The Spiritual Life of Catching Killer Waves in : Surf City : It’s a Swell Town, Locals Say of Huntington Beach

Most days begin early for Bill Robillard.

Rising at 6 a.m., he pulls on a wet suit in the converted garage off Pacific Coast Highway that houses his mattress and surfboard. Then he treks from his Spartan bedroom two blocks to the ocean for a quick session atop the waves.

“It’s the most important part of my day,” says Robillard, 20, who generally repeats the experience in the late afternoon if the surf is good. “When you catch a killer wave there’s a satisfaction you feel about yourself. There’s something about surfing that makes life happy.”

That sort of routine is as common in Huntington Beach as the steady swells that crash on the sand below P.C.H. Just across the highway from the beach are scads of condos and apartments jammed tooth to jowl with young surf dudes whose sole reason for existence is to rise at dawn and hit the waves.

They are the denizens of a special culture, the keepers of a flame that gives this coastal city and other surf towns dotting the Orange County shoreline an identity enshrined since the heyday of the Beach Boys.

Surfing boomed here in the 1950s and ‘60s. Attracted by the big waves, the long rides and a youth culture glorified in movie and song, surfers crowded by the thousands into small apartments, took odd jobs, partied on the beach, lived in their bathing suits and surfed, surfed, surfed.

It’s no different now, and the direct descendants are guys like Robillard, who supports himself flipping hamburgers for about $5 an hour at Wimpy’s, a local burger joint on the coast. He’s willing to do this for a living, the young man says, because surfing is the center of his universe.

“Other people just go to work, come home and go to sleep,” he says. “What kind of a life is that?”

Not much, if you ask the young surfers of Huntington Beach. And there are plenty around to ask.

A 1991 Los Angeles Times poll found that nearly one of every five men and women in Huntington Beach regards themselves as surfers. No wonder the municipality recently adopted the public relations mantle of “Surf City.” Of course, the bulk of the surfers are youthful, with 39% of those in the city between the ages of 18 and 24 saying that they like to ride the waves.

Some parts of the city, most notably the clusters of apartment houses and cottages radiating inland from the pier, are magnets for hordes of surfers. They cram into rental units or camp out in garages. Thundering stereos and boisterous weekend parties are a fixture.

Police, however, say there’s been few serious problems.

“The surfers are interested in surfing,” said Lt. John Foster, noting that the sport generally keeps the youths busy and out of trouble most of the day.

You can see them almost anytime below the cliffs next to Pacific Coast Highway. Glistening black in shiny wet suits, they dot the ocean like tiny specks of flotsam about to be washed ashore.

Just north of downtown is where the “inlanders” surf, people who travel to Huntington from landlocked burgs, park at the beach and tromp out into the swells with boards in hand.

Keep heading south and you come to the Huntington Beach Pier, closed for reconstruction since 1988 but scheduled to reopen next month. It is here that the locals surf, kids whose lives revolve around the clean swoosh of surfboards sliding on swells.

They’re guys like Robillard’s blond, long-haired buddy, Shannon, who calls himself “Poi” and won’t give a last name. When he was 7, Poi says, his parents took him from their San Clemente home on a four-month tour of the coast during which he learned to surf. He’s been surfing ever since.

“We’ve all been born into the water,” says Poi, 21, who works nights as an usher in a movie theater so that he can surf all day. “Surfing is spiritual. It’s like meditating. When the waves are up, everybody’s happy--it’s like a fever in the air. And when there are no swells, depression sets in. Every time I go out there I know that the ocean is a higher power.”

Or Eddie Thomas, a 23-year-old carpenter, who describes surfing as “orgasmic.” Once during a particularly gruesome wipeout, Thomas says, the skeg--or fin--of his surfboard broke off and stuck deep in his neck. After medical treatment that left a 13-inch scar, the young surfer was back in the water.

And over on 7th Street, almost within sight of the ocean, is the tiny two-bedroom apartment in which Robert Currasco and three surfing buddies live with their boards tied to the walls, wet suits hanging in the bathroom and bathing suits strewn all over the floor.

“If I’m away from the ocean I feel like I’m wasting my day,” says Currasco, 19. “I’m addicted to surfing. It’s important, like eating breakfast.”

One recent morning, however, breakfast was all he got. That’s because the swells were down, leaving surfers all over town feeling edgy. Currasco spent much of the day in bed. And a few blocks away at the apartment Poi shares with his girlfriend, a bunch of surfers sat moping on the couch reminiscing of better days.

“Surfing helps you focus,” Thomas mused, staring blankly at soundless pictures flashing on a television screen.

When they’re not flipping hamburgers or surfing, the young men say, they can usually be found hanging out with friends, partying at each other’s houses, or cavorting with bikini-clad women on the beach.

Days without surf are hard, though. So when someone suggested that Poi and his friends hit the water despite the poor conditions, there wasn’t a single guffaw. First they popped a surf video into the VCR to get into the mood. A little while later, hyped up, they grabbed their boards and headed straight to the beach.

For two hours the four friends floated on their surfboards near the pier, catching an occasional modest wave into shore then paddling back out. It was flat all right. But the sun was hot and the smell of the salt heavy. “We joked and spit water at each other,” Thomas said later.

And as usual, he said, they cleared their minds, became one with the ocean and momentarily forgot about the material world.

“When I’m out there catching the waves,” Poi said, “I don’t even see P.C.H. I shut it all out.”

Out on the highway, though, a quartet of eyeballs was not shutting out the surfers. The eyes belonged to Bill Byrd, 54, a hotel worker from Greensboro, N.C., visiting California for the first time, and his wife, Pat. The couple had come to Huntington Beach to, among other things, see some real-life surfers. Now they stood at the cliffs scanning the horizon hungrily for some views.

Byrd’s assessment?

“I think they’re crazy,” he pronounced without a millisecond’s pause. “The waves aren’t big enough and the water looks too cold.”

So much for Surf City.