The Green Room

Plenty of folks in Santa Cruz thought it was possible. Some even said it was only a matter of time. But few of us expected it would happen this soon.

Nat Young, the 17-year-old “Pride of the Westside,” won the 2008 O’Neill Cold Water Classic Sunday in pumping overhead surf at Steamer Lane. He is the youngest surfer ever to win the prestigious event and the first to bring the title back to Santa Cruz since Kieran Horn in 2003.

“It’s been a long day,” Young said after being carried up the stairs at Steamer Lane and mobbed by well-wishers and media. “I’ve been in my wetsuit since 7 a.m.”

Young’s first-ever victory in a World Qualifying Series event came by less than three-quarters of a point over second place finisher Chris Waring from Seal Beach. Maui’s Granger Larsen finished in third and Sean Moody, also from Hawaii, took fourth.

All four surfers surfed brilliantly during the final, which saw a booming northwest swell combine with an afternoon low tide for a wealth of waves pouring in off Lighthouse Point. The heat was so close that Young, who earned a final heat score of 13.87 out of a possible 20 points, and Moody were separated by less than two points.

“This was one of the best contests I think we’ve had in 21 years,” said Pat O’Neill, president and CEO of O’Neill Wetsuits. “The waves were always big enough for guys to get enough speed to pull off the most amazing maneuvers and really shine.”

No one shined brighter than than Young. After falling on his first two waves early in the final, Young settled down and found a solid opening score of a 6.5. Then, needing a score of at least 6.1 to take the lead, Young stroked into a medium-sized wave that walled up all the way through to the inside and linked together a series of vicious backside turns. The ride earned Young a 7.37, leapfrogging him past Waring and Moody for first place with eight minutes remaining in the heat. From there, Young was able to hold onto his slim 0.74-point lead until time expired.”I started off slow,” Young said. “I tried to go too big a couple times and fell. Then the waves started pumping and everything started to flow for me.”

It was the second big final in recent months for Young and Larsen, 18, who are developing quite the rivalry. The two also met in the finals of the National Scholastic Surfing Association’s National Championships at Lower Trestles this summer. Larsen, the favorite, wound up finishing runner-up to Young.

“I would say there’s a bit of a rivalry now, for sure,” Larsen said. “He had me. … Anyone could have won, but he’s the local, he knows the wave. Party at Nat’s house tonight!”

Larsen wasn’t the only one toasting Young on Sunday. In fact, it appeared as though half of Santa Cruz showed up at Lighthouse Point to cheer on the polite, freckle-faced grommet, who was the last local surfer remaining in the contest after fellow Santa Cruz surfers Bud Freitas, Randy Bonds and Jason “Ratboy” Collins were all eliminated in the semifinals.

The hometown crowd rallied behind Young, erupting with noise at every big backside turn, cringing any time a he dug a rail — which wasn’t often — and waving bright orange sings that read ‘Go Nat!’.

“Nike [one of Young's sponsors] made the signs and passed them out,” Young’s mom, Rosie, said. “Nat was a little shy about that.”

For Rosie Young, who has chauffeured her son up and down the California coast countless times for NSSA contests and other surfing events, his victory at the Cold Water represents the culmination of a five-year full-time commitment to her son’s surfing.

“Nat’s been surfing for five years now hardcore, every day,” she said. “Him winning the Cold Water at his age is something he can always be proud of, and it shows him what he’s capable of in the future.”

Youth was certainly the theme of the day as the average age of the four finalists was just 20. With underage surfers like Young and Larsen on the victory podium, contest directors had to quickly replace everyone’s beers with energy drinks and water before bestowing the finalists with the traditional victory soaking.

When asked what he planned to do with his $10,000 first-place check, a sopping-wet and shivering Young gave a prudent answer well beyond his grom years. “I’m going to put the money in my bank account,” he said.

O’Neill, who has known Young since he first began surfing for Team O’Neill at the age of five, said he had a special feeling watching Young’s run through the Cold Water.

“I’m so proud of Nat,” O’Neill said. “Last year, watching him in the Pro Junior, I just had a feeling he was going to win it, and I got that same feeling watching him in the contest this year.”

With the 2007 Pro Junior title and this year’s Cold Water both under his belt, O’Neill said there’s only one feat left for Young at next year’s Cold Water.

“He can still surf in the Pro Junior event until he’s 20,” O’Neill said, “so he’s got a few years to try and win them both.”

On Saturday, Santa Cruz board builder Ward Coffey was locked inside a Southern California shaping bay and asked to replicate a classic 1979 Bill Caster surfboard in an hour and a half.

Today, his shape will vie with five others to be declared the winner of the second annual Tribute to the Masters Shape-off at the Sacred Craft Consumer Surfboard Expo in Del Mar. Each of the five boards will have been crafted by an esteemed shaper representing a different surfing region from both the east and west coasts

Last year, San Mateo’s Marc Andreini represented Northern California in the shape-off. This year the honor was bestowed upon Coffey.

“I’ve known Ward for a long time,” event producer Scott Bass said. “He came down last year to cheer on Marc Andreini. Santa Cruz has so many facets to its surf culture, but one of the greatest things about the town is there’s tons of great shapers up there. [Coffey] is one of them. He’s totally into hand-crafted surfboards.”

Even if he hadn’t been asked to participate in the shape-off, Coffey said he wouldn’t miss a gathering like the Sacred Craft surfboard expo. Last year he was one of the few shapers from up north who made the eight-hour drive south to attend the inaugural event.

“From a shaping point of view, and surfing point of view, you can walk into anyone’s booth and check out a board and know where to surf it and when to surf it,” said

Coffey, who made the trip along with fellow Santa Cruz shaper Michel Junod. “You basically want to ride everything. It’s like, ‘Where’s the wax, I’m ready to go!”I got to see Terry Martin [Orange County master shaper of 45 years] shape. I got to talk story with him, discuss new ideas. I came away from the show feeling like I’m walking in the footsteps of the masters.”

