# Territorial surfers? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 30, 2010, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534 "2010-07-30T01:31:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/1 "2010-07-30T01:31:34Z")
I’ve often heard that surfers can be very territorial and violent about keeping strangers off their favorite piece of beach. But I’ve never seen or heard anything first-hand so I was wondering if this is just an urban legend, or something that only happened in the 1950s… Have you ever encountered (or were you) a territorial surfer? What happened? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/2 "2010-07-30T03:45:45Z")
[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wzi3ruT1uA) ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/3 "2010-07-30T03:59:54Z")
By coincidence, I was browsing at lunch today and came across the Wikipedia page on Jaws, the beach and surf on/off Maui: > [@](#): > > **Road blockage** As of 2006[update], the road to “Jaws” had been intentionally blocked by placing derelict vehicles across the road, and setting them on fire. In addition to the vehicles, there are tank trap-style cuts into the roads, preventing all but small, ATV-style vehicles from approaching from the highway. > > The reason for the blockage is related to the December 15, 2004 crowding of the beach. Surfers who were not competent, tourists, and many others showed up to the beach to observe the massive surf. People were injured, and veteran big wave riders Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama protested that the congestion on the waves made it more difficult and dangerous than otherwise to surf the Peahi reef. It is suggested that one surfs at “Jaws” “by invitation” from a veteran tow-in surfer only, despite absence of any legal basis for such a suggestion regarding public territory. Non-expert big wave surfers are discouraged. Also, in **Dogtown and Z-Boys** , someone mentions that surfers at Pacific Ocean Park in the '70s would harass non-Venice surfers, including one time when they took the carburetor off the car of someone who wouldn’t get out of the surf. The problem there was that the strangers didn’t know how to surf the piers under the park and would either cut off or run into the locals. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/4 "2010-07-30T10:05:26Z")
I have a colleague who surfs a lot but is in his sixties and came to surfing late, and is not part of the cool crowd. He says there are beaches on the Gold Coast in Queensland that are very “local” where outsiders definitely get hostility from locals. I haven’t heard him describe any actual violence or interference with property but certainly he has experienced verbal abuse and hostile looks ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/5 "2010-07-31T02:34:56Z")
Surfing is unlike any other sport. Surfers are entirely dependent on natural forces to provide them with a place to practice their sport. Just finding a beach usually does no good at all. The beach has to have just the right kind of bottom so that the waves break in a way that they can be ridden. But the biggest problem is the waves them selves. Waves are caused by storms and storms don’t happen ever day or even every week. And sometimes the waves generated by these storm send swells toward the beach at an angle that doesn’t produce “ride able” waves. In other words, good surf is an unusual event. Even the best surfing beaches have good waves only about 100 days out of a year. The waves can be good for 2 or 3 days and then it can be weeks before the waves get good again. You might hear about surfers who claim to surf everyday, but just going out in the water and paddling around in 2 foot mush isn’t surfing. All this causes big problems. Waves are meant to be ridden by one surfer at a time. And at most beached these waves all come in and break at the same place. When you have 20 surfers (or even 10!) waiting for a wave, you can imagine the problems. Some of these surfers come here every day and have been doing so even since they were 8 years old. They are there rain or shine, winter or summer and when the waves finally get good, they get pissed off when a bunch of surfers from who knows where come and try and take their waves. ME? I quit. It just got too crowded, but I’d start again tomorrow if some one invented a machine that produced enough good waves that alleviated the crowds. There is NOTHING like riding inside a huge tube or even just riding a nice shoulder. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/6 "2010-07-31T04:12:19Z")
No personal experience but the word in the whitewater kayaking community is that surfers are hostile to kayakers that attempt to surf thier waves. On second thought, I’ve read that more than once but maybe that’s not as universal as I made it sound above. ---
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/7 "2010-08-01T00:20:30Z")
Interesting… thanks for the insights. > [@Mangosteen](#): > > All this causes big problems. Waves are meant to be ridden by one surfer at a time. And at most beached these waves all come in and break at the same place. When you have 20 surfers (or even 10!) waiting for a wave, you can imagine the problems. Some of these surfers come here every day and have been doing so even since they were 8 years old. They are there rain or shine, winter or summer and when the waves finally get good, they get pissed off when a bunch of surfers from who knows where come and try and take their waves. > > ME? I quit. It just got too crowded, but I’d start again tomorrow if some one invented a machine that produced enough good waves that alleviated the crowds. There is NOTHING like riding inside a huge tube or even just riding a nice shoulder. That was a great post! But reading between the lines - are you trying to say that you used to kick peoples’ ass before you quit? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/8 "2010-08-01T05:17:54Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > I’ve often heard that surfers can be very territorial and violent about keeping strangers off their favorite piece of beach. But I’ve never seen or heard anything first-hand so I was wondering if this is just an urban legend, or something that only happened in the 1950s… > > Have you ever encountered (or were you) a territorial surfer? What happened? FWIW, last month a hung jury in Malibu let off, for now, [Skylar Peak and Philip Hildebrand](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/19/local/la-me-malibu-surfers-verdict-20100619) who were caught on film beating a French paparazzo who was trying to get a picture of Matthew McConaughey. Granted, the victim and the other paparazzi were being supremely annoying by their very nature, but this excerpt from the article annoys the heck out of me: > [@L.A. Times](#): > > The June 2008 incident was caught on camera and spread across the Internet. A dozen paparazzi were angling for a shot of actor Matthew McConaughey when they were confronted by a group of local surfers, including Peak and Hildebrand. > > “Let’s go!” shouted one surfer. “We’ll draw a line in the beach, and we’ll fight for the beach. If you guys win, you can have the beach.” _You can have the beach_. That’s very nice of them, isn’t it? I thought public beaches were for everybody. (Not all Malibu beaches are private and I’m assuming this one wasn’t, or if it was, Peak and Hildebrand didn’t hold title). I _know_ this isn’t the way most surfers are, and I know that the ire against paparazzi is well deserved, but this doesn’t sit well we me at all. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/9 "2010-08-01T05:26:13Z")
> [@Mangosteen](#): > > ME? I quit. It just got too crowded, but I’d start again tomorrow if some one invented a machine that produced enough good waves that alleviated the crowds. There is NOTHING like riding inside a huge tube or even just riding a nice shoulder. This makes me think surfer territoriality wasn’t much of an issue in the 1950s. Was there anyplace, in all of the United States, that was too crowded in the 1950s? We had only about 150M people in those days. All of California had just under 16M in the 1960 census, or just 7M more than Los Angeles County now. When I think of what it must have been like to go to the beach in the 1950’s compared to now, it’s enough to make a grown man cry. Every beach is crowded now, and even more so, every road leading to every beach. ---
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/10 "2010-08-01T05:36:31Z")
My friend got into a fight at Venice Beach. He was fishing, the surfer was surfing. We later met another surfer who surfs the area and he said the guy my friend fought with is an asshole and always looking to fight. Surfers have almost always been nice to me when I’m fishing from the beach. We’re all doing our own thing and the only times we cross paths are when they’re going out or coming in. ---
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/11 "2010-08-01T14:10:28Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > > [@L.A. Times](#): > > > > The June 2008 incident was caught on camera and spread across the Internet. A dozen paparazzi were angling for a shot of actor Matthew McConaughey when they were confronted by a group of local surfers, including Peak and Hildebrand. > > > > “Let’s go!” shouted one surfer. “We’ll draw a line in the beach, and we’ll fight for the beach. If you guys win, you can have the beach.” > > _You can have the beach_. That’s very nice of them, isn’t it? I thought public beaches were for everybody. (Not all Malibu beaches are private and I’m assuming this one wasn’t, or if it was, Peak and Hildebrand didn’t hold title). > > I _know_ this isn’t the way most surfers are, and I know that the ire against paparazzi is well deserved, but this doesn’t sit well we me at all. Hey, I just found the videos of this incident (bad language within) ![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/rG_G2vMAWy4/maxresdefault.jpg)https://www.youtube.com/embed/rG_G2vMAWy4?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PZpDwUGySy8/hqdefault.jpg "BEACH BRAWL 3 surfers vs paparazzi new footage") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZpDwUGySy8) Sounds like “if you win, you can have the beach” was just an adlib and the surfers’ “victims” deserved it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/12 "2010-08-01T17:09:03Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > I’ve often heard that surfers can be very territorial and violent about keeping strangers off their favorite piece of beach. But I’ve never seen or heard anything first-hand so I was wondering if this is just an urban legend, or something that only happened in the 1950s… > > Have you ever encountered (or were you) a territorial surfer? What happened? If you shut up, mind your manners and respect the locals you shouldn’t have any trouble in my experience. And avoid Oxnard. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/13 "2010-08-01T17:17:49Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > Interesting… thanks for the insights. > > > [@Mangosteen](#): > > > > All this causes big problems. Waves are meant to be ridden by one surfer at a time. And at most beached these waves all come in and break at the same place. When you have 20 surfers (or even 10!) waiting for a wave, you can imagine the problems. Some of these surfers come here every day and have been doing so even since they were 8 years old. They are there rain or shine, winter or summer and when the waves finally get good, they get pissed off when a bunch of surfers from who knows where come and try and take their waves. > > > > ME? I quit. It just got too crowded, but I’d start again tomorrow if some one invented a machine that produced enough good waves that alleviated the crowds. There is NOTHING like riding inside a huge tube or even just riding a nice shoulder. > > That was a great post! But reading between the lines - are you trying to say that you used to kick peoples’ ass before you quit? 