Surfing Guide to Southern California

The 'Surfing Guide to Southern California' was the first guidebook to surfing spots written by and for surfers, and was concept of late producer, director, film editor and Topanga Beach resident, James Fitzpatrick.

Fitz was an amazing individual and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of his extended family and learn from his example.

Bill Cleary wrote the first draft before he left for Biarritz and the Canaries. David Stern completed the project after further research, editing and a complete re-write. He also bankrolled the project.

For me, it was a an interesting exercise.

There were long periods during which Bill and David refused to speak directly to each other. I was somehow chosen to pass messages back and forth. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. It took some quickly learned diplomatic skills to rephrase Bill's messages as they were often prefaced by a well calculated insult or two. David's responses were no less challenging.

Far more enjoyable were the 'research' trips up and down the west coast. After several enjoyable surf safaris down south to Baja, I was disappointed to learn that David, Bill and Fitz had all the information they needed for the book. It had provided the perfect excuse to throw the boards on the car and take off in search of new waves.

An excerpt from the original 1963 preface:

The sport of surfing is booming all over the world and is destined to grow increasingly popular each year, the only limit being the total number of rugged individualists who will seek the satisfaction of doing something well and doing it better next time. It is a competitive sport, but the contest is between the individual and his own capabilities, and the victories are purely personal triumphs. It is not a team game, and there are no rules, regulations, scoring methods, or stadiums filled with cheering thousands. But whenever and wherever one of the uninitiated first stands upon his board and feels it slide forward down the face of a wave, the sport has gained another follower who is hooked for life. And when you multiply that feeling by all the undiscovered waves on all the ocean shores of the earth, you can realize the sport's potential.

Like boating and mountain climbing, it has attracted enough followers to support the publication of several good magazines. Like skiing, it offers sufficient visual excitement to be the subject of successful motion pictures produced for an audience of aficionados. Already it has its heroes, oldtimers and legends, its own language and code of ethics, and its special kind of problems. One of its major growing-pains is overcrowding at a few well known spots, which leads to other problems, such as misconduct on the part of a minority, which leads to official pressure on all surfers. Though our book describes these popular spots in full detail, we also hope it will help break the mob habit. On a hot Sunday in July there may be 100 surfers at Windansea, 300 at Malibu and 500 at Doheny; yet within a few miles of these congested beaches are uncluttered waves wasting their concave faces on deserted shores. This is ridiculous, but we are not about to mount a soapbox to champion the cause of spreading out. We feel the advantages should be evident to the individual, so we have limited ourselves to gathering enough information on all spots - including those deserted shores - to help widen the surfer's horizon.

We have written this book for surfers who want to go surfing in Southern California. Whether you are an accomplished artist who regularly extends his toes over empty space with the greatest of ease, or an admitted novice who carts his vintage plank to the beach each weekend for another session of grim effort and inglorious wipeouts, you are always looking for a better wave. The main purpose of this book is to give you the information you need to find it.

DEDICATION TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES FITZPATRICK

- by Bill Cleary

Topanga was the first and last place I ever lived that was truly home. The beach was my family. Over the years, though its members changed, the family was constant, as ever a family must be: it was there then even as it is there today, although the houses have been gone for more years than I care to number.

At day's end everyone gathered for the sunset, and after we had caught up on the day's events, the talk invariably turned to the surf. Was there a swell? How big? Who got the wave of the day? It didn't matter if you surfed or not - surfing was the dark adventure that bound us together. The waves rose over the outer reefs, endlessly tracing and retracing the invisible bottom like the hand of some ancient physician seeking the boundaries of the human soul.

One evening as the sun went down, Fitz turned to me and said, "I've got an idea. I think you are going to like it." And that was it, that was the moment this book began. And one by one, we all took our places in its story.

Fitz worked in the Hollywood dream factory; he was older than we were, but not really - people like Fitz stay young forever because they live in their dreams. He was the book's first publisher, but he was at heart a romantic, a storyteller, a man for whom everything was possible. He was an American visionary who thought everyone should throw out their trash on the freeway, so that the unemployed could get jobs picking it up. He imagined supermarkets on wheels that brought shopping for groceries to your neighborhood street corner. He had a quick and sensitive eye, a taste for beautiful women, a love for adventure. His quick Irish smile belied the hungry genius of a sidewalk sketch artist for that telling line of the jaw, a gesture, or a single line of dialogue that in one quick stroke would mark his subject's character as unique.

Fitz invented his own niche in the Hollywood ghetto. His life was a movie within the movie, whose characters were the all too familiar examples of man's ignobility. There were tales of the California gold mines and gamblers and swindlers, stories that sprang out of the dark side of man's nature - but no matter how bleak they were, Fitz turned them to comedy and always left you feeling the essential goodness of humanity.

If he believed in something or someone, you never stopped hearing about it. Fitz had a million ideas, and they were already alive in him. He had the gift-this book is proof of it. Sure, I did my part; and David did his; but the magic in it was, and still is, Fitz's.

A few years later I was making money, I drove a Porsche and put locks on the gate. Fitz came by to talk but couldn't get in. He was appalled. "Cleary!" he yelled. "You're possessed by your possessions!"

Fitz was a free man and made no claim to owning anything. If you needed something he had, it was yours - and he gave everyone his heart.

Fitz's most poignant story was his own. In World War II he strayed behind Japanese lines and was surprised in the act of relieving himself by a Japanese soldier. Fitz disarmed him and almost got him to surrender, but at the last minute he had second thoughts and attacked Fitz, who mercifully dispatched him. Fitz would tell that story, and people would laugh till they cried - but the nightmares never left Fitz, who anguished over the fate of his slain adversary's family the rest of his life.

Only six years after the Surfing Guide to Southern California was published, in January of 1969 (ed: December 1968), Fitz died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-nine (ed: he was 44 years old). He left behind a whole beach full of people who will never forget him. David and I dedicate this 35th-Anniversary Nostalgia Edition to him.

August 1998, Santa Barbara, California

The Surfing Guide to Southern California	- by David H. Stern and William S. Cleary

The Surfing Guide to Southern California

DEDICATION TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES FITZPATRICK