The Closest Thing To Being Born

With the advent of every big surf day cameras on tripods are lined up at the top of the sand berm ready to be snapped as rapidly as the waves give cause. Later the Wedge men may sell their pictures to surfing magazines or trade them among each other. On special nights in the summer they will get together for a mass showing of movies and slides. Egan himself has about $5,000 worth of camera equipment and hopes, someday, to make photography his profession. Together with Mike Fitzwater, a free-lance photographer, whose work includes publicity stills of "Mickey and Diane," a local husband-and-wife singing team, and John Ramuno, who, when asked his profession, answers "retired," Egan plans to publish the first body-surfing magazine. The three entrepreneurs have a name for the magazine—New Visions—a cover, a layout, "outasight" pictures and some money. But no publisher. "For our second issue we're gonna have just the whole bitchin' Wedge," says Ramuno. "A page of Wedge waves. A page of Wedge guys. A page of Wedge chicks. A page of Wedge goons and turkeys. People will think it's bitchin'. What an unreal, righteous issue!"

No photography or magazine text, however, can fully capture the tense anticipation followed by the near delirium that overcomes the crowd onshore when a huge set of waves approaches the Wedge. Roars and cheering accompany especially thrilling rides, and shouts of "Outside! Outside!" warn surfers in the water of impending crashers. "No, that's wrong," says Egan. "Goons caught on to that and started shouting 'Outside!' when there were only East Coast tinies outside. Now they're always going 'Outside!' What do we do now? We signal. Hand signal."

As is the case with most outasight places, great numbers of legends, some true, abound about the Wedge. Local men say its fame has spread throughout the globe. "These are the best body surfers in the world right here," says Ralph Polston. "I began at Boomer Beach in La Jolla, and all of us down there used to think we were the greatest, and we'd come up and show the Wedge guys how to surf. Well, I did one day, and I got my tail cleaned. I ate surf for two days straight. I mean ate it. Hawaiians come over here all the time to beat the Wedge, and they end up eating it, too. I mean, eating it.

"In the oral test the Navy gives under-water demolition team candidates they try and scare you—'Well, men, we're going out in some really heavy surf today'—stuff like that. One officer said to me, 'I see you're from Southern California. You surf?' 'Yes, sir,' I told him. 'The Wedge.' He looked at me like he had seen a ghost. 'You surfed the Wedge?' he said. He was stoked for all time. I was in Hong Kong with an Australian a few years ago, and when he found out I was a Wedge man he literally jumped up in the air. He dragged me into a bar and wanted to know all about it. We got ripped that time. I mean ripped. Outa...bitchin'...sight!"

The days are gone when Wedge men used to fill their socks with sand and smash a turkey's face bloody as he came over the falls. Or when a person like Nick Nick, a bona fide Hell's Angel (now deceased), would show up in his denims and chain belt, sharpen the aluminum fin on his short board, say something like, "O.K., men, where are they?" and go out looking for goon bodies to accidentally cut open. Tales of more recent vintage and of considerably less macabre tone are given currency by Pat Carden, the self-appointed "keeper of the legends." Carden says that on one memorable day he and another body surfer took off on a giant wave and flew so high they landed on the other side of the jetty. They got up, staggered around, saw they had ended up on the opposite side of the rocks from which they had started and wondered only if they had gone under or over the power-pole wires 40 feet above the surf. Observers assured them that Carden had gone over, his friend under. But it wasn't until two years later when he overheard a goon describe the incident to his date and insist to same that he was a witness that Carden realized how history is made.

There is one Wedge happening that has come to be an issue of grave disagreement among those who insist they were there. It involves the appearance at the Wedge of two girls, Candy Calhoun and Nancy Corfman, on what is described in Justice Gardner's book as "Big Tuesday" of August 1962, "when," as Gardner has written, "both girls rode the huge surf then pounding at the Wedge. Candy and Nancy [who is the former Nancy Gardner and the justice's daughter] had surfed but a few moments when, by unspoken agreement, most of the rest of the surfers left the water to watch the two girls. Estimates vary as to the size of the surf that day. Some say 18 feet, some say 20 feet. There was common agreement that Nancy took one free fall of at least 12 feet. Every camera at the beach tried to take the shot, but they were all fogged up with flying spray. But whatever the size of the surf, the girls rode the biggest the Wedge had to offer to the cheers of an all-male audience."

"Judge Gardner is full of it," says one Wedge man. "We didn't get out of the water. We were teed off that the dumb chicks came over and got in our way. They're O.K. surfers for girls, but nobody messes with a Wedge man's waves. There might have been some clapping, but a lot of guys head-hopped those chicks."

"There was no head hopping," says another regular. "They were friends. We all knew them. But it wasn't any 'Big Tuesday,' either. That's stupid."

"There sure was head hopping," says the first Wedge man.

Girls are tolerated as spectators at the Wedge only if they are on the near side of 25, slim, blonde, tanned, wear a bikini and have a face like Candice Bergen. Girls as dates, however, are a different thing.