Every surf town has its local legends. A familiar face that everybody recognizes whether they’ve been introduced or not. The unofficial mayor. Somebody you plan to see in the lineup every morning, rain or shine, absolutely pumping waves or treading through painful flat spells.
In a small stretch of Hermosa Beach, sandwiched somewhere between jets flying over the packed lineups of El Porto and the nooks and crannies of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, that guy is Frank Paine. He has an unforgettable look — a trademark mustache that could help him pass for Sam Elliot — and he’s hilarious.
“Frank Paine cracks me up,” Frank admits, describing himself as having the soul of a clown and the feet of a woman twice his size.
He also has a growing text message chain called Surf Familia, which has at least 30 people now, ranging from local South Bay pre-teens to friends in their 80s. He has a surf report newsletter that started out with just about a dozen people and is inching toward 100. Both are used to fuel his group of friends with some lightheartedness, surf reports, or just plans for the next morning session. When you actually get to see all those people in the water together or at Brother’s Burritos for their regular post-surf breakfast, it’s easy to get all sentimental about surfing and being part of a local community. Because while we all obsess over the best waves we can find, getting our fair share, and pining for the next all-time conditions, the spirit behind Frank and the Surf Familia is what really makes it all so gratifying: the people. It’s incredibly cliché, I know. But I promise if you spend even a few moments on the south side of the Hermosa Pier and run into Frank Paine, you’ll get it.
“He believes in everyone around him — whether you’re a stranger or a close friend,” says Morgan Sliff, who met Frank in the water years ago when she felt like she was “failing” but now sits on a surf streak that runs nearly eight years of catching a wave every single day. A lot of those days she’s shared waves with Frank and she’s watched him invite more and more people out for morning sessions — the literal antithesis of what most people think of when the word “local” is thrown around.
Funny enough, filmmaker Anna Burns assumed Frank might be that salty, unwelcoming stereotype of a local when she was brand new to the South Bay and met him in the water for the first time.
“(My) first impression of him, I was intimidated. But as soon as we had a conversation with him we were like ‘This is the coolest guy ever. I wanna be him when I grow up,'” she remembers. She started showing up at the pier almost every morning after and fell in love with the community pretty fast. When you hear Frank talk more and more about their little crew, it’s easy to see why.
“I think the best thing about surfing is the people. And it always has been,” he says. “Part of The Familia is raising our children, raising each other to learn the ways of good surfers to be conscious of something bigger than themselves.”
Frank Paine’s a character. And that’s a good enough story to tell on its own. But the way he invites people into the water with him is the stuff of legends.
