CORKY CARROLLS SURF ADVENTURE
LA SALADITA, MEXICO
ANNOUNCING 2009 SUMMER SUPER SAVER “THE ECONOMY SUCKS AND WE NEED SOME BUSINESS” DISCOUNTED RATES.
JUNE 20 TO OCT 17 RATES
SOLO $2000
COUPLE $3000
TWO OR MORE SURFERS $1600 EACH
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE SLASHED RATES AND MAKE A RESERVATION TODAY.
Corky and Raquel Carroll
By Corky Carroll
Ya know I was thinking that something that seems to have unfortunately gone out of style is the good old-fashioned “moon.” Not the one up in the sky at night. The act of dropping your pants at just the right moment and flashing a big bare butt. We used to call it a “B.A.” Bare ass. It can be such a wonderful statement if done correctly and at just the right moment. Maybe the current state of our culture has gotten just a bit too cool for comfort these days, I don’t know. We live in times where everybody wants to sue everybody else for any little thing and almost everything you say can and will be held against you. If you call a geek a geek you can get thrown off the island and sued in open court for discrimination. If you casually mention that the babe working down the hall from you is a total “hottie,” and she hears about it, you are either gonna get fired for sexual harassment or a get date. A date would be better but lets be real folks. Your job is fried. And don’t even think of calling your kid a “bad boy. He will have you up on charges of mental child abuse before you can hit the button on the remote to change the channel. In the midst of all this cultural refining the art of the well delivered “moon” as all but disappeared. It’s sad.
So, in honor of one of my fonder traditions, I thought I would recount a few of my favorite “mooning” stories. My earliest memory of flying a moon was when there was the Hobie surfboard shop in Dana Point and the Velzy and Jacobs surfboard shop in San Clemente. On a typical surf safari to “Trestles” or San Onofre you had to pass both of them on the way and the way back. The usual way to honor them while passing was to have the guy riding shotgun hang a moon out the passenger side window while the driver honked the horn and everybody would yell, “Hobie sucks, Velzy rules” when passing the Hobie shop. Opposite when passing the Velzy shop. It was just part of the essence of taking the surf trip. And of course you had to get “the Greeter,” in Laguna Beach on the way home. The Greeter was this old dude named Ned Larson who would stand on the corner near the center of town in Laguna and wave at all the cars going by. That poor dude must have gotten mooned a dozen times every afternoon. Ya had to do it.
My favorite surfing moon came in the Malibu Invitational Contest one year in the mid 1960’s. It was the one big contest moment for the infamous Miki Dora. A.K.A. “the Black Knight of Surfing.” Miki didn’t enter many surf contests but he was in this one and made it to the finals. He was the king of Malibu back then and was the crowd favorite to either win or get buried by the competition, depending on if you were a fan or not. He had strong legions going in both directions. He was a beautiful surfer to watch and had the perfect style for Malibu. On his last wave he came screaming down the point in perfect trim on the nose. The crowd was going wild and cameras from every surfing magazine were whirring madly. Just as he reached the inside section right in front of the gallery he hit a hard bottom turn and launched himself into the air out the top of the wave. In mid-air and as smooth as silk he dropped his pants and gave the whole surfing world the moon. It was a breathtaking moment that lives on in infamy. I fell over laughing. It just doesn’t get much better than that.
There is also a story of the famous Hawaiian surfer Chubby Mitchell, who weighed in at about 400 lbs., getting stuck in the window while mooning some dudes on Pacific Coast Highway. Paul Strauch was driving and tells how he had to pull the car over and it took two of them to get Chubby unstuck from the car window.
Then there was “no pants Lance.” Another great Malibu surfer who became a legend in mooning circles. That story would take a whole book to tell so I will leave it for now. But what I would like to present to you at this time is my suggestion that we all do our best to buck the “system” and bring back the fun-filled art of delivering the moon. I will be awaiting your stories of great flyings in the near future. Do it, its fun.
WHERE IS MY KITE?
By Corky Carroll
The other day I was sitting on the beach watching a kite surfer screaming along the waves and getting big airs. I was thinking that it really looked like a lot of fun. My dentist, Bob Levin, has been doing it for years and has told me about it many times while drilling huge gold mines in my teeth. Sitting there in the sand brought back a vivid memory of a kite that I once had when I was a kid growing up in Surfside.
I remember this particular kite very clearly. I was in the sixth grade at J.H. McGaugh Intermediate School in Seal Beach. There were two sixth grade teachers there at that time. Mr. Richmond and Mrs. Schliker. Mr. Richmond was the cool one. He surfed. All the cool kids got put in his class. I had Mrs. Schliker. She had a bad habit of kinda drooling when she talked and if you had the misfortune to sit in the front row you got wet some of the time. I sat in the front row. Life was dark that year. Mr. Richmond’s class got to build kites. Our class didn’t get to do anything except dry off after school.
