Surfing San Onofre to Point Dume: 1936-1942
21102r.html to 0811821102-21102r.html : Thu Feb 15 18:12:42 PST 2001Reviews From:Entertainment WeeklyDetourUSA TodayAs for the West Coast, it would appear that Californians are too absorbed in turning outBaywatchepisodes to establish much of a beach-tome tradition, at least this year. The lone example washing up on these shores is a book of photographs by the late celebrity dentist (and one-time Cary Grant stunt double) Don James calledSurfing San Onofre to Point Dume: sepia snapshots of innocent, gorgeous hedonism."It was a balmy Sunday and the news about the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor was coming in over the radio. We were paying $60 a month for rent, which was split three ways, and life was good. Suddenly everything had changed. We all knew we were going off to war." For the half-decade preceding World War II, photographer Don James and his cronies lived in the balmy Eden of the southern California coastline, surfing from San Onofre north to Point Dume. "Surfing is life all the rest is details," someone once philosophized. In Don James's six-year diary of life in paradise, surfing is indeed life, but the beauty is in the details. James's sun-drenched remembrance of a paradise lost introduces us to a cast of golden children that Bruce Weber might well envy, and leaves us with at least one mystery: What ever became of Jack Power? According toSurfing San Onofre to Point Dume,"One day he walked down the beach and was never seen nor heard of again." Where did Jack Power go? Into the sunset, no doubt. Where the details hide.James' photographs are a unique peek at the genesis of alternative sports, a genre that lacks a Babe Ruth or Jim Thorpe to provide historical perspective. There is no extreme equivalent of this summer's home run derby.Waveriders like Jack Power didn't know they were rocking the cradle of cool and could not conceive that someday their laid-back beach culture was the beginning of a billion-dollar business that markets the edgy modern sports of skateboarding, snowboarding, wakeboarding and more. Or that their maverick sport of surfing would be taken up by 4 million people and reach the zenith of establishment acceptance: inclusion in the 2000 Olympic Games.What began on those waves 60 years ago was turbocharged in the 1960s by the boom in surf music and movies. It is reflected today in the baggy back-to-school clothes of sixth graders, the electric guitars on your car radio and the growing realization that sports are something we do, instead of just watch.In his introduction to James' recently reissued book,Surfing San Onofre to Point Dume, 1936-1942, C.R. Stecyk wrote: "...Surfing was still purely about the experience the burn in your shoulders from carrying your 90-pound plank two miles down the perilous cliffside trail to the cove; the sensation of skimming down the face of a chilly breaking wave at sunrise, the gentle offshore Santa Ana wind delivering the scent of distant orange groves."In James' viewfinder are young men and women, their heads tossed back in laughter, a broken-down Model T overloaded with heavy surfboards and spare tires. Love of the game was more than a locker room sound bite, it was the way they lived.Surfing was born centuries ago in the South Pacific islands, but took root in the untamed Southern California coast. It was adopted by gypsy drifters like Powers and movie stars such as Errol Flynn, Johnny Weissmuller and Gary Cooper. Jackie Coogan, a child star who rediscovered fame as Uncle Fester in the Addams Family television series, turned his youthful earnings into a Malibu surf pad that he shared with then-unknown starlet Betty Grable.Those halcyon days ended with when World War II released the serpent into the garden. The military fortified defensive positions on the beaches, giant weapons factories took root in the Los Angeles suburbs and the surfers trad