Coffey shaped his first board in 1979, a year after relocating to Santa Cruz from Alameda. But it wasn’t until 1983 that he began his formal introduction to the craft, under the tutelage of Arrow Surfboards’ Bob Pearson. Coffey was surfing out at Four Mile when Pearson noticed Coffey’s self-shaped board. After admiring the green shaper’s work and comparing notes, Pearson invited Coffey to come by his shop and watch him shape some boards. Coffey wound up working in the Arrow surfboard factory for the next 10 years, learning each step of the production process, from shaping to glassing to sanding.

“The time I spent at Arrow, I would hang that on the wall as a proud time of my life,” Coffey said.

In 1990, he left Arrow to start Ward Coffey Surfboards. Now 48, Coffey continues to shape all his boards by hand. Nearly every one is a custom order from his loyal following of surfers between Big Sur and San Francisco.

The five other shapers competing with Coffey in this year’s Tribute to the Masters Shape-off include: Matt Calvani [Los Angeles], Timmy Patterson [Dana Point], Chris Christenson [San Diego], Ned McMahon [San Diego] and defending champion Ricky Carroll [Florida]. Carroll’s winning design last year replicated a classic Mike Diffenderfer shape.

This year, the winner receives $1,000 and a full-page ad in Surfing Magazine.

Whether or not his shape is selected as the winner today, Coffey said experiencing the camaraderie and new ideas spilling out of the Sacred Craft surfboard expo was the real prize.

“In a nutshell, we have a really small industry, and it was started here in California,” Coffey said. “The people who have been doing it a long time, we’re all craftsmen, we’re all artists. When we get together and look at the stuff that’s made, you realize how special it is. We make the coolest toys around.”

A memorial paddle-out will be held Tuesday to honor the memory of Santa Cruz surfer Mike Green, who died while out surfing at Shark’s Cove on Thursday. The paddle-out, being organized by the folks at Freeline Surf Shop on 41st Avenue, is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at the Hook on the Eastside of Santa Cruz. Anyone who wishes to participate is welcome to attend.

For more info stop by Freeline.

It’s official.

After an utterly dominant start to this year’s Association of Surfing Professionals World Championship Tour, Kelly Slater clinched his record ninth world title Friday at the Billabong Pro Mundaka, in Spain’s Basque Country.

Slater’s latest crown comes 16 years after securing his first ASP world title in 1992 at age 20. He remains the youngest-ever world surfing champion, and now, at 36, he is also the oldest surfer in ASP history to win a world title.

Even before No. 9, Slater was unquestionably the most successful professional surfer of all time. In addition to owning the most ASP world titles of any surfer in history [next in line is Australia's Mark Richards, with five], Slater also holds pretty much every other significant record in the world of professional surfing, including: most ASP world tour victories [39]; most event wins in a season [seven in 1996]; and highest heat total [Slater is the only surfer ever to score a perfect 20 out of 20 in a heat, a feat he accomplished during an epic performance in Tahiti in 2005].

Now the question arises: Where does Slater’s legacy rank among history’s all-time dominant athletes?

The “most dominant athlete” debate is a regular item on the agenda inside sports bars and on ESPN. The discussion invariably includes a small handful of usual suspects like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong and now Michael Phelps.

Even in a surf town like Santa Cruz, you’ll never hear Slater’s name thrown into the mix — a major oversight. While it’s true professional surfing is but a small blip on the mainstream sports radar, that shouldn’t diminish Slater’s athletic achievement.Similar to Jordan, Slater went into semi-retirement and then returned years later to reaffirm his dominance against an entirely new generation of younger competitors. At the ripe old age of 26, after claiming five world titles in a row from 1994 to 1998, Slater retired from competition citing burnout and a lack of motivation. He returned to the tour full-time in 2003, lost a heart-wrenching title race to Hawaii’s Andy Irons that same year, and wasn’t able to reclaim the crown until 2005. Slater then cruised to title No. 8 in 2006 and made it nine on Friday.

Armstrong “only” has seven Tour de France titles, but he managed to win them all in a row [from 1999 to 2005]. It’s possible that, had he not taken a break from the tour, Slater could have made it to seven in a row as well, maybe more. Now Armstrong is attempting to do what Slater has already done — return from retirement to once again climb to the top of the pack against a new crop of younger athletes. It will be interesting to see how he fares.

Tennis great Roger Federer has won 13 Grand Slam singles titles in his career and was the world’s No. 1-ranked player for a record 237 consecutive weeks, from February 2, 2004, through August 17, 2008. He remains close to unbeatable on grass, but has proven vulnerable to younger players such as Spain’s Rafael Nadal, especially on clay. Slater meanwhile is the favorite to win every event he enters, no matter the venue, from 2-foot Huntington Beach to 12-foot Pipeline, and has been the favorite for 16 years.

Phelps has won 14 career gold medals over two Olympic games, but let’s see how well his arms paddle against the world’s best when he’s 36. Furthermore, the ASP world tour is a 10-month season with stops around the world. To consistently win events requires a continuous top form for the entire year, not just one climactic two weeks.

And Tiger Woods? Well, I don’t consider golfers athletes, so that takes care of that.

I don’t expect to convince any Chicago Bears “superfans” that Slater is greater than Mike Ditka. Nor do I think I can convince hardcore golfers that Slater’s backside surfing at Pipeline requires more skill than Tiger Woods’ putt to force a playoff at the U.S. Open. All I’m saying is that what Slater has accomplished in his career deserves just as much mention in a discussion of athletic dominance as the standard cast of characters.