🙂 Its funny that you thought that because after I read what I wrote, It DID seem like I might have done that! But, no, my group of surfer friends never were like that. We started surfing in the early 60’s before it was too crowded. The fights started in the late 60’s at some of the better (and thus more crowded) surfing spots. It was the next generation of surfers that acted this way. They grew up fighting for every wave, After high school my friends and I moved to north San Diego County and had a “secret spot” to surf that was never crowded at least until the mid-70’s when I moved to Hawaii. The outer Hawaiian Islands at that time had great surf and uncrowded waves, but I still got into fights because even 3 or 4 guys out at a surf break was too much for the locals who were haoles (white). Never had any trouble with the local Hawaiians. I finally decided to quit surfing, so I sold my board and bought a one way ticket to Bangkok, Thailand just for something to do, but that’s another story. ---
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/14 "2010-08-01T17:59:10Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > And avoid Oxnard. Why’s that? ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/15 "2010-08-01T19:45:06Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > > [@Mangosteen](#): > > > > ME? I quit. It just got too crowded, but I’d start again tomorrow if some one invented a machine that produced enough good waves that alleviated the crowds. There is NOTHING like riding inside a huge tube or even just riding a nice shoulder. > > This makes me think surfer territoriality wasn’t much of an issue in the 1950s. Was there anyplace, in all of the United States, that was too crowded in the 1950s? We had only about 150M people in those days. All of California had just under 16M in the 1960 census, or just 7M more than Los Angeles County now. > > When I think of what it must have been like to go to the beach in the 1950’s compared to now, it’s enough to make a grown man cry. Every beach is crowded now, and even more so, every road leading to every beach. Malibu was crowded in the late 50’s, but surfing was different then. No one took it seriously. It was new. It was fun. There were people who surfed every day in the summer at Malibu, but they didn’t see themselves as _locals_ in today’s sense. No one would think of telling some one to get out of the way. The good surfers just went around the new comers. Taking off in front of another surfer who was already riding the wave was commonplace and no one seemed to mind. This all changed by the mid 60’s at the premier surf spots like Malibu. We’re not talking about crowded beaches. You can always find a place to lay your towel out. Waves, on the other hand, are one to a person and there are never enough waves and always too many surfers. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/16 "2010-08-01T19:57:19Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > > [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > > > I’ve often heard that surfers can be very territorial and violent about keeping strangers off their favorite piece of beach. But I’ve never seen or heard anything first-hand so I was wondering if this is just an urban legend, or something that only happened in the 1950s… > > > > Have you ever encountered (or were you) a territorial surfer? What happened? > > If you shut up, mind your manners and respect the locals you shouldn’t have any trouble in my experience. > > And avoid Oxnard. Exactly. The problem is that minding your manners and respecting the locals means that you can surf “over there”. The thing is that the waves never break _over there_ and if you come over here to surf, we will take off in front of you and generally make your so life miserable that you get out of the water, go home and never come back. There aren’t even enough waves for the locals. How are you going to ask them to share an extremely rare commodity like a wave? Oxnard is a surf spot north of Los Angeles, but no more notorious than a lot of other surf spot for _local-ism_. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/17 "2010-08-01T20:35:05Z")
Backcountry skiers have a bit of this kind of territoriality. The standard motto is “I won’t tell you, but I’ll show you where the hidden stash of powder is” but as more and more people want to use up the untracked snow that is suffering. I’ve heard rumors of some cars being vandalized out west when they weren’t “locals” at some isolated trailheads but I don’t know if it can be attributed to territoriality or just assholes. ---
**Author:** ![mo50](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@mo50](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mo50)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/territorial-surfers/548534/18 "2010-08-02T00:39:57Z")
Don’t know if anyone else recalls, but I seem to remember recently a news story about an older, local, beloved surfer dude guy in Santa Barbara, who got murdered by some gangbanger over some, I’m guessing, surf dispute. Apparently the old local surfer peace & love dude got the best of the original fight, but then the ganbanger went & got his posse, came back & stabbed the surfer dude & that was that. Sorry I can’t provide a link, but I’m sure it’s not too hard to find. Just goes to show where the peace & commune with nature surfer thing sometimes seems to end up. Very sad! 😕