DISPATCH: Ocean Beach

Andy Olive with a little San Francisco treat of his own off of Santiago Street

The Ride

Kelly’s Cove: Sited on the extreme north end of OB, Kelly’s sits in the shadow of the Cliff House and is the most protected from the prevailing northwest wind. While it doesn’t catch as much swell as the middle of the beach, Kelly’s often does more with it, offering wedgy peaks and barrels when the rest of the spots are walled. Locals such as Marty Magnussen and Andy Olive destroy anything here, from triple-overhead bombs to shoulder-high wedges. They also, along with the rest of the local boys, run this spot, so surf with respect.

Ocean Beach “The Beach” is four miles of powerful, constantly shifting beachbreak distinguished by fickle and unforgiving inner and outer bars. The breaks are named for the street or landmark they line up with. Hence names like “VFWs” (located behind a former VFW hall), Judah, Noriega, Taraval, and Sloat. It’s always best to take a long look from the dunes for auspicious rip currents before paddling out. While a hazard to the unwary, these rips can also be a dry-hair free pass out the back. However, Ocean Beach can defeat even the most fit and determined surfer, leading to a hellish, never-ending, static beating known as “The Denial.” The upside is once—or if—you make it out, it’s a near-wilderness wave reserve and rarely crowded over 8 foot. “The big waves in the middle of the beach take care of the bullshit,” asserts Washburn with a grin.

The Danger Zone

Hazards and Annoyances:

Hypothermic water, deadly rip currents, and occasional pollution closures.

Sharks

Ocean Beach is sited on the northern end of the infamous Red Triangle. There was one documented attack in 2005 and several brushes with white sharks more recently. The nearby Farralon Islands, just 27 miles off the Golden Gate, are prime white shark feeding and breeding grounds. A 19-foot, two-ton female behemoth named “Stumpy” apparently likes to pounce—incisors first— upon surfboards tethered as lures.

Legends

Jack O’Neill: Inventor of the modern surfing wetsuit and one of Ocean Beach’s earliest surfers. In 1952, O’Neill founded what is arguably the world’s first official surf shop.

Fred Van Dyke: North Shore big-wave pioneer, Fred grew up in the Outer Sunset and learned how to bodysurf through the treacherous OB currents in the 1940s from Hawaiian transplants Eddie Eukini and Clifford Kamaka. “We didn’t know any better about warm water and good conditions,” says Van Dyke in the soon-to-be released San Francisco surf film Great Highway. “We just went surfing.”

Mark “Doc” Renneker: A garrulous but intense surfing oncologist with a near-messianic bent for leading willing adepts out into huge Ocean Beach for the rides—or beatings—of their lives. Renneker, an accomplished Maverick’s paddle-in surfer, is also the first to attempt paddling in to 30-foot-plus waves at Potato Patch.

Lore

While San Fran was renowned as one of the hotbeds of 1960’s counterculture, Ocean Beach was, and is, a traditional blue-collar community. The “Outside Lands” were one of the last areas of the city to be developed, which accounts for its Eisenhower-era, time-warp appeal. The beach culture here goes back more than 100 years and began when mining magnate Adolph Sutro built his celebrated Sutro Baths. The baths, a sprawling 500-foot proto-waterpark, featured six saltwater pools heated to varying temperatures and could accommodate up to 10,000 wet, woolen-clad San Franciscans. Duke Kahanamoku visited Sutro Baths several times but it’s unknown whether he tried the waves out front. Prior to the ’60s, Ocean Beach (still technically illegal to swim) was the province of a small, hardy crew of watermen who surfed on 40-pound logs and warmed themselves by periodically thawing out beside raging beach bonfires. By the early 60’s, surfing had taken a tentative hold. In 1964, SURFER Magazine reported: “Recently, the Kelly’s surfers have been given a bad name among the locals as a result of the drinking and obscenities of a group of non-surfing slobs or hodads that have infiltrated the beach and parking lot.” For most of the 20th century, however, Ocean Beach existed in near-total media blackout, considered the exclusive domain of a hardy and eccentric breed of urban surfer. However, with surfing’s surging popularity in the 1990s, coupled with the discovery of Maverick’s 30 miles south and the wholesale migration of young professionals to San Francisco during the dot-com bubble, The Beach has become a bonafide scene.

Special thanks to Grant Washburn, Matt Warshaw, Mark Gunson, and Julio.