So next time you’re in a bar or listening to sports talk on the car radio, and you hear the “most dominant athlete” debate start up again, pipe up and give a shout-out for surfing’s great one, Mr. Slater.

A small encampment of smiling people lying on beach towels and sitting in folding chairs was the only sign that the biggest bodysurfing event in Northern California was happening in Santa Cruz. There were no sponsor tents, no sound systems thumping out music, no contest announcer. Just an inconspicuous scattering of swim fins and wetsuits on the sand in front of a nice peak breaking at 26th Avenue Beach.

Eric Gustafson of San Francisco, above, looks out from the mouth of a 26th Avenue barrel during a senior men’s heat Saturday.

The Santa Cruz Bodysurfing Association’s annual California Bodysurfing Championships was held in typical low-key fashion on Saturday. The contest, first started in 1983, continues to run relatively unchanged since its inception. That includes the pancake breakfast for participants at event director Tish “The Fish” Denevan’s house, a group barbeque, and no mention of prize money anywhere. The competition aspect remains informal [Denevan walked the beach Saturday asking if anyone wanted to help judge heats while the other judges headed out in the water]. It’s less about a contest and more about gathering the small, scattered tribe of bodysurfers, Denevan said.

“It’s a little bit lonely out there,” Denevan said. “Anytime you see another bodysurfer out in the water, you naturally gravitate to them. If I ever meet another bodysurfer I say, ‘Hey, join our contest!’”

When asked what she liked most about putting on the event every year, Denevan described a “feeling of being connected with everybody” and “the camaraderie.”While stand-up surfing today is featured in mainstream movies, fashion and advertisements, bodysurfers continue to operate under the radar. There are no bodysurfing magazines, no professional bodysurfing tour, and even the world’s most talented practitioners perform their dolphin-like acts to little fanfare or recognition. “Professional bodysurfer” remains an oxymoron.

Aside from wave riding of dolphins and seals, bodysurfing is a rare sight along our coast. The small cadre of lifeguards and water people who regularly partake in the sport are often forced to do so alone.

Case in point: Two bodysurfers at this year’s contest meet on the beach and begin talking about the waves. It turns out they both live in San Francisco and often surf the same spots. Both said they usually go out alone and were happy to find a partner to paddle out with, “especially on a big day at Ocean Beach.”

Nick Harvey shoots out of a large wave off of 26th Avenue on Saturday during the first semi-final junior men’s heat.

One of the men, Eric Gustafson, said that in the nearly 15 years he’s been living in San Francisco, he had only met three other bodysurfers — in a city trafficked by a million people every day. While the small number of bodysurfers around San Francisco may have something to do with the frigid waters and punishing surf of Ocean Beach, most of the bodysurfers at 26th Avenue on Saturday agreed they were something of a dying breed.

“There aren’t many of us,” said bodysurfer Peter Horak, of Santa Cruz. “Look around — a bunch of silver streaks.”

Quinn Sandberg, 17, was one of the few youngsters surfing in Saturday’s event. Sandberg, a senior at Soquel High, said he was one of just a few kids at his school who like to bodysurf. He attributed the underground nature of bodysurfing in part to the lack of commercial opportunities to make money off the sport.

“There aren’t really any products to sell besides swim fins,” he said. “They’re not selling anything with bodysurfing. There’s no magazines or shops or anything like that. There’s a lot more of that with stand-up surfing.”

A small clan of 31 bodysurfers from up and down the California coast — nearly half made the trip up from Southern California — showed up for Saturday’s gathering. They were treated to some pretty good conditions: The sun shone down all day as a fogbank was kept at bay far offshore and 2- to 3-foot green waves peeled left and right before hollowing out onto the sand.

Among this year’s contestants was Judith Sheridan, the San Francisco bodysurfer of underground surfing lore known for her fearless sessions out at triple-overhead Ocean Beach and as the only person ever to attempt to bodysurf Maverick’s. Sheridan said the attraction of bodysurfing is simple: an undeniably smoother, more intimate interaction with the wave itself, without the board as intermediary.

“I don’t like the idea of all this gear,” she said. “[With bodysurfing] there’s nothing between you and the water.”

For nearly 20 years the Mermen have been playing their own unique brand of surf rock.

The band, formed in San Francisco in 1989, has toured with the likes of Dick Dale and the Ventures and been featured on the soundtracks of countless surf movies, including just about every Maverick’s film ever made. They have also been dubbed “the official band of Maverick’s” by Jeff Clark himself.

But to lump the Mermen under the umbrella of “surf music” betrays an ear unfamiliar with the ocean and its many moods. For those who insist on labels, try “ocean music.” Nothing communicates the essence of the sea, particularly the chilly waters of the Northern California coast, as powerfully as the Mermen. When you play their music, you can hear the pounding surf and shifting sandbars of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, the thick bull kelp swaying off the rocky North Coast, and the teeming wildlife of the Monterey Bay.

After 20 years of drawing inspiration from the fog and unruly beachbreak of Ocean Beach, Mermen founder and lead guitarist, Jim Thomas, who composes and produces all the band’s music, relocated to Santa Cruz. With the help of part-time Mermen bassist Jennifer Burnes, he built a recording studio/lair of the avant-garde on the Eastside of town out of an old storage space.

How would the reefs and coves of a sunny surf town like Santa Cruz influence the music? We’ll soon find out. The Mermen are set to release their first new record in nearly eight years. In the following interview at the Mermen studio, Thomas talks about his migration 70 miles down the coast and the band’s highly anticipated new album:

Q: So Jim, you’ve left Ocean Beach for the Eastside. After five years, what do you think of Santa Cruz?

