Too Many Surfers and Too Few Waves

The fight reportedly started with the question, “Hey, where are you from?” It came from a self-appointed enforcer of a Palos Verdes Estates credo: If you don’t live here, don’t surf here.

Tim Banas, who was joined by his teenage son, Tommy, wasn’t about to back down. Surfboard tucked under his arm, he told the “locals” he was going surfing, “right here,” just as he has done for 25 years. “I probably surfed here with your parents,” he said, tossing in a mouthful of expletives for emphasis, according to one account.

Rocks began to fly. So did punches, until Banas’ 18-year-old son ended the brawl, onlookers say, by throwing a rock that lacerated the skull of a man grappling with his father.

Tim Banas wound up with a broken tooth and a knee injury. Chris Millican, 21, suffered a two-inch gash to his scalp.

The incident in early January--and a subsequent misdemeanor assault charge against Tommy Banas--has uncorked three decades of pent-up fury over contentions that rich kids from Palos Verdes Estates use street-gang tactics to keep outsiders from surfing at public beaches.

The fight may seem mild compared with fatal gang attacks in other parts of Los Angeles County. But beaches often breed territorial tensions, even on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, with its multimillion-dollar bluff-top homes.

Visiting surfers complain of threats and menacing stares called “stink-eye” from local surfers who belong to cliques such as the Bay Boys and Dirty Underwear Gang.

Visitors complain that they have returned to their cars after surfing to find flattened tires, snapped antennas and other vandalism. Others admit that they have fled before getting in the water, chased away by local toughs.

Local surfers don’t like being compared to gang members. They consider their cliques more like fraternities, created to prevent their backyard surf spots from getting crowded.

Some also contend that the fight between Banas and Millican was a rare instance in which tough talk erupted into violence.

Yet the incident, resulting, as it did, in charges against an outsider but not against any of the locals, has put the spotlight on surf access in Palos Verdes Estates and raised questions of equal treatment by local police.

Beach access, ironically, was a cause celebre on the Palos Verdes Peninsula during the Save Our Coastline campaign of the early 1970s, resulting in laws protecting the public’s right to enjoy California beaches.

The South Bay chapter of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation recently released a statement declaring “war on localism.” Its members, mostly from Torrance, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, have scheduled a March 9 nonviolent “beach clean-up and paddle-out” to reassert the public’s right to use Palos Verdes Peninsula beaches.

Members of the group have met several times with Palos Verdes Estates Police Chief Timm Browne to settle on a strategy that will end beach intimidation.

Palos Verdes Estates police say they will lend the group waterproof cameras to snap pictures of any offending locals. They also are helping organize “Surf Watch” volunteers to stand guard over prime surf spots during big swells, when the wave action is most likely to draw visitors.

Police Step Up Coastal Patrols

Browne, a police chief who surfs, said he understands “everybody has a right to get to the ocean.” He has increased uniformed patrols along a stretch of coast that includes popular surf spots such as The Cove, Haggerty’s, Indicator and Lunada Bay.

Browne also has been running undercover stings to nab car vandals. He even mounted an Internet camera with a powerful zoom lens atop his house, city-owned property with a bird’s-eye view of the surfing beach where Banas tangled with the locals.

The “surf cam” allows Internet viewers to watch the waves, or any mischief taking place on the beach, at www.surfline.com. Police hope the camera will act as a crime deterrent, much like a video camera in a convenience store.

At the same time, a Torrance lawyer representing Tim Banas is preparing to sue the group of local men that he says provoked the Jan. 4 fight. The lawyer refers to them as the Dirty Underwear Gang. The nickname grew out of the rump-scooting descent on the steep, muddy trail down the bluff to the ocean.

Michael Sisson said he will try to invoke the state law that in Los Angeles triggered numerous court injunctions against violent street gangs, forbidding them from congregating in certain neighborhoods. “You have a violent gang assaulting and attacking non-locals to keep them off their ‘pristine’ beach,” he said. “There’s no difference between these guys and the Crips and Bloods, except perhaps money.”

The facts of the fight are in dispute. Banas said he was jumped by Millican and others. The locals told police that Banas provoked the fight with combative language and threw the first punch.

So far, the district attorney’s office has declined to file charges against anyone but the younger Banas, citing a lack of evidence.

Philip Cohen, Tommy Banas’ lawyer, said he expects his client to be found innocent of the assault charge.

“He and his dad were attacked,” Cohen said. “He was doing his best to protect his father and he ends up being charged. It’s outrageous.”

The hostility toward outsiders known as localism is not unique to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Surf breaks in Hawaii, Oxnard, La Jolla and Hollister Ranch in Santa Barbara County have similar reputations.

In the Los Angeles area, parts of Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach reportedly have cliques that maintain a pecking order in the lineup of surfers competing for waves.

The overarching problem is too many surfers chasing too few waves.

Although the coastline seems vast, not all beaches are created equal. Some surf spots draw bigger waves. The best of these surf breaks have sand bars, rocky reefs or points of land that allow waves to unspool in long ridable ribbons, instead of crashing all at once in an unbroken wall of water.

Rocky Shoreline Easily Defended

The Palos Verdes Peninsula is blessed with some of the best point breaks in Southern California. The gorgeous, rocky shoreline is also easily defended.

A clutch of local surfers can often be found on the bluffs overlooking these beaches, checking the surf and greeting anyone who happens by.

To get to these beaches, surfers must pick their way down cliff-side trails, where they are vulnerable to rocks thrown from above. Once they are on the beach, the towering bluffs block any view of their cars left behind.

A group of about 200 to 300 Palos Verdes Estates residents surf regularly at the prime spots. They range in age from pre-teens to graying, balding men in their 50s. Most of them recognize each other by face, if not by name. An unrecognized face is likely to prompt the question, “Where are you from?”

Some of these locals admit to misgivings about intimidation tactics. Others worry more about attracting unwanted attention to their beaches.

“We don’t talk to the press,” said one thirtysomething man in wraparound sunglasses, interrupting an interview with another surfer at Lunada Bay.

Adam Dia, 28, who grew up in Palos Verdes Estates, said his fellow locals are mad at him for recently getting arrested on a misdemeanor charge that grew out of another beach confrontation.

Their anger is not over the fact that he challenged a pair of out-of-town surfers Jan. 16, but because his arrest has drawn attention, more “heat,” to the surfing beach. Dia fears he may lose his standing in the group.

He said locals are misrepresented as gangsters. The Banas fight, he said, was the first he ever saw at Indicator.

“There was 10 of us and one of him,” Dia said. “We could have done some serious damage to the guy. Instead, we asked him to leave.”

Locals Have to Wait for Their Turn Too

Even locals get hassled, he said, if they don’t wait their turn to catch waves.

“If someone comes down there to poach waves, it makes the regular surfers pretty damn angry,” he said. “You have to wait in line. You aren’t going to get a front-of-the-line pass. No way. It takes years.”

To protect their home turf, some local surfers are lobbying for a new city ordinance to limit parking on public streets to only residents with permits.

Others are circulating fliers that warn of falling property values to pressure the City Council into removing the Web camera and to prevent the installation of a second one that would scan the surf at Lunada Bay.

“Your neighborhood and surfing spots will be viewed by over 1.5 million surfers on the leading Internet Web site--Surfline.com,” the flier states. “This will drive hordes of people to come to these surf spots. Will PV become the next Huntington Beach or Malibu surf Mecca?”