WESTSIDE / COVER STORY : A Lifestyle Worth Its Salt : People Who Can’t Be Far From the Sea Arrange It So That They’ll Always Have Sand in Their Toes

Frankie Garrett leans back in the director’s chair outside his hair salon, takes a swig of cold beer, breathes in a long drag of sea air and smiles at a woman in a sun dress walking by.

“As long as the sun is shining and I’m within 500 yards of the beach, life is good,” said Garrett, the well-tanned co-owner of Bangs, a Santa Monica hair salon on Main Street, a short two blocks from his beloved Pacific Ocean. “Everything that we need is right here.”

While the majority of Southern Californians make their pilgrimage to area beaches during the warm summer months, Garrett and others like him live year-round a life that’s more a Midwest fantasy than reality for most Angelenos.

They work as lifeguards, scuba divers, parking attendants--anything to keep them a stone’s throw from the sand. They don’t have much money, especially by L.A. standards. They don’t own the million-dollar beachside homes or have $200 dinners at Shutters at the Beach hotel. Instead, they live in small, rent-controlled apartments or modest homes they built themselves.

They don’t really care if they’re missing out on the urban scene--after all, that’s what they’re trying to escape. Instead, they trade bigger homes and apartments inland for something that everyone wants, but few people are willing to sacrifice to get--beach access, all the time.

“Our freeway is the beach and our boss is the ocean spray,” said Garrett, who rents an apartment two blocks from his shop. “We don’t go east of Lincoln Boulevard, nunca , never. That side of the world doesn’t exist for us. We live here, we shop here, we work here and, God willing, we’ll die here. Life began at the ocean; that’s where life should be.”

But Garrett, who admits to being “over 30,” said he and others like him are “the last of a dying breed.” For 10 years, he and his partner, Avidis Jessippe, have operated their shop. They open every day at what he calls “Gary Cooper time”--high noon. They sit in the sun, clip some hair, take bike rides, clip some hair, walk to the beach, then drink some beer.

“People are always walking by and telling us they wish they had our lifestyle, but few people are cut out for this,” said Garrett, who sports a salt-and-pepper ponytail, a mustache and leathery tanned skin. “The men envy us because we have freedom. The women want to hang with us because we’re fun and we’re tanned. I’m the quarterback of sunbathers, baby. Nobody can tell me I’m wrong.”

Jon Johnston, a professor of sociology, anthropology and social psychology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, is an avid beach-goer who has speculated why some people have a mystical attraction to water that forces them to seek out the ocean at all costs.

“The sea symbolically represents new beginnings,” said Johnston, who has been at Pepperdine for 20 years. “You can sit there and look at the waves, imagine faraway places and wonder what’s on the other side. You could be sitting in Laguna Beach or Waikiki and see the same thing--blue.”

Living in a beach state of mind can be a release for people on “psychic overload,” he said.

“People have several choices when modern life gets to be too much,” Johnston said. “One choice is to get angry and frustrated. That’s how you get people like these postal workers coming to work and shooting their fellow employees.

“But another, more reasonable choice is to disengage, to find a place where it’s always beautiful, even if they have to sacrifice a lot to be there,” he said. “People used to criticize the poor for buying Cadillacs. But for the poor, that car was the one thing they could be proud of. It’s the same with people who live the beach lifestyle. They may not have a lot, but look what’s outside their front door.”

Jefferson Wagner, 42, decided 20 years ago that he would combine his love of the ocean with a way to make a living. He opened a surfing shop in Malibu and created a legend for himself. He’s known as “Zuma Jay.”

“I did a circumnavigation of the globe in the early 1970s and decided that I could never be far from the water,” said Wagner, who can see waves from his modest Malibu home. “I don’t have a Ferrari or a Mercedes but I’ve got the sand, and that’s all I want--my toes in the sand.”

What drives these people to seek out such prime location isn’t a high-priced address. Instead, Wagner said, it’s the ability to live a more relaxed life, with fewer cares and worries.