A: I like Santa Cruz. It was hard leaving San Francisco, but Santa Cruz has its own thing going. Me and Jennifer are here, Martyn [Jones, Mermen drummer] is still up there in San Mateo. But you know, I lived in San Francisco for 20 years. I was looking for a place to do a studio. I would have rather not left San Francisco, which was a bad move in retrospect because I didn’t realize how much my community was established there. And once you leave San Francisco, you know, people start to hold it against you. If you’re in Berkeley or San Francisco or Oakland people tend to feel like you’re part of the hometown crew and they support you. But the minute they even see your phone number change, they’re like, ‘What the heck, what’s this 831 stuff?’ you know. I’m not kidding man. But, I figured 20 years there, I’m just gonna try something different. If I was up there I probably would have made three new albums by now. Because I got down here and it was like…

Q: You can definitely surf more often down here. More time getting distracted by waves.

A: You know, this is not San Francisco. Santa Cruz is like a small town where everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Up in SF nobody cares what anybody else is doing, right? And it’s a lot different in regards to the music scene. [In SF] it’s really harsh and intense and real competitive. If you’re into writing or art or whatever, SF is a great place because it’s competitive. It’s like New York City in that respect. Santa Cruz reminds me a lot of a small town. But this place has got some amazing people. Like Barney and Flea for example. I look at those guys and they’re really interesting people. Really soulful. They’re like cowboys, they do scary shit. They just don’t go by the book, you know. When I see Flea riding a wave that big and being so aggressive with it, it’s like what the heck is that?
Santa Cruz is a great town. Having toured a lot all over the U.S., probably to every major city in the country, gone back and forth probably 25-30 times, there is no place like the Bay Area and Santa Cruz. Here we have Big Sur. We’ve got that whole stretch up the coast [north of town] for 70 miles. We’ve got the north coast. And Santa Cruz is an interesting town. A lot of young people, it’s a surfing town, plus this area is one of the premier areas in the world where people are doing ocean science and preserving the Monterey Sanctuary. All the biggest ocean scientists are here. And then there are a lot of people who are … over the top I’ll call it. A lot of freaks, a lot of hippies. Surfer freaks, and surfer punks and surfer gangs, it’s got it all.

Q: You guys have always been very open and encouraging about sharing the Mermen’s music with fans for download. Could you talk a little about that?

A: Right now is a time where it’s so difficult to regulate. What can you do? Once you have music out there, it’s just a virtual world and it just goes everywhere and people get it for nothing. So people want to pay for our music, they pay for our music. They can get it for free if they want. I just don’t care. I’m so much more interested in just making music. I’ve never been interested in making money, to the chagrin of everybody around me. I’ve never been really ambitious about making a lot of money. It’s nice to have it, and I’ve sold music for a lot of money, but I’m just not the kind of guy who’s gotta have a nice car, gotta have a nice house, gotta have all this bullshit. So, yeah, the music’s free. And now we’ve established such a history of providing the live recordings for free, we have to continue to let people have them for free. I was talking to the guy who recorded our last show and we were talking about whether to sell it or to give it away for free. I decided we’ve been giving em away for free for all these years, we just gotta keep giving it a way for free.

Q: Did you surf with Grant [Washburn] and Doc [Renneker] and John [Raymond] and others from that original Ocean Beach/Mav’s crew back in the day?

A: Not really. Grant was in a whole other league. We lived in the same area, so we’d see each other out in the water, but I was never in the same class as those guys, you know. Even though I know Grant and Jeff [Clark] and all these people are my buddies I just… All those years I lived at Ocean Beach I saw days…man, and even days when I would paddle out that were way beyond my ability, where I put two leashes on because I thought if I ever lost my board out there, I would drown. And I’d be paddling over waves and I’d have to blink because I couldn’t comprehend that the wave was that big. And yet I wasn’t getting killed, so that was a good feeling.

Q: I just always think of that photo you guys put on the inside of the “Food for Other Fish” album [of Washburn at the bottom of a heaving, dark, outer bar Ocean Beach wave pushing 20 feet]. That photo is just ridiculous. How do you even get outside on a day like that?

A: Grant has been a huge support to the Mermen. You know, he and I learned to surf in the same town in New Jersey. Lavalette, New Jersey. He’s from Connecticut, but his parents own a house in Lavalette, where my parents used to rent a house in the summer. So we learned to surf at the same beach. Grant and I have had this resonant thing over the years. He loves the music. All the years we’ve known each other, he’s used our music in every one of his films. And Jeff too. It’s been a good relationship. A lot of the Maverick’s guys have always supported the music. Our ties to all the surf music scene over the years have become really strong, you know. I’ve met the guy who screamed at the beginning of “Wipeout,” I’ve met the guy who wrote “Pipeline.” Every surf hit known to man, I’ve met all these people over the years: The Ventures, played with Dick Dale ten times. It’s been an interesting trip. And I’m just from New Jersey.

Q: Yeah, how is that? That’s interesting to me, because I’ve always felt like you’re music captures the essence of the Northern California coast. You hear Ocean Beach in your music. It’s insane. How did you get in touch with that?

A: I don’t know. I think it’s just the fact that I love the ocean and have always lived by the ocean my whole life. I’ve always lived close to the beach and I’ve never felt comfortable anywhere else. I’ve always surfed. I’ve had a good ten years of my life where all I did was surf and travel. Surfed the Jersey shore in the winter in a full wetsuit in the snow and the ice. I think it’s informed by all that. I love surfing, I love music, I love the ocean.
The funny thing was I came to San Francisco from New Jersey with nothing. I came out here with one surfboard and an acoustic guitar. And I was in a real apathetic state. I didn’t care about doing anything. I got a job I hated. I hated it all. But then I saw a job ad in the newspaper in San Francisco for a music store salesperson. I thought, ‘that looks interesting.’ I went through interview and I wanted that job so bad. They gave me the job, I ended up doing really well there. And what happened was I ended up writing all the music for what ended up being “Krill Slippin’” [the Mermen’s first record] in the music store when things were slow. We sold four track recorders and I would play customers the songs I had written while I was showing them how to use the four track. These songs became the demo tape for what would be “Krill Slippin’”. Sometimes when I was selling people on equipment, I would write parts of songs on the spot.

