SURFURBIA CALLS

Life feels good as we cruise south along the Southern California coastline, my beloved husband at the wheel of the Honda Element, our two old black Labradors resting contentedly in the back seat of the car. I am happy with my little family, and at least for the time being I am not wanting, or cursing, or thinking about the mess our world is in. And the last time I checked my body parts are not cranky or nagging me. My back feels free, and loose, my head is clear and my thoughts keen.

Perhaps it is just this relaxed and secure state of being that makes me do it: fall in love with Malibu, again. Like the California Impressionists —Wachtel, Payne, Rose, Wendt -I repeatedly return to the California coastline to drink in its cascading light, the ever-morphing aqua green of the Pacific, the turbulence of white caps shoveling at the shore. On this particularly very bright pre-autumn Malibu afternoon, an opaque gibbous moon rises in the East at least two hours before the sun is to set. To my right: red, blue, yellow and white sails slice the surface of the sea with windsurfers muscling their boards beneath them. Surfers surf, families cluster, lovers take selfies. Yes, the hills are parched a brackish yellow, and yes we are forced to jockey the traffic, but as the Ventura county line merges with the somewhat remote and northernmost end of the 27 mile stretch called Malibu, I think I am damn glad I live here.

To trace the origins of my love affair with Malibu I have to think back some fifty years when this place first became my playground. There really wasn’t much to do then except play on the beach, take tennis lessons, or loaf around the “rental” and read books. But when you’re a kid, that’s a lot. When the summer days got real sleepy my sister and I joined in with girls we knew from town and we put on a dog show, a talent show, and a show- and- tell for all the beach kids. The smell of Coppertone, the pungent seaweed baking in the sun, burning charcoal and the sticky salt on our skin seemed forever and endless.

My dad taught me how to ride the waves on a canvas raft, and my mother walked up and down the beach with me, looking for shells. There were shells then. Down the road you would see horses tied up in front of Colony Market, which was next to the drugstore where we sat in our bathing suits at the circular counter, eating fries, drinking shakes. Always vanilla for me.

“You don’t have to finish it,” Dad would goad. His tease was like a secret code, as transparent as a glass of water. Not quite finished with this summer elixir, and shivering from the icy lumps buried within, I handed the ridged and thick shake glass to him so he could drink the rest. Thinking about it makes me want a milk shake. And to be with him.

Now my own mortality leaps out at me.

“This is where my ashes should drop,” I tell my husband as we drive by El Matador. “Okay,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road. “Okay,” I repeat to myself clutching the Malibu that is my myth, and allowing myself to be enfolded in it.

SURFURBIA’S MYTH

Later that night I come across a text from an old friend who recently moved to Malibu.

“Malibu,” he ascertains, “certainly lives up to its mythology.Mythology is a funny thing. It is kind of true in a metaphorical, symbolic way, like the Ten Commandments, or Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, or “the little black dress.”

Malibu’s mythology primarily relies on surfing imagery, a sport, a lifestyle, and for many, a raison d’etre. Nearly 100 years ago the sport migrated beyond the tropics and trade winds to California’s cooler shores. Once called an “alai a” the surfboard has morphed in design, but the human element doing the sport has remained the same: the surfrider lays, paddles, crouches, bends, sways incorporating a little hula, sometimes pumping to gain momentum, all on a flotilla made of resin and wood. Wearing full neoprene for the winter months; less so in the warmer months.But always, the surfer is a remarkable athlete who possesses cardio endurance, a good sense of timing and balance, and relentless nerve. While Hollywood may have immortalized Elizabeth Taylor, Ursula Andres, Bo Derek and even Pamela Anderson as languorous, feisty, independent and above all sexy “Beach Babes,” today’s quintessential California Girl is the surfer chic who calls upon the graces of her female self, exhibiting strength enough to carry her own board, paddle out, and own her place upon a glassy wave. If she falls, and she will, she will rise to the surface and ever smiling, get up and do it again. Their names are Athena, Venus and Artemis. She has muscle, moxie, and measured calm.

Now it is late and I want to text my friend and tell him all that I love and know that is Malibu.

But I don’t. I merely write back, “Welcome to surfurbia.”