“The only law out here for me is the tides, the law of high tide and low tide,” he said. “In the winter, when there are fewer people around, you can wander down on the sand and be the only person for miles. It’s a humbling experience, but it’s also freeing. You can’t get any more in touch with nature.”

Wagner is sharing his love of the beach with his 3-year-old daughter.

“I know how special the ocean really is when the school buses come out loaded with kids,” he said. “Usually, they’re from the inner city, where these kids don’t get to the beach often. When they get off those buses, they hit the beach running. The effect being near the water has on them is remarkable. Those are the times I know what I have in my life is special.”

Johnston said people who embrace the beach state of mind will often find ways to tailor their lives around the sea.

“Some people will find ways to strike a balance between being at the ocean and maintaining a living by having jobs close to the sand,” Johnston said. “Those people will find their jobs will be made easier because they’re close to something they love.”

Pete Breceda, 41, is one of those people. He started working for the Santa Monica Police Harbor Patrol 10 years ago. Breceda, a native of Santa Monica, has his office at the end of Santa Monica Pier, which is exactly where he likes it to be.

“There’s a connection I have with the water that I’ve never really thought about,” he said. “One thing I know it does is help me to relax. Even if my job gets hectic, I don’t feel as stressed as I would if I were away from the ocean.”

Besides patrolling the pier and the surrounding waters, Breceda’s job includes scuba diving. He has to repair the buoys that are anchored along the old breakwater off the pier.

“Sometimes when I’m not working, I just automatically find myself going down to a beach parking lot to just relax and look at the waves,” he said.

Breceda’s love of the water is making one part of life difficult right now. He and his wife are considering moving inland to buy a home--Breceda has rented apartments most of his life. And though the move would give him his own home and more space, something about it doesn’t feel right.

“The more I thought about moving, the more tense I would get,” he said. “I’d be closer to my family and I’d have my own place. Then I realized it was the water. I wouldn’t be near the water, and that bothered me. Even though I’d still be working here 40 hours a week, I didn’t want to leave.”

Others find ways to make living near the ocean work, even if they have to build a house themselves. Los Angeles County Lifeguard Lt. Bill Robinson bought land in Decker Canyon and built a modest 2,000-square-foot Spanish-style home that on a clear day has a partial view of the ocean.

Now the Baywatch boat captain drives to Malibu Pier in the morning, gets on the lifeguard patrol boat and goes to work for the day.

Glen Egstrom, a professor emeritus of kinesiology at UCLA, combined work with the ocean by becoming a diving safety officer for the university’s scuba-diving program, a job he held for 30 years.

“Years ago, I divided the world into two populations, water people and non-water people,” said Egstrom, who can see the ocean and Catalina Island from his Santa Monica home. “People who are water people literally can’t stay away from the sea. They surf, body surf, sail, scuba dive, whatever it takes to be on or near the water.”

Even when he was fighting in the Korean War, Egstrom said, he found ways during leave to make his way to the beach.

“I’d catch a plane to Japan if I had to,” he said. “Whatever it took to see a wave.”

Egstrom’s love of the water was handed down to his two children, a son and a daughter, now both grown. They live on the island of Hawaii, and Egstrom and his wife visit their children several times a year.

But even if people aren’t constantly bounding into the ocean foam, Egstrom said, they can appreciate being near the ocean and sand.

“There’s a serenity that comes from being near the sea,” he said. “It makes everything seem like it’s all right. I don’t know of a more calming place. It’s good for the soul.”

Malibu artist John Register moved to Point Dume in 1973 because he liked to surf. He never left.

“When I came to look at this piece of property, I looked out at the ocean and saw a bunch of guys surfing,” Register said. “I thought, ‘This must be paradise.’ There’s not much better than to be able to look at the ocean every day and take walks on the beach with my wife and kids. Besides, the world sure smells better out here.”

But with a year-round beach lifestyle comes the question: Where do these people go on vacation? The answer is almost always the same: Hawaii.

“It’s our Mecca,” said Garrett, who travels to the islands a few months each year. “The north shore of Oahu is the only place that’s better. Where else can you go when the weather in California is lousy?”