60 Years of Music • The Beach Boys, Surfin' USA • Released March 25, 1963

Avila Beach Pier and town. Notice the red rectangle?

 
Music is all about association. In March of 1963, I turned 8 years old. This post is about my childhood in the 1960's and the associations I have with California beach culture growing up on the central coast. For me, Avila Beach and the Beach Boys are joined as sand is to the surf.

Left of the pier, sunning by the wall.

I picked the panoramic photo above because it best helps tell this little story. I want you to picture this scene if you drove into Avila Beach with your family in the 1960's, parked the station wagon, and walked to the beach. As you approach, the right side beach at the pier was the family side, and the left side was more of the teenager's side. If you look how I've blocked off the rising road and embankment wall in the red rectangle, that particular section was where all the high school and possibly Cal Poly college students laid out their beach towels and sunned themselves in all their beach blanket bikini glory. As a child and adolescent, I walked that section many times, not only on the beach, but walking up on the sidewalk and looking down the embankment, if you get my drift. Oh my wannabe self, to be one of the guys with my Gordon and Smith surfboard resting against the embankment wall while I was talking with the girls... Hello cowgirl in the sand.

Now to the right of the pier (the family side), that's where my parents would set up. When you were really little you played in the sand, on the slide or took a spin on the merry-go-round. It was so cool, that they had all that right there in the sand for the kids to play.

A vintage "Surf Mat"

When we got a little older, we would rent the inflatable canvas blue and yellow rafts for 50 cents a hour under the pier and ride the waves in the pre-Boogieboard days (see the photo on the left I found on the Internet called, "surf mats"). Typically Avila waves are not a left or right break at all. On bigger days (3-5 ft.) the swell would develop and just slam straight down. A great ride was being in the wave and when it slammed, the industrial strength rental raft just bounced and you held on for dear life and rode that buckin' bronco in a wave of white foam. A bad ride was usually catching it a little too early on top and going over the cliff of the wave to be body slammed. Now as an 8-9 year old, if you did that in the shallower water, you'd get slammed into the sand. By 10 years old, you were a pro, and if you were going to get slammed, it would be on bigger waves in deeper water, or what everybody called, "the washing machine."

It was so fun. You would spend about a hour in the water, and the water was not like Southern California that warmed up in the summer. The water in Northern and Central Coast beaches are cold. You would see kids come out of the water shivering and their skin would be blush red. I remember, running from the surf with my raft to my beach towel cooking on the sand. I would dive into that big beach towel as my shivering would turn to roasting, and then running back into the surf to repeat the whole cycle. I was stoked.

Now back in those days, you could be 10 years old, and your mom gives you money for a burger or treat and you go to the beach strip of shops, all by yourself! I remember this like it's yesterday. The smell of burgers cooking on the grill, teens drinking cokes, kids eating cotton candy all covered in sand, and The Beach Boys playing through a shop's rusted outdoor cone speaker system. I can't say that Surfin' USA was playing in that most vivid moment of my memory, but let's just say it was.

The Wilson brothers (Brian, Carl and Dennis), cousin Mike, and neighbor David Marks had tapped into the early sixties beach culture and surfer music. Sixty years later, why would anyone ever want to leave that scene, you gremmies. 

Enjoy my friends.

 

Here are some common surfing terms from the 1960s:

1. Beach Bum: Someone who spends most of their time at the beach, usually a surfer.
2. Cowabunga: The surfer's cry "Cowabunga" as they climb a 12 foot wall of water and "take the drop."
3. Ditching: Skipping school to go surfing.
4. Gremmie: A beginner surfer.
5. Gun: A long surfboard used for riding big waves.
6. Hang Ten: A term used to describe a surfer's ability to ride a wave with both feet at the front of the board, toes over the edge.
7. Hotdogging: Showing off one's surfing skills, often involving radical maneuvers and tricks.
8. Kook: A surfer who is inexperienced or lacks skill.
9. Nose Riding: Riding the front of the board while balancing on the nose.
10. Soul Surfer: A surfer who embodies the spirit and culture of surfing.
11. Stoked: A feeling of excitement or happiness.
12. Tubed: To successfully ride inside a wave's hollow barrel.
13. Wipeout: Falling off the board while surfing.

Avila Beach today, minus the oil storage tanks on the bluffs, and that's another story.