Surfurbia is a word coined by architectural historian Reyner Banham in his forty-five year old classic, Los Angeles—The Architecture of Four Ecologies. The word means exactly what it sounds like: where urban living meets the surf. That means seventy miles of white sand that reaches from the western tip of Malibu to southern Balboa. As the Malibu myth encapsulates athletic youths seeking a relaxed lifestyle at the beach, so does surfurbia encapsulate the idea of fleeing the greater metropolis for the shore, stripping down to skivvies and running like a banshee into the ocean. 

Finally, my friend writes, “Malibu definitely takes some getting used to.” Well, duh, I want to say, but I don’t, for it is his evolution that he will have to get used to.

Instead I consider my friend’s future in the “Bu.” I imagine him taking up a hobby he might not have otherwise considered while living in another one of Banham’s ecologies, such as the foothills, the desert or the mountains. I speculate how he will adjust to Malibu’s lifestyle and his new, evolving self. Some guys follow an impulse to do something out of the ordinary, something they always wanted to do or are just now inspired to do as never before. Like comb the beach for trash, take up smash ball, this sort of thing.

THE SCHWAG WAG

Hey, it’s never too late to acquire a passion for the ocean, and I know plenty of guys over 60 who surf. I can count then on two hands. But my friend is

The Schwag-Wag is a kind of dance that goes like this: “Surfer Mike” pivots on one leg, and then the other, like a dancing ostrich, while peeling away the wetsuit from his body erstwhile pulling a (usually) thin towel around his waist. While holding the towel he pours a bucket of water over his head, then drops the wet suit to the asphalt upon which he pivots. Potentially disastrous this street shower is a mere 3-6 feet from the ongoing traffic. Because of the precarious nature and limited square footage of this outdoor cabana “Surfer Mike” oftentimes exposes his “package” to those of us driving by or sitting in traffic waiting for the light to change. It’s not that I’m a perv or peeper, it’s just there. The performers come in all shapes and sizes, age and levels of immodesty. Dude, for real.

I can’t help but watch the Schwag-Wag when Pacific Coast Highway traffic has jammed, as it has several times this past summer. What PCH commuter hasn’t felt anxious or bored waiting for the traffic to move?  It’s moments like these I find myself watching the Schwag- Wag show.

NOT MYTH

My husband, who was raised in a freezing urban enclave called Detroit, declines the invitation to swim in our waters because they are “too cold.” What can I say? Being tough and not so tough is part of his charm. Hopelessly romantic to play some kind of Beach Blanket Bingo with my husband, it took me at least ten summers of living in Malibu to fully realize he would never run into the ocean with me. But that’s all behind me now. I’ve got bigger issues.

“It hurts in the places where I used to play,” Leonard Cohen sings in his “Tower of Song.” Guess what Mr. Cohen, I can kvetch too! It hurts in the places where I used to play: in my body and in Malibu itself. No longer can I just throw myself in the ocean without some physical repercussions such as: earaches, sinus crud, back aches and stubbed toes.

Why did that sort of thing never hurt before? Now when I swim, boogie board or body surf I swim with my “old lady protective gear.” WARNING: NOT VERY SEXY! Like, (and I am not joking), a rash guard, wax ear plugs, a waterproof UV hat and sand booties to keep the bottom of my feet from scraping. Later, as body temperature and blood pressure return to normal I crash for a snack and nap. This was my joy and still is, it just takes a little more effort now.

Thank you dear reader for giving me the opportunity to tell you about surfurbia, and even more so, about my surfurbia. You have served witness as I passage. As much as I want to, and try to, I do not have the vim and vigor of my youth, and for this I feel a personal loss.

Meanwhile I’d like to leave you with a final surfurbia image, or if you prefer, paint it in a “plein aire” light: A sixty-year old woman hikes with a much taller man, hand-in-hand down the steep gravel path to the beach. There, she watches her partner in life toss the ball to a couple of black dogs. Now, standing at the shore (looking like a full on beach Martian), she bows her head, as if in a prayer of gratitude. She waves to the man on the beach before she sets out for a swim. She thinks of him as her beach lifeguard, and her lifeguard in life. Smiling, he waves back.