I wanted to build a kite too, so I went out with my dad and bought all the stuff I would need to make my own kite. It came out great and I painted a big wave on it with the words “Corky’s Custom Surf Kites” under it. When it was finally ready to fly I hooked up a roll of string to it and took it out on the beach for its maiden flight. It worked. In fact it worked really good. But I needed more string as I had visions of this baby entering the stratasphere or beyond. So I rode my bike over to Seal Beach and bought about ten miles of kite string and hooked it all together and rolled it around a piece of driftwood I found on the beach in front of my house. Now I was ready to put that puppy into orbit.
The afternoon of the big flight the wind was howling out of the west like it normally does on the beach at Surfside almost every afternoon. I launched my custom surf kite and just kept letting out the string. It just got higher and higher and higher, almost out of sight. I was very happy and was thinking in my little mind, “Yeah, eat your hearts out Mr. Richmond’s class…hahahahaha.”
But right at the height of my mirth the string broke. I could just make out my amazingly cool kite drifting off towards the east and eventually disappearing somewhere far on the other side of Pacific Coast Highway. Somewhere out in what was then called “the slews.” That area is now Huntington Harbor but back then was just a huge swamp.
Oh man, I had to go rescue my kite. But how was I gonna get out there in the slews? I enlisted the help of one of the other kids that lived in Surfside at the time but I can’t remember which one. Might have been Steve Rowe. Another kid who lived there, Joe Johnson, had this old plywood hydroplane without a motor. And Joe wasn’t home but his hydroplane was. Perfect. We snuck Joes hydroplane out and got a couple of oars from somebody’s patio display and set out into the swamp to find my cool surf kite.
After a little while we were way deep into the back of the slews and I was getting kinda scared. Scared not only that my cool surf kite was lost but also because there was a rumor that giant octopus and squids lived in the back area of the slews. It had been on my mind. And then Steve had to mention it. “I hope the giant octopus don’t see us.” (Cue the music from Jaws). Ah man, I wish he hadn’t have said that. Now we were watching out for tentacles coming out of the water more than we were for my cool surf kite.
A few minutes later we both agreed that the kite had probably landed somewhere out in the desert and we booked it out of those slews as fast as our little arms could row.
Mr. Richmond later became a good friend and is a concert violinist and ukulele player. He occasionally sends me violin charts to help me with my lifelong struggle to be able to play that ridiculously difficult instrument. I have no idea where my cool surf kite ended up.
By Corky Carroll
Every now and then I hear something that flat out makes me laugh. Sometimes it’s a joke or a funny story or just something stupid that happens that cracks me up. Not often do I get a full on belly laugh, and that’s a big one cause I have a big belly, from listening to music. But today I did.
A friend of mine came by and gave me a CD. It had handwritten on it “to Corky…Killer Taco Band.com…Soft Taco…15 songs…rock on.” I asked him who this was and he said that it came from a dude who he only knew as “Johnny” that hangs out at Rockin’ Figs Surf Shop on Main Street in Huntington Beach. He said he was a local musician and had given him the CD to give to me.
“Cool,” I thought. I was just about to jump in the car with my pal James and head down to one of my favorite surf spots for an afternoon session and this would give us something to listen to on the way. I cranked up the car stereo to see what the Killer Taco Band was all about.
Within seconds we were smiling and soon laughing our guts out. This is great stuff. Very locally Huntington Beach oriented and totally classic. The music is excellent and the lyrics are absolutely wonderful. The resulting vibe is so fun and cannot help but make you smile. I was blown away and wound up listening to the whole thing even though we got to the spot at about track six. I have been humming one of the songs, Big Co-coa Nuts, ever since.
If you haven’t heard this CD I strongly recommend it for anybody living in Huntington Beach or anywhere else for that matter. But if you live in town ya gotta love it.
The first song opens up with “I’m so glad to be livin’ in HB, ain’t nobody botherin’ me, everybody havin’ fun in the California sun.” That sort of sets the tone for what’s to follow. Brian Wilson would NEVER have thought up this stuff.
My favorite song is sort of a real “core” kinda diddy. “Big Co-coa Nuts.” I love this song. I mean really, who could not love lyrics like, “she has big coconuts….boom boom boom boom.” It open’s with the question, “Do you like coconuts? Of course you do.” It seems to tell the story of a large coconuts endowed lady and the enjoyments of watching her and so on. My kinda tune. I need to learn this one. If not for my act, just for the pure fun of singing it.
Other stand outs are “Rippin’” and “Give’em Da Boot.” Rippin’ is about ripping, daaaaah. “Rippin’… rippin’… rippin’… rippin’. I’m totally ripping.” Sounds good to me. Da Boot is a classic tune about “Barneys” in the lineup. “Boom, give’em da boot. Boom, give’em da boot. Outta da water Barney.” The guitar solo in this song is pure genius. It blends in the theme from the “Flintstones” with a pure surf guitar tone. Floored me. “I got girlfriends on every shore and I once went surfing with a dinosaur…..Boom, give’em da boot.” This is art.