Q: What did the people you were selling this equipment to think of your songs when you played them?

A: Oh, most of them didn’t give a flying [crap]. But you know you did? Allen Whitman [original Mermen bassist] was working there, and there was this girl that worked in the music store. Allen had to be in the band and that girl cared enough to finance our fist record.

Q: You guys are currently working on your seventh album. When can we expect to get our hands on it?

A: Probably a few months still. I’ve been working on this one song and it’s taking me forever. Trying to get a song where you need it to be involves a lot of pushing and shoving, you know. It’s kind of like surfing and trying to get in just the right spot on a wave that just wants to kick your ass.

Q: Is it true this August recording session was really the first new Mermen recording session in ten years?

A: Yeah. We’ve done a lot of playing together in here, but this is the first formal recording with quality tracks where we hired an engineer and we set up a huge amount of mikes and made a lot of noise and pissed off all the neighbors.

Q: How would you describe the music on this new album? What kind of sound were you going for?

A: It’s hard to describe. There are songs that are really ethereal and others, like this one I wrote, that’s like this very epic cowboy disco song. Yeah, go figure. Ever see the movie “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”? Well, Ennio Morricone wrote the music to that. I love doing that type of stuff. Sometimes people will write about us and say that the Mermen are all classic surf music. The Mermen are as far from classic surf music as possible. We get mislabeled all the time. I love all that old surf music and I play it all, but we don’t like to limit ourselves to that.

Q: Anything in particular inspire you?

A: Sometimes, but that usually never really feels right to me. You know how you have dreams? Well, I think of my music as what I dream. That’s what it feels like to me, like you’re dreaming of this perfect form. You can think of it like a perfect wave. So you have a dream where you are in that perfect form of the perfect wave, this resonant form. So the music is like putting a carrot out in front of my donkey, which is myself. I’m trying to move towards that perfect form. And maybe it’s something that will never completely come true for me, and it feels very much disembodied from me, in the sense that it’s beyond my own experience. And it could be really beautiful and resonant and perfect and meaningful to so many people — because I get lots of letters from people describing these feelings from our music — but I use the word disembodied, because it really is outside of me. It really is like a dream. Even though you’re part of it, it’s as if your body and your mind know something that you don’t know consciously. The form that we are as humans, we are evolving things. The closest I’ve really come to explaining it for myself what music is to me, is that it reminds me of dreaming. I can say all my songs are like dreams I’ve had. And I write the dream down as a song. But the dream is a tension between where I am and where I want to be. You’re growing into something greater. It’s like with surfing. As you build your skills through your life you get better and better and you reach a point where, because you have accumulated all these skills you can surf an incredibly heavy wave and deal with it. So dreaming is like grasping for that perfect form you want to get to.

Check out over 100 recordings of live performances by the Mermen available for download at www.archive.org.

You’ve probably run across the Dogman during a websurfing session at some point. You know, one of those prolonged surf report/forecast checks that turns into two hours of looking at pictures of perfect waves and reading travel articles on exotic surfing destinations.

The Dogman Chronicles–a weekly column of thoughts, observations, and photos from around local waters–are hard to miss, since they are hosted by forecasting site PacificWaveRider.com. I’ve been a regular reader of the Dogman for a long time now. But who is the Dogman really? Read the following interview to find out more about one of the best underground surf documentarians along the Northern California coast…

Q: Who is the Dogman? Describe yourself and how you got involved with surfing?

A: DogMan is the alias of Rus Scott, a long-time resident of Santa Cruz, a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a surfer who is not actually very good, but is accomplished enough to handle very heavy ocean conditions, not create undue danger for himself or others in the lineup, and ride waves up to triple overhead.

Q: How long have you been surfing?

A: I started surfing so long ago that it would be embarrassing to admit the year. My Dad was a Navy man and I was a Navy brat, so as a boy (buoy?) my family lived all around the country and even internationally. But we always lived near or on the ocean, and I inherited the love of the beach from my Dad and my Mom, herself an avid bodysurfer.

I first learned to surf at a break called Mayport Poles, on the Mayport Naval Base at the mouth of the Saint John’s River near Jacksonville Beach, Florida. But one dark and dismal day my Dad was transferred to Pensacola, Florida. No matter what anyone tells you, the Gulf Coast ain’t got no waves! So my nine foot Hobie collected dust in the garage for several years, and I lost touch with the sport. After moving to Santa Cruz, I couldn’t help but notice the great waves and world famous breaks. So about 20 years ago I got back into the sport. My wife got me an O’Neil wetsuit for my birthday, and that was the restart of my love affair with surfing.

Q: How did you get the nickname Dogman?

A: My wife and I have been the proud guardians of Airedale terriers for many many years. In fact, I have a small tribe of Airedales pushing daisys in my back yard in Felton. The current pair of mutts’ names are Buster and Gracie. On trips to the ocean I take my dogs. Like many other surfers, I have trained them to stay on the beach and wait for me while I surf, although Buster has been known to swim to the lineup to join me. At Davenport, the other surfers knew me by sight, and by my dogs. They took to speaking of me as “that guy/man/dude/surfer with the dogs.” A surfer named Kelly first transliterated this into “DogMan” and the name stuck. For a while, the other surfers were too shy to use the nick in my presence, thinking it would insult me. Not to worry! Another surfer named Josh was finally brave enough to use it to my face, and I was delighted. I get a much better reaction writing about and photographing surf related subjects as “DogMan” instead of “Rus.”

Q: How did you come up with this fantasy surf world of “Dogworld”? What’s the idea behind “Dogworld” simply to protect names of local surf spots by giving them alternate names?

