fun being misunderstood.”

Nationally, at least 1 million to 1.5 million people are avid surfers. An estimated 300,000 people in Orange County now surf, and going “off the lip” or getting “barreled” cuts across generational lines from Seal Beach on the north to San Onofre State Beach on the south. In the 1940s, there were fewer than 400 surfers in Southern California.

For pro and amateur alike, the allure of the sport remains the same--the rush of adrenaline that courses through the veins when a surfer taps a wave’s power. The sensation is similar to getting good wood on a baseball, hitting a crisp tee shot or swishing one through the basket from 25 feet out.

“There is a primal feeling to it,” explained Jonathan Paskowitz, a local long-board champion. “It is wave height times your weight times wave speed plus an unknown X-factor that allows you to project yourself across the wave using the fin in the bottom of your board. You can virtually will yourself to any place on a wave, go anywhere you want across that viscous surface. There is nothing that touches it. . . . Surfing is a savvy thing to get involved with.”

Fueled by its own success, the sport, by all accounts, has grown up, shaping fashion, environmental politics and lifestyles in the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, Latin America and even the Middle East.

But surfing has gained particular legitimacy in Orange County.

Thirty years ago, a handful of surfing entrepreneurs built the foundation for the industry by applying a little greed and business acumen to wave riding.

Today, the county’s surf-related companies--from beachwear and surfboards to surfer trading cards and a board game called “Surf Trip”--have grown rich on the fat of the sand. They earn the lion’s share of at least $1 billion a year in revenue, based on wholesale prices.

Major surfing associations have headquarters in Orange County, and the main office for the Surfrider Foundation, a rapidly growing environmental group, is in Huntington Beach.

Although still predominantly a young man’s sport, it has become common for surfers to share the lineup with 10-year-old grommets, as well as with up-and-coming pro riders, middle-aged professionals and salty dogs-- the elderly.

Unlike their predecessors, the modern surfer is more aggressive and increasingly image-conscious. Many have become what publisher Pezman calls “corporate kids,” pretenders who act like pros and plaster their surfboards with manufacturer’s logos as if they were sponsored.

Yet, there are many others in the water, and it is possible on any Sunday to see the evolution of surfing in the crashing waves off Orange County, especially if the waves are good.

Long-boarders ride in the style of the 1950s and ‘60s, carving fluid turns and walking up to the nose to put their toes over. The emphasis is on smoothness and flowing with the wave.

Pilots of short boards--less than seven feet long and weighing less than 10 pounds--make sharper turns and get higher on the wave face, occasionally becoming airborne before dropping back into the surf. Modern surfers, such as Christian Fletcher of San Clemente, use the latest equipment to shred, rip and “send waves to the hospital.”

Fletcher, counterculture hero and 19-year-old progeny of two generations of surfers, gets his thrills performing aerial maneuvers on an ghoulishly decorated ultralight board.

In contrast, Lorrin (Whitey) Harrison, still surfing at 77 despite five heart bypass operations, gets on all fours before he stands up on a gentle breaker at San Onofre State Beach. In a style reminiscent of the 1940s, he angles in standing straight up. His trademark hat made from the fronds of a coco palm barely gets wet.

For the professional surfer, however, there is more to the sport than just making waves. Domestic pros are buying pieces of suburbia overlooking the ocean. They drive expensive cars and earn steady--often heady--incomes.

Thirty-four contests worldwide offer purses totaling more than $2.5 million and at least two events hand out $50,000 for first place. The sport has become so awash in greenbacks that manufacturers often are reaching down to hand out free trunks and wet suits to even the 100th-seeded surfer in the National Scholastic Surfing Assn., an organization of 4,000 surfing students based in Huntington Beach. For top-ranked high school amateurs, sponsorships can mean more than $10,000 a year in terms of surfboards, entrance fees, accessories and travel expenses.

“I remember when you had to be in the top five to get trunks or a wet suit, and that wasn’t too long ago,” said association director Janice Aragon, women’s world surfing champion in 1984. “You really had to work for the free clothes. Now, sometimes I think these kids get too much success too soon.”

The chance of becoming a highly paid surfer, though, is about as remote as an inner-city youth becoming a Los Angles Laker. Competition is severe, the pressure great and longevity short.

“It’s pretty hard these days. There are a lot of hot kids in the water, but I’d say only a few have enough talent to do it,” said Dino Andino from San Clemente, who turned pro five years ago. “They’re calling me a veteran and I am only 21. Give me a break.”

