Photo: Chris Dodds
I first met Kevin on the cliffs above my favorite spot in California. I had just finished another sunset session with a friend, all during a nice run of spring swell. Kevin was wearing red shorts, a beige cap, Rainbow sandals, and had nothing else but a small towel wrapped up in his arms. When my buddy first spotted him he said to me, “Oh man! I thought that was him, of course he’s here…”
“Who?”
“This crazy old guy who I always see down here when the swell picks up. Sometimes he doesn’t even surf, he just swims around in his trunks for hours — even in the winter. But when he does surf, he fucking rips!”
As we walked closer, the man spotted us, nodded his head in recognition and said, “Fun day out there today. I saw you guys get some pretty ones.”
My buddy replied, “Yeah it started to get a little wonky with the tide but you can’t complain when there’s only a handful of guys!”
“Yeah, hopefully it keeps up for the next few days. I know I’ll be back tomorrow (laughs). You guys have a good one…”
That was my first and only impression of that man for a while to come, but it lasted — something about his aura was just so pure. I could tell he was the real thing. In other words, he was about as far from kooky as possible. I didn’t see him again during that run of swell, having to work and stay closer to home, but more than one year later we met again in the very same place.
Photo: Chris Dodds
I had just had one of those magical sessions, one that you go out with low expectations and Neptune and the rest of the Gods bless you with fun and fast conditions and minimal crowd…there was even a fucking double rainbow. One facet of California surfing is that if the waves are good, expect a crowd. So if the waves are good, and there is no crowd — take full advantage. By the time I got out of the water my arms were ready to fall off but I was still high from the stoke and walking towards the car in a post-surf daze.
I was so #blissedout that I almost walked right into him, I first saw his Rainbow’d feet and then those red shorts and cap and said, “Oh shit sorry dude, didn’t see you there.”
“Haha it’s alright man, I can see you got that look on your face.”
“Yeahhh man, it was magic out there.”
“Totally, great energy today.”
“Yeah…”
I was about to walk away, not really knowing what else to say, when he said, “What kind of board is that you got there?”
“Oh this is my baby,” I said with a smile. “It’s a 5’11 single fin. It’s new, and it’s made by CI but it’s a total retro board.”
“Yeah it may be retro to you, but I remember when this was the most radical shape around. But of course, that was way back before thrusters and air-reverses. It’s cool to see someone your age riding that, and you know how to ride it too.”
His compliment caught me by surprise, “Oh, uh, thanks, man.”
“Yeah, dude. I saw you out there and you were doing some nice bottom turns and I thought to myself how rare it is to see young guys do bottom turns nowadays.”
Photo: Chris Dodds
We ended up talking right there, on the cliff, for over an hour. It was something genuinely unique to our whacky and wonderful pursuit of surfing; to have built a relationship with someone based on a similar pursuit of fleeting moments in a shared location. Sure, something similar could happen to climbers, but rocks and cliffs are pretty stagnant — swells come and go, sometimes the window lasts for just a few hours before disappearing into the sea. Chatting and watching the waves roll in with Kevin was an esoteric experience. The man clearly knew his shit and I was happy to listen to whatever he had to say. Our discussion ranged from board designs, surf history and local breaks, to style and top pros like John John and Jordy. His voice, like everything else about him, was just classic California. It wasn’t Spicoli, more Gerry Lopez with a subtle California drawl. Where Gerry is all around zen and soft-spoken, my new friend would really emphasize certain things: laughing as he would say something like, “Riiighhtt? How crazy would you have to be to surf Nazaré?”, or drawing out, “Duuuudddeee, that was sooo radical!” before naturally reverting back to a softer pitch.
The location — which, pertaining to the unspoken surfer’s code, will remain secret — was (and still is) of the utmost importance to me. Surfing is what brings me the most joy in this life and, in this life, this is the place I have enjoyed it the most. That being said, I believe it would even be fair to say that is my favorite place in the world. From our talk, I could tell it was the same to him. He had been making trips there for over 30 years and could still detail all the ways it had changed. In the short time I had been coming, I had also seen the spot welcome more and more travelers — probably due to geo-tagging on Instagram and every Jack, Dick, and Harry needing their own fucking photo of the place. I had always resented the lamenting nostalgia of elders when they would say, “back in my day…”, and now here I was realizing that same sort of change in a span of less than a decade.
I have since seen Kevin one more time, again in the same spot on the cliff, almost one year later. It was a rather synchronistic meeting as I had been thinking about him not long before. This time around I was more alert and instantly saw him as I came up the path, “Ayee man how ya doin?”
“Oh you know man, just waiting…watching the waves,” he said with a satisfied grin on his face.
“Yeah, it was kinda small but pretty fun out there.”
“Dude. You should have been here yesterday…”.
All I could do was smile and laugh because that was such a classic thing to say. Then we talked for maybe half an hour, with the notion of time, and the change that comes with it, again present throughout all of our sub-topics under the larger umbrella that is surfing in California.
I, like many in the lineup, was not born in the promised land. I grew up on dreams of someday moving to “Cali” and being able to snowboard and surf in the same day. I froth on being able to drive up and down the coast, from San Diego past San Francisco, even just to watch the waves and mind-surf the nooks and crannies along the shore.
Surfers, for good or ill, are a tribe, and I cherish interactions like the ones I’ve had with Kevin and other elders of the surfing nation. They know so much about what I love and it’s a privilege just to be able to listen to them. While we sometimes foolishly engage in battles over waves with each other, our only true battle is with those groups and actions that threaten our beloved ocean. As a younger surfer, I feel like it is my responsibility to respect and learn from my elders and to carry on the fight to protect what we all love.
Photo: Chris Dodds