A: Protection of the innocent is part of it, but as with the “DogMan” nick, it started with others. One of my long-time surf buds, Legendary Mike (that’s a whole story in itself), originated the phrase “DogLand.” Loosely translated, it means “anywhere the DogMan surfs.” I’m mostly a west side surfer in Santa Cruz, so more specifically, “DogLand” is the stretch of coast from the Lane north to Añyo. On occasion, “DogLand” includes the east side of Santa Cruz, Moss, Montara, Maui, Mexico, Ventura, Coast Rica, Indo, Fiji, Oz and on and on.

Q: How long have you been doing photography? How did you get into it?

A: My Dad was a photographer in the US Navy, and taught me the tricks when I was a kid. I didn’t really take to it, but the early learning helped. Later in life, like most surfers, I was vain enough to want some cool pictures of myself riding waves. Que Lastima! There was no one willing or able to take such pix. So I hatched a half-baked idea: I would take surf pictures of everyone else. I figured that somehow karma would come back to me, and if I was good enough and dedicated enough to the task of surf photography that it would somehow lead to my goal. I didn’t really have it planned as to how this would unfold. But with time, my wish came true. I now have a whole collection of pictures of the DogMan surfing. Guess what? They reveal a rather ordinary, pedestrian style of surfing that would never make the cut in any surf magazine. But this has also helped; seeing myself in action has spurred me to develop my style, push my limits, try harder and achieve more.

I’ve sold photos to magazines and individuals. In fact, some of my surf trips have turned a profit from the sale of pictures. On the other hand, if I buy one more camera my wife might divorce me! I’ve also done photography for weddings, commercial work for periodical advertisements, and pet photography. Anyone interested in DogMan pictures or photography services should email me.

Q: How long have you been doing the DogMan online column? How did you get into it? What inspired you?

A: My inspiration, like most writers, is myself. I spend most of my life being responsible: family, job, house, dogs, autos, chores (yawn…). There are precious few hours left for surfing and for world travel. I want to remember the good times in my life, so I started logging while traveling and after each and every surf session. This was all purely for my own amusement.

With the advent of the internet age and email, I began to share some of what I wrote with friends, and they reacted favorably. I went on an extended surf trip to the Mentawais in 1999 and logged everything, from which I wrote an entire travelog and surf adventure with photos. I shared this by email, and friends shared it with their friends. I began to get email from people I didn’t know telling me how much they enjoyed what I wrote. BTW, it was an extreme adventure to surf and travel in the Mentawais, but it was not what you would call a vacation. Among other things I got to surf with and speak with Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian, Ken Bradshaw, Lisa Anderson and others.

By 2001, I was clicking into a fantastic surf forecast site called PacificWaveRider, which featured columns by various contributors. One columnist was Glenda Carrol, a surfer from the north bay. She entertained ideas for guest columns, so I sent one to her. She ran it, and suggested I start writing regularly for PWR. Just about September 11, 2001, I began to run regular columns on PWR, and became friends with Mike, the creator of the site.

More than six years later, I have yet to miss a weekly column, and even run a feature on my website called “Six Years Ago On DogMan’s Chronicles.” My own website is DogManSurf.com

Q: Funniest/wildest stories of all time from the Dogman Chronicles?

A: Funniest story: I don’t know what anyone else finds funny, but I have two funny favs:

“Honey, I Shrunk the Surfer,” and “DogMan talks to the Dolphins.” I like the first one so much I recently did a reprise called “Honey, I Shrunk the Surfer, Again.”

Wildest Story: Again, I nominate two columns for being the wildest: “Tales of Ho’okipa”, and “Soul Surfing with SuperMan”.

What to do when almost 100 surfers show up at the beach for a surf contest but the surf fails to follow suit?This was the question facing surfers and organizers at the fifth annual Schralpfest surf contest at Pleasure Point on Saturday, which saw plenty of enthusiastic young surfers, but mostly weak ankle to knee-high waves struggling to break through the lineup.

Fortunately, Schralpfest is about a lot more than just competitive surfing.

“It’s all about giving kids something positive to do, whether it’s a surf contest, trips to skateparks or dances,” said Jenny Useldinger, 23, who went on to win the women’s event. “I grew up on 34th Ave. Back then, living near the Point, there was a lot of drugs and alcohol around. [Schralpfest] definitely puts on a positive vibe.”

Seven Adams works over a small Pleasure Point wave in an early Shralpfest heat Saturday morning.

Schralpfest is a total grassroots surf contest, organized for the youth of the community by the youth of the community. The event is hosted by The Core, a local youth group founded in 2002 to give kids around town positive recreational, social and educational activities to engage in. The Core members — ranging from middle-school-age kids to 21-year-olds — meets weekly to organize concerts, dances, educational speakers, mentorships, and the Core run-swim-run.

“We’ve been getting a lot of younger kids,” said Kim Clary, who founded The Core in 2002, “but even as our original kids get older they aren’t leaving. They’re staying on and mentoring the younger kids. They all work together to put on this event.”

Some big names showed up for the Pro-am division, including Peter Mel — who also helped MC the event — Anthony Ruffo, Homer Henard, and eventual winner Jason “Ratboy” Collins. But it wasn’t just for the $500 prize purse, said pro surfer and Schralpfest contest director, Matt Myers.

“You see pros like Peter Mel and Homer Henard out surfing in the contest and hanging out with everyone even though the waves aren’t good,” Myers said. “Normally you would be over it and out of here, but everyone is hanging out to support the kids.”

This year’s contest saw 90 surfers of all ages sign up to participate at the beach in the early morning.

In addition to being able to surf in one of the more popular local amateur contest, kids were treated to a free lunch from Aloha Island Grill, a T-shirt and entry into a raffle for prizes like wetsuits and surfboards.

