Most people who have heard of me, Elijah Mack, and my river surfing pedigree, don’t know that I was born Eli Simmerman. They have no idea of my ocean surfing pedigree. My father, Jeffery Simmerman, and his cousins were dominant surfers in North San Diego County in the ’60s and ’70s. My dad’s cousin, a man named Carson Holder, was one of the finest surfers ever to grace the waves of Leucadia, Encinitas and Cardiff.
My father and his cousin were the son and nephew of some of California’s most influential early surfers/lifeguards, Dempsey and Mickey Holder. Dempsey was California’s first big wave legend and the most innovative lifeguard America has ever seen. Nicknamed “King of the Sloughs,” Dempsey was revered by legends like Greg Noll and was elemental in some of Bob Simmons’ surfboard design development.
Mickey was the lifeguard at Swamis. When the younger guys wanted to start The Swamis Surfing Club, it was Mickey they came to. He gave them legitimacy they needed to form the club, even though it wasn’t his thing. He just wanted to help out the younger surfers from my father’s generation. I started bodyboarding at Moonlight Beach when I was eight-years-old. I started surfing at age eleven at Cardiff Reef. When I was fourteen, we moved to Oceanside, where I pretty much gave up on school to surf every day. At fifteen, I started hitchhiking to La Jolla to surf Big Rock and the other hollow reef breaks. At age sixteen, some friends took me to Todos Santos island and I fell in love with big waves. Then, at nineteen, I moved to San Francisco and immersed myself in the power of Ocean Beach.
Surfing was the only thing I did right, and I did it well. My quivers have ranged from a Donald Takayama 5’6″ twin fin to a Gary Linden 10’6′ Rhino Chaser and everything in between. People who respect my surfing prowess range from Alex Martins to Billy Connell to Gary Linden and Joel Tudor. So if anyone in the world wanted to claim “Ocean Surfing” as their home, it could be me. But I don’t.
It was my home, but it was my home in an era before I was born. To hear the surf industry talk about my great uncle Dempsey is beyond ironic, as my family had no taste for fame and storytelling or the shameless self promoters that took over surfing. See, when my forefathers enjoyed surfing, no one thought it was cool to surf. My father and great uncles didn’t surf to be cool. Dempsey died before I embarked on my river surfing journeys. Mickey didn’t, and his pride in what I am doing is deep and true.
Mickey wasn’t just a wonderful surfer, he was a true innovator on many levels other than surfing – art and poetry was just one of those levels. When Allen Ginsberg first arrived in San Francisco, it was Mickey’s flat that he stayed in. Jack Kerouac and the rest of the beat poets held Mickey in the highest regard, and Mickey… well, Mickey couldn’t have cared less.
Mickey doesn’t know anyone in the ocean surfing industry. A little while ago, a prominent figure in the industry bad-mouthed river surfing to me. “It’s a joke,” he said. “Nobody cares about river surfing.” When I told Mickey about it, his response was this:
“Eli, you see, there are the people who make history and then there are the people who talk about the people who make history. Some of of what they say will be positive, and some will be negative, but in the end, they are talking about what YOU have done. And as far as I can see, if this man is speaking about you and what you are doing in a negative way, well Eli, that is a positive thing.”
So if you think wearing a Brixton hat, riding a single fin, or reading The Surfers’ Journal taps you into what my great uncles were tapped into….you’re wrong. Maybe the guy from Ohio who just moved to Oceanside and is in love with surfing but not in love with being a surfer isn’t the kook. Maybe the kids in Idaho who are boogie boarding a one-foot river wave don’t care if Transworld Surf writes about them. Maybe, just maybe, “surfers” have become the establishment.
So what is ocean surfing? It is an incredible gift. It is the funnest thing in the world. It is the source energy that gives us an opportunity to tap into something unexplainable, something magic.
Here’s the million dollar question: Why is the ocean surfing industry so down on river surfing? Did river surfing take the ocean surfing’s chick? Did it slash its tires?
So what is river surfing? It is surfing. It is surfing without the bullshit.
What’d river surfing ever do to you?
