People Who Surf: An Interview With Palos Verdes Artist and Charger Zen Del Rio

Golden canvas

I started in 1969.

What was that like?
Well, what was really cool about it was a lot of my older brother’s friends were really into it, and my mom was pretty liberal and she was really helpful to people who needed help. So one of the guys who lived in our basement was Jim Irons. He’s Andy and Bruce’s uncle. The whole Iron’s family just has this surfing gene running through their bloodline. Every one of them has it. Bruce surfs a lot like his dad Phillip. Anyway, he was a huge influence on me. And he introduced me to Dale Struble, and Dale was kind of a young, successful guy. He was kind of sponsored and was in a few movies. So, he taught me how to shape and they were actually laminating boards and shaping boards on his property in the garage. So, that’s kind of where I started shaping. The whole backyard surfboard thing was going on, this was the early 70s, and I was 13.

Tell me about the waves you grew up with.
I started at Haggerty’s and then moved up the peninsula to Bluff Cove and to Indicator and then to Lunada Bay.

And back in the 70s, California surfing was pretty under the radar. What was it like coming up in that atmosphere?

It was amazing how good you got at patching dings. P.V. was sort of one of the last leash holdouts in southern California, even though we probably would have benefited the most because of the rocky coastline. So, we’d be patching dings down in my mom’s basement basically every night when there were waves. We’d have ding parties. It was great. I feel like the art of ding patching has kind of been lost because of the leash. And the leash shifted the whole way people surfed certain breaks. Nobody ventured inside much. We’d just sit out at the peak and one set would clear the water. You learned how to not make mistakes. Tube rides were a big thing then, because you were really throwing the dice. The guys who rode the tube and made it were pushing the envelope. So were the guys who were hitting the lip. They weren’t just cruising.

In Palos Verdes, it’s tough to be a new face in the lineup. What was it like being a grom in that area and coming of age?

It was great. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it was sort of like a big pecking order. And you somehow found your way in one way or another.

What was the localism scene like back then and how did you find your way in?

It was exactly like it is now, but worse. There were actual punch-outs. Anything went back then. It was before lawsuits. But I got lucky because the biggest, heaviest local enforcer’s younger brother was failing Spanish. I took Spanish for an easy A, you know, and he was flunking. Just floundering on the final and I let him copy my test. He got a D in the course and passed Spanish. So he talked to his brother. He told him I was cool and his brother called off the dogs. Everybody has a story like that. Guys all had their own ways of getting ingrained into the local scene. Eventually, the heavy guys would figure out you were cool, that you were from the area. It was a tight community.

How has localism affected this area as a whole?