The local community is trying to fight off the contest scene at Lowers. Photo: WSL
There are rumblings emanating from the vicinity of Lower Trestles, and not because the Pacific Surfliner is rolling by. The contest season at California’s marine skatepark is well underway. And as the scaffolding goes up, so does the number of visiting surfers, picking off green wall after green wall.
Lowers locals wouldn’t be the first to gripe about a comp-circus disturbing life at one of world’s finest waves. But to hear them tell it, back-to-back comps in June and extra-long stays by contestants, coupled with a new-ish continuous Surfline camera have made for restless locals. Some also voiced frustration that, despite revenue brought in by contest permits, the Surfline cam and parking fees, the paved trail to the beach is long overdue for maintenance. Ever-increasing parking fees are already exorbitant, and god-forbid you need a toilet. Have fun with those Porta-Potties!
“I’m a big fan of all these surfers, but they’re taking advantage of the situation,” says Matt Hayden, 45, who heads a public relations firm and has counted Lowers as his home break for 20 years. “Two contests back to back in the middle of the summer is way too much. It’s lunacy.”
This year, mid-June brought Volcom’s Totally Crustaceous Surf Tour, followed closely by the USA Surfing Championships a week later. From a local’s perspective, it probably didn’t help that the groms competing in the latter scored near-perfect surf that towered well over their pre-pubescent heads. In September, the Championship Tour men and women will co-opt the break for four days of competition, plus several unofficial days of the Toledo-Andino-Florence show. Unlike last year, no Qualifying Series event took place at Lowers in the spring, an event distinguished by surfers power-wriggling and micro-boosting to 5.24s on shin-high corners.
Steve Long, father to Greg and Rusty, and former longtime state parks superintendent, says whoa now, horsey. He wrote the permitting rules for San Onofre State Park two decades ago, and they still stand. Three permits is the max, annually, allowing for only the highest level of professional, amateur and grom surfing. What revenue the park does earn, he says, gets eaten up by basic services like lifeguarding, medical response and the chemical toilets.
“Every penny generated by these things goes back into operations,” Long says. Statewide, the parks service is broke af, he adds, with over a billion dollars in deferred maintenance. So that explains the paved trail.
That’s not much consolation to the peeved lokes, who deal with “pandemonium for weeks around each event,” as Hayden puts it. “In 20 years, I’ve seen not one addition to our area of the park. There’s not even a real bathroom in the parking lot. And if you look at main trail, it’s rutted and rocky. I’ve seen women and children falling and people on bikes going over the handlebars.”
Aaron James, a UC Irvine philosophy professor and Lowers surfer of 25 years, is likewise none too psyched. “The park is supposed to be a sanctuary for people to enjoy. And many of us who’ve organized our life around it over decades are upset to see it exploited more and more over the years.”
World Surf League spokesman Dave Prodan says the league’s events have minumal ecological impact on the park. He and Long point out the inspirational value of webcasting Lowers comps to viewers worldwide, a point disgruntled locals would agree with except as a matter of degree.
“At the end of the day, it’s four days of competition. The benefit is getting to see the world’s best surfers on your home break,” Prodan says.
To an extent, calling a world-class break home is a good problem to have. It’s like a first-world problem, but a world-class-break-in-my-backyard problem. Though Lowers is all the rage, Long also points out the proximity of other nearly-as-good breaks, some within paddling distance of the iconic peak.
Long, who’s been paddling out there since the ’60s, has some perspective on what the testy locals have to put up with. “I could make an argument for their case as well. I started surfing down there in the ’60s. I recall what a wonderful experience it was, and we’re never going back,” he says. “It’s frustrating to them, especially as they get older, these kids are surfing circles around them.”