Another of my favs is the song about the sugar shack (I can’t find the title of this one). “Sugar Shack in the mornin’, hotcakes on the grill, I’m gonna order me another round…. Until I get my fill.” Geeze, how many times have I been right there doing that exact same thing? Zillions. Michele Turner being everybody’s mama figure and “getting so deep in the barrel that you could see Timmy Turner busing’ tables at the Sugar Shack on the other end,” resounding in my ears. That last part is not from the song, its HB lore. It does NOT get anymore local than this folks. The Sugar Shack is the core of the core. “One big surfin’ family.” Complete with Timmy and Ryan.
So I just got home and am on deadline to finish this column. Why do I always wait till the last minute? It’s part of the performance under pressure alibi syndrome. It’s not my fault the column sucked, I was under too much stress to get it done on time….hahahahaha. Anyway, I jumped on my laptop and called up the Killertacoband.com website so I could get some information on who these dudes are. The site would not come up. Then I googled ‘em and got a couple of sites that sell their music but have no information about them whatsoever. It does say that they are from Huntington Beach, but that was pretty obvious from the songs. So at this time I have no idea who is in this band other than “some dude named Johnny.” But I can say that I love this album and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anybody who likes fun in their music and lives in Huntington Beach, especially if you surf.
“Soft Taco” by the Killer Taco Band has found a home in my iPod.
By Corky Carroll
Last week I got into the history of the surfboard fin and why modern surfboards have them. This week I thought it would be fun to talk about the alternative. The no-fin surfboard design. Many of you are probably scratching your heads, either in wonder or because you have dandruff or head lice, and thinking, “what is this idiot talking about now? Everybody knows all surfboards have fins on them.”
Well think again my wonder readers. There are indeed surfboards being used even today that are finless. Not many, that is a fact, but there are some.
Some years ago I was at one of the surfing industry trade shows and I was watching a video in one of the booths that showed guys on skimboards, I think it was taken in Laguna Beach, that were riding the boards out towards the waves and then banking off the lip of the wave and actually riding the wave back to shore. The amazing part was that they were turning up the beach and riding the wave for a great distance, turning and getting into the curl all along the way. At the end of the wave was a big wedge section where they would get air off the top and/or get covered just before riding back up the beach. I was totally stoked to see how they could do that on a thin little board without a fin to hold the direction.
About the same time the “standing wave” came about and they use small finless boards on that too. I have heard that they have held competitions on those between surfers, skateboarders and snowboarders and the surfers always loose. Snowboarders and skaters are tuned into more of a no fin approach. Especially snowboarders.
In Hawaii they still have a few “hot-curl” boards in use. These are longboards designed to ride without a fin. Some of the older locals can ride them pretty well too. But more recently there has been a resurgence of what is called an “Alaia.” These are like the smaller and thinner boards used by Hawaiians dating way way far way back.
A couple of months ago I got an email from my pal Steve Pezman suggesting that look into the come back of the Alaia for a possible column idea. Steve is the publisher of SURFERS JOURNAL magazine and my former boss when I worked at SURFER magazine back in the 70’s and 80’s. I was kind of amazed that anybody would really be riding those boards in this day and age of super performance surfing.
Then a few days ago I was paddling out at my favorite local surf spot when I saw a guy take off on a wave on what looked like a piece of plywood. He stood up fairly easily and was kind of sliding sideways and yet keeping the line down the face of the wave as he went by me. When he got back out to the line up I asked him about his board and he told me it was an Alaia. I checked it out and it reminded me that I had one of those under my arm in the photo on the cover of my “SURFER FOR PRESIDENT” album back in 1979. I had never considered trying to ride that thing back then.
It seems that there is a whole new movement of guys riding these boards now in Australia, Hawaii and California. The kid I saw was from Santa Cruz and his dad had made the board for him. In Australia there is a dude named Tom Wegener who makes them and is working on the development of new shapes and designs as well as replicating what the Hawaiians had done in the early 1900’s. He has a website with videos and all sorts of cool information about the Alaia. It is definitely worth a check out. You can find it at www.tomwegenersurfboards.com
It’s good to see people expanding the art in different ways. This takes me back to memories of being a little kid growing up on the beach in Surfside, California. We kids would try to ride anything that would float. Old redwood boards we found buried under houses, jagged pieces of plywood with nails sticking out of them. There was this guy named John Murphy that went out one really big day in a rowboat. He ate it like a rat, but hey…it was a cool effort. It’s getting harder and harder to be a hard-core surf snob, especially at my age. With all the longboards and SUP’s and everything else being ridden today it might be better to keep an open mind. I tell myself that until some lame kuk on a 10’6” tanker snakes me for a wave.
Powered by WordPress