For those who can’t surf like Andino, they can at least dress like him, and the seemingly insatiable desire to do so has been translated into a huge industry that generates an estimated $2 billion a year in revenue, both retail and wholesale. About 70% of all beach-related manufacturers are based in Orange County, and they have exported the surfer cachet all over the world.

Fashion labels such as Gotcha Sportswear Inc., Instinct, Quiksilver Inc., Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd. of Tustin and Hoffman California Fabrics of Mission Viejo are now the mainstays of the surf garment trade. Ocean Pacific estimates that it has garnered about a third of the wholesale market. Surf-wear stores even do brisk business inside shopping malls miles from the beach.

“It’s worldwide,” said Bonnie W. Crail, executive vice president of marketing for Ocean Pacific. “An Op rep was traveling in the Soviet Union and gave someone an Op business card. He was excited to get it. The romance has sort of spread.”

Surfing entrepreneurs such as Hobie Alter of Dana Point, Walter Hoffman and Gordon (Grubby) Clark of Capistrano Beach, and John Severson, now of Hawaii, started it all in Orange County in the late 1950s. Most of them have lived on Beach Road, a strip of beachfront homes off Pacific Coast Highway in Capistrano Beach.

Alter became one of the largest producers of surfboards and later developed the Hobie catamaran, the distinctive, popular double-hulled sailboat. His modern surfboard business would not have been possible without Clark, who developed polyurethane foam, the material from which modern surfboards are made. Lighter and easier to shape than balsa wood, foam transformed the surfboard business.

Hoffman, 58, whose family owns Hoffman California Fabrics, has traveled the world selling beach-inspired fabrics. He began as an importer of Hawaiian floral cloth and apparel such as the so-called “Aloha” shirt. Hoffman has also helped fashion giants such as Quiksilver and Ocean Pacific get started.

Severson documented the sport in Surfer magazine, which he founded in 1960. What started as an annual filled with black-and-white pictures is now a slick, graphically appealing monthly publication with a paid circulation approaching 120,000.

Other media have since joined in. Surfing Magazine in San Clemente now rivals Surfer in volume and advertising. Dynocomm in Mission Viejo produces virtually all surfing shows for television.

This year, Dynocomm is scheduled to make 23 hourlong shows to air nationally on Prime Ticket and ESPN, nearly double last year’s lineup of shows. It is a far cry from the few minutes ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” devoted to covering a major Hawaiian contest in the mid-1960s.

“It’s pretty exciting, what’s happening for surfing,” said Alan Gibby, owner of Dynocomm. “In America, if it isn’t played with a ball, people aren’t interested a lot of the time. But television has made competitive surfing more mainstream. We have had a tremendous impact on kids all around the country.”

Yet, surfing is beginning to become a victim of its own success. An apparently infinite supply of surfers is jamming a finite strip of coast, and the symptoms of overpopulation are everywhere.

Although strong “localism” has not surfaced so far, verbal disputes-- soundings-- and fistfights have erupted at some of the county’s most crowded breaks, as surfers jockey to take off on the limited supply of good waves.

“At the Huntington Beach pier, if someone comes out the regulars don’t know, he can get vibed out of the water,” said Andy Verdone, 30, coach of the Huntington Beach High School surf team, one of the best in the county. “Sometimes it gets physical. Somebody gets hit. It isn’t good, but, hey, it happens.”

To help ease the crowding and preserve what coast is left for surfing, the sport’s prophets, entrepreneurs and associations have put the emphasis on fighting coastal development and coming up with man-made solutions.

Artificial reefs have been proposed to create new surf spots along the coast. One is now under study for a stretch of beach north of Ventura. The first such reef, made of plywood and boulders, was installed experimentally during low tide at Doheny in the early 1940s. It was the idea of Ronald Blake Drummond of Dana Point.

Inland wave pools and water parks built from scratch are also on the drawing board, and the sport’s self-described visionaries predict that the totally controlled surf venue is a big part of the future.

Wave tanks, which mechanically produce artificial surf up to four feet high in an enormous concrete swimming pool, already exist in Irvine, Arizona, Florida, the Midwest, Tokyo and Canada. The Assn. of Surfing Professionals, the premier pro surfing group in the world, holds at least one professional event a year in a wave pool.

Herbie Fletcher, a former surfing champion who calls himself surfing’s public relations man, envisions national chains of wave pools with quality surf, perpetual good weather, palm trees, sand beaches and surf shops.

“It’s the California dream becoming a reality,” said Fletcher, 41, owner of Astrodeck Inc. in San Clemente and an avid jet-skier. “When it is snowing outside, you will be able to go surfing indoors. It will happen in Chicago. It will happen in Des Moines.”

Staff writer David Reyes contributed to this story.