Despite being micro, the waves were still contestable, especially for the smaller groms, and plenty of small wave hotdogging was on display.

Jacob Davis slices through a cutback in his grom heat at the Shralpfest Saturday at Pleasure Point.

Noah Wegrich “schralped” his way to first place in the Groms event and Jason Hdez won the Juniors. In the women’s open, it was Sahara Ray and McKenzie Stair taking second and third respectively behind Useldinger, who said she was just happy to be a part of such a community oriented surf contest.

“It’s just cool that it’s all local kids putting it on,” Useldinger said. “It’s something that the city was lacking when I was growing up.”

Nick Mucha was in the middle of a two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America when he decided to use his vacation time to visit a friend’s surf camp in Nicaragua.

After going for months without seeing the ocean while working in the mountains of Honduras, Mucha and his Peace Corps partner, Adam Monaghan — both hardcore surfers — weren’t fazed by the arduous two-day journey by bus required to reach the small town of Pie de Gigante, along Nicaragua’s southern Pacific coast.

While they were impressed with the often perfect and empty waves they found at their friend’s newly established surf camp in Gigante, Mucha and Monaghan were more concerned about how the small town of about 400 was being affected by the rapid influx of foreign surfers in search of waves.

Even more disturbing was how the majority of people in the community — mostly poor fishermen — were seeing little, if anything, in return from the foreign surfers and surf camps that came to use the beaches and waves.

“I think if I had just come there straight from Santa Cruz, I would have been in hog heaven,” Mucha said. “But coming from a Peace Corps perspective in Honduras it was so clear that surfing was infiltrating this small town where the only exposure to the outside world is through surfing.

“Americans like my friend Jack are coming in and setting up hotels, taking advantage of the resources these communities are offering. There wasn’t a coordinated effort on the part of the surfers to make sure that the community was the primary benefactor.”

In 2005, Mucha and Monaghan founded Project Wave of Optimism, a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, dedicated to promoting sustainable community development in Latin America surf destinations. For the past year and a half Project WOO has been working on its pilot project in Gigante.

After their first visit, Mucha and Monaghan realized that the well-groomed tubes spinning just off Gigante Beach represented the town’s most valuable resource, one that could prove to be a vital asset in pulling the community out of the depths of poverty.

The rapidly growing, million dollar surf travel industry could wind up being the savior of this formerly isolated village — or its downfall.

“We wanted to make sure that these small towns are really benefiting from the presence of surfing,” Mucha said. “Our philosophy is that surfing’s footsteps around the world be planting positive seeds of social change.”

Mucha, 28, currently lives in Santa Cruz working full time for a separate nonprofit, but for the past two years his second “full-time” job has been his role as Executive Director of Project WOO. He works on a volunteer basis, receiving no pay.

“Project WOO is really where my heart is,” he said. “We’re on a very shoestring budget. Paying my salary is not a high priority right now.”

Monaghan, meanwhile, facilitates Project WOO’s on-the-ground operations in Gigante and is committed to staying in Nicaragua as long as necessary to ensure that the program becomes sustainable, Mucha said.

Drawing upon their community development experience in the Peace Corps, both knew that in order to create sustainable social change in Gigante it was up to the villagers themselves to decide what they wanted to do about the issue of surf tourism and how they wanted to accomplish their goals.

Instead of coming in as outsiders and telling the people what to do or just handing out what they deemed best, Project WOO asked the people what they wanted and helped them to address those needs themselves.

To that end, Project WOO worked with townspeople to conduct a “commmunity-wide needs assessment” study in which each citizen participated in workshops and town meetings to identify Gigante’s greatest needs. This project included the first census ever taken in Gigante. At the end of the nine-month process, the town identified transportation and education as its biggest priorities.

Gigante has never been served by a public bus, making things that should be simple — such as going to school or going to the market to buy and sell goods in the nearest city — a time-consuming and exhausting affair. Since there is no secondary school in Gigante, high school age students who wish to continue their education are forced to travel as far as 30 miles just to get to school every day through a combination of walking, hitchhiking and waiting for buses that run outside of town.

WOO is working with the community to acquire and operate the first public bus company in Gigante by providing the town with a “micro loan” to purchase the bus and cover the startup costs for the first six months. Over a five-year period, the town will pay the organization back and assume full ownership of the transportation business.

“There is no charity involved,” Mucha said.

Project WOO is also helping to pay the salaries for three new elementary school teachers at the town’s primary school. Before the new hires, there was just one teacher responsible for some 80 kids.

WOO also facilitates other town projects, including providing educational materials for the primary school, constructing two latrines and a swingset for the school, digging a well and constructing a water system for potable water, and improving the dirt road that connects Gigante with the nearest town.

In the coming months, there are also plans to build a town library. An architect from the States, who frequently visits Gigante for surf trips, is donating his experience to help in the process.

Project WOO’s innovative grassroots approach to helping poor coastal communities in Latin America benefit from the presence of good surf has also attracted the support of Reef, one of the most powerful players in the surf industry. The clothing giant recently launched a new project called Reef Redemption in an effort to get on board the “green” bandwagon and implement what its Web site describes as “environmentally conscious and socially responsible business practices.”

Mike Gass, Director of the Reef Redemption program, said the company has been working with Project WOO and providing seed money to get operations off the ground for over a year now.

“The thing that most impresses us with the efforts of Project WOO is their commitment to empowering the local communities to take charge of their own destiny,” Gass said. “The model of work that they employ truly engages the local community and puts the prioritization and ownership of the projects in the hands of locals rather than handing down what is deemed ‘best for them.’

“It is a great extension of the concept of you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him to fish and he can feed his family for a lifetime.”

