PIPELINE

In the 1930s, the city of Newport Beach, CA, began constructing a rock jetty at the southern end of Balboa Peninsula. As an unexpected result of construction, southern swells began ricocheting, splitting and recombining into narrow 15-to-20-foot monster waves with vicious turbulence. The spot became known as “the Wedge,” and surfers brave enough to go into it were known as “Wedgemen.” Decades before aerial acrobatics in extreme sports, the Wedgemen were catching massive air going over the falls at the Wedge.

In the early 1950s, Dick Dale moved to Newport Beach and got inspired by the local surf scene. A self-taught musical prodigy, Dale evolved into the “King of Surf Guitar.” Leo Fender was inspired to install bigger speakers and boost wattage in his amplifiers based solely on Dale’s requests for sonic boom. Thousands flocked to his performances at the Rendezvous Ballroom, where the Beach Boys would get their start as an opening act, and where Dale would play a song called “The Wedge.”

“Yeah, I was one of the Wedgemen,” admits Robert “Stubby” Tierney. “And I was also one of the first pot smugglers. When I was 15, I used to go down to Tijuana, buy a kilo, stuff it in a duffel bag and walk across the train tracks. One time a train came and I had to jump into the river. When I got home, I laid the wet pot out on the roof to dry.” Stubby breaks out laughing at the recollection of his days as a novice pot smuggler.

No one knows exactly when or where the practice of surfing started. Evidence suggests that it was common to communities throughout the South Pacific before the arrival of the Europeans. But in Hawaii, surfing crossed into the realm of magic and spirituality. Mark Twain was the first to take note of “the sport of kings,” but Jack London was the first outsider to extol its virtues from firsthand experience. In fact, London played a major role in promoting Hawaii’s surfing renaissance, which began around 1900 (after the best efforts of colonialists had pushed surfing to the brink of extinction). By 1920, the sport had spread to California, where enthusiasts created surf clubs up and down the coast. But the dirty little secret that many surf historians fail to mention—the 800-pound gorilla in this story—is the pot connection. Many of the original California surfers became stoners, and some of the best even became international smugglers, capable of making more money smuggling cannabis in one week than they made in a lifetime of professional wave-riding. Surfers pioneered the market for sensimilla and launched gourmet cannabis in North America.

“I grew up in Balboa Bay,” says Bob “Crazy Foot” Cherry. “We were all surfers back then, and going on a surfing safari to Mexico was your first big adventure outside of establishment reality. If you were under 18, you had to have a note from your parents. I was going to Mexico for years before I discovered marijuana.”

By the time Jack Kerouac’s On the Road appeared in 1958, the secret was already out: Marijuana was easy to score in Mexico. Kerouac and many jazz musicians were on record saying that it provided spiritual and creative inspiration. In many ways, surf culture was Southern California’s response to the Beat Generation, and even before cannabis arrived, surf culture embodied a form of spiritual communion with nature. Surfing developed an elite priesthood, the big-wave riders, and the arrival of a forbidden sacrament from the East provided immediate synergy for some. “You merged with Mother Nature and understood the energy at that point,” explains Stubby.

“Rosarito was a beach town 39 miles south of Tijuana,” recalls Cherry. “You’d see these cars along the beach jacked up like they were changing tires, but they were really stashing kilos under them. Sometimes I’d hitchhike and carry a load back without telling anyone what I was doing.” According to author Peter Maguire, the preferred pot-safari vehicle was the 1954 Plymouth station wagon, because the interior paneling could be unscrewed and stuffed with contraband.

In 1958, Hobart “Hobie” Alter began making surfboards out of foam and fiberglass. These boards had an impact on surfing similar to the introduction of resin wheels in skateboarding: They were faster and more responsive than anything surfers had ridden before. Hobie set up shop in Laguna Canyon, just south of Balboa Peninsula, and hired a team of shapers. It probably didn’t take long for the first surfer to cut a glass board open, stuff a channel with pot and reseal it with a fiberglass patch. Smuggling in the early days was more like a college prank than a serious crime: Few got caught or punished, and it seemed like everybody was doing it. And it was easy.

In 1963, LSD transformed the surf scene. “I met ‘Farmer John’ Griggs in Newport,” recalls Stubby. “He was affiliated with a car club from Anaheim called the Street Sweepers. John was a mellow dude and really nice to be around.” Griggs was drifting away from the Street Sweepers, riding a motorcycle and surfing when he discovered acid. Legend has it that he stole his first taste at gunpoint, got high and then threw his gun away forever. But reality may not have been quite so dramatic. “Everyone has a right to their own version of things,” says Michael Randall, who became Griggs’s right-hand man in their plot to turn on the world, “but none of us carried guns. We were little gangsters, but not real bad guys. I was an atheist until the first time I took acid on the beach—then I went through a transformation. We took acid for years before it became illegal. Johnny was a magical guy with a lot of charisma and kindness and a lot of fire under him. He had a way with people and could get things done.”

B. Bunker Spreckels, who would later become known as “the most decadent person in surfing” before his death in 1977 at age 27, believed that acid played a major role in the evolution of the sport. “It was a factor in rearranging the boards,” he acknowledged. “The boards got smaller. The surfing got more radical. People were having hallucinations and visions and vibrations, spiritual revelations. Psychedelics brought surfing to another level.”

Documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown began producing surf films in 1958 and had released five by 1962, when he embarked on his most ambitious project, The Endless Summer, which became the most famous surf documentary. To play one of the main characters on a worldwide surfing safari, Brown picked a young shaper from the Hobie factory named Mike Hynson, who’d already become known for riding big waves in Hawaii. By the time the film was released in 1966, the counterculture revolution was in full swing, and Hynson was sucked in. He left Hobie and began working for Gordon & Smith, in his own words, “building 2 1/2” redwood-stringers with double 10-ounce Volan glass decks, 2 1/2” rap on the rails and a red cut-out fin.” Hynson launched the “Red Fin Era” with boards built for whip turns and high speed.

Laguna Canyon was the place to be in 1966. Sandstone hills rose quickly out of the surf to over 1,200 feet and then dropped down to a cluster of clapboard houses sheltered from the ocean. The rents were dirt-cheap compared to what could be found in surrounding upscale Orange County, and the canyon was soon transformed into a hippie ghetto. The canyon had so many dealers that Griggs dubbed it “Dodge City.” Since there was only one road in (and some houses were accessible by sidewalk only), it was difficult for law enforcement to keep tabs on the rapid evolution of the neighborhood.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE JULY 2008 ISSUE