Unlike certain environmental non-governmental organizations that might have come in and spoken for the town, condemning all development in an attempt to keep this little stretch of tropical coast “virgin,” Project WOO has simply helped the people to organize their own assemblies and come to a democratic decision about how they want to confront the impending wave of surfers.

In Gigante, the community has decided that it wants to pursue responsible development. They want to welcome the surfers but to also make sure that the town as a whole benefits from the infusion of surf tourism dollars.

“Our biggest principle is organizing, mobilizing and empowering the people to accomplish what they want to do with surfing,” Mucha said. “Do they not want surfers? Do they want to make it harder for gringos to purchase land? We want them to do with surfing as they please. But it seems that in Gigante the people want to benefit from it. For them it’s a tremendous opportunity.”

Project WOO is still fundraising for the bus project in Gigante. If you would like to learn more about the project and how you can help, please visit their Web site at www.projectwoo.org.

“A life devoted to surfing has been a splendid way to live,” writes Gerry Lopez in the preface to his new book “Surf Is Where You Find It.”

Such a life also makes for some epic stories, described in the accompanying 38 chapters of the first-ever book authored by the man known as “Mr. Pipeline” for his inimitably stylish performances at the infamous North Shore break.

Lopez shared some of these tales in front of a packed house Saturday night at the UC Santa Cruz campus for the second stop of his book tour.

“Surf Is Where You Find It” is the second book published by Patagonia Books, a division of the Patagonia clothing company Lopez has worked for since 2004.

The new division wasn’t exactly taking a gamble when it decided to put out Lopez’s first book. Anyone who has ever subscribed to a surf magazine going back to the ’70s has likely read an article penned by Lopez, now 59. His surf stories and articles have appeared in almost all of the major surfing journals in the states as well as Europe and Japan. Lopez also credits his parents — his father was a well known newspaper journalist in Honolulu and his mother was a lifelong school teacher — for instilling a love of the written word in him.

“I’ve always loved a good story,” Lopez said in a phone interview from his home in Bend, Ore., Thursday, before arriving in Northern California. “I’ve had the good fortune to live through a few good ones, so I thought I’d write them down before I forgot them. I’ve been telling them for years, and I didn’t want to lose them.”

The stories in the book are ordered chronologically — more or less — and trace the timeline of a life dedicated to riding waves around the world, both literal and metaphorical. They tell the unbridled joy of Lopez’s first time riding a wave as a child at Baby Queens in Waikiki, his first unsuccessful attempt at surfing the Pipeline in 1963 on a bulky “ironing board” longboard, and his discovering the perfect wave at G-Land, Indonesia with a small group of friends.

Lopez has often been described as one of surfing’s more humble heroes. Fittingly, the book focuses as much on the people and places that shaped his life as it does Lopez himself. Many chapters are titled after special waves — Pakala, Ma’alaea, Cannons and, of course, Pipeline — and describe memorable experiences at each spot. Other chapters are dedicated to unique characters that played a role in Lopez’s life, such as Buffalo Keaulana, Dick Brewer, Herbie Fletcher, Miki Dora and a young Laird Hamilton growing up on the North Shore.

“Things would prompt me to think of different stories,” Lopez said. “I would see someone and we would start talking about old times and I would think, ‘Hey, that’s a really good story.’ I don’t know how most people write, but when I sit down to write a story something usually sparks me to get me going — remembering a moment or incident, and the thing just flows out. I don’t write from outlines.”

Most of the book was produced over the past four years while Lopez was living in the mountains of Oregon with his wife Toni and 18-year-old son Alex.

Lopez said that the process of writing a book, although foreign, came naturally, much like his masterful surfing at the Pipeline throughout the ’70s and ’80s, during which time he made even the heaviest of situations appear almost effortless.

Gerry’s favorite shot of himself surfing the Pipeline. photo: Denjiro Sato

“I’ve been writing articles for magazines for years, but I have no formal training,” he said. “I make surfboards. I’m not a full time writer. But the more you do it, the better you get. I’ve come to find that I really enjoy it. Sometimes it takes several days or weeks, but the whole thing just pours out. It was easy.”

Some of the stories involve fond memories. In the chapter titled “Pakala,” Lopez recalls being a child and spending some of the best times of his life at his grandmother’s old plantation home in the sugarcane fields on Kauai’s sleepy west shore.

One fateful day, two older surfers showed up with their longboards. Lopez watched in amazement as they gracefully rode the perfect empty waves breaking on the outside reef in front of his grandma’s house — waves the young Lopez had previously been oblivious to while playing on the beach. Watching the display “profoundly changed the direction my life would take from that day forward,” he wrote.

Other stories are of more grim dimensions, like when Lopez nearly drowned after getting caught inside and swept back over the falls on a failed duckdive attempt at huge second reef Pipeline. Lopez describes in vivid detail having an “out-of-body experience,” actually watching from above as his body was trapped under the turbulent white water below. Most of the stories in the book attempt to convey some type of formative experience or overt lesson learned from the ocean.

“The book is more than just surf stories,” Lopez said. “It has a lot to do with the lessons we learn while out surfing, many which may have been learned in the surf but have more to do with life on the beach than in the surf.”

Most surfers will want to check out this book if only to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the world’s great watermen to see what wisdom can be gleaned.

“Lopez has proven himself a keen observer of human nature encountered while living through experiences quite extraordinary” writes Surfer’s Journal publisher Steve Pezman in the book’s introduction. “Gerry has taken to writing more and more about what he has seen. His is a rare slice for us to have access to.”

However Lopez hopes that the book will appeal not strictly to surfers, but also to non-surfing readers.

“That’s my hope,” Lopez said. “I named it ‘Surf Is Where You Find It’ because not only have I found surf in the oceans all over the world, I’ve also found waves in places without oceans and met a lot of surfers who are people who have never ridden a wave. Surfing definitely transcends a lot of borders.”