Bodysurfing at Newport Beach

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Outside Magazine August 2004

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Bodysurfing
The Lip Comes Down (cont.)


	Wild man Kevin "Mel" Thoman (Jake Chessum)

UNLIKE OAHU'S BANZAI PIPELINE, Northern California's Maverick's, or any other world-class big break, the Newport Wedge has the unusual distinction of being entirely man-made. Between 1934 and 1936, the Army Corps of Engineers bulldozed 200,000 tons of boulders into the ocean off Newport Beach, extending a fingerlike jetty first built in 1918 to protect the entrance to Newport Harbor. As an unintended side effect, they also created one of the strangest wave dynamics on earth.

Here's how it works: Grinding alongside the boulders, headed for shore, each wave generates a reflected wave that bounces off the jetty and moves sideways behind the original. When that "side wave" hits the next incoming wave, the two combine to form a double-size mutant triangle. Precisely where the waves converge, the ocean floor rises abruptly. The big peak has no place to go but up.

As early as the 1920s, bodysurfers all over Southern California were tucking their arms and riding waves to shore headfirst. At the Newport jetty, however, that technique would have landed them in a wheelchair. For decades the Wedge remained largely untouched—even through the post–World War II years, when fins developed for Navy underwater-demolition teams started showing up in military-surplus stores. The stiff black rubber fins allowed bodysurfers to catch bigger waves, then angle across their faces.

It wasn't until 1961, when former UCLA water-polo player Fred Simpson redesigned the fins and figured out the right body position, that the Wedge was finally mastered. Others followed Simpson, and by the seventies a full-blown urban surf tribe was sharing raucous "Wedge houses" and living in utter debauchery.



	Newport Beach alpha dog turned flight instructor Terry Wade (Jake Chessum)

They held mock tanning contests and regular keggers, sported Wedge tattoos, and—according to one lifelong member—bedded more than a few young girls. They had their own surf report, their own Wedge cocktail (white and gold tequilas, curaçao, lime and orange juice, plus soda), and even their own Wedge Wear line of T-shirts, bearing pictures of themselves in action.

At the time, most of the Crew—which included characters like Terry Wade, Kevin "Mel" Thoman, and Tom "Cashbox" Kennedy—had the roguish exuberance of an out-of-control fraternity. A typical anecdote goes like this: In 1986, the Crew decided to mix things up at the World Bodysurfing Championships. They had long ridiculed the event; to them, the tame surf farther down in Oceanside made it a championship in name only. Wedge pioneer Simpson, who hung up his Speedo and retired from bodysurfing in 1989 after a brush with melanoma, was at that time making a living selling his fin design under the Viper brand. As a sponsor of the Oceanside event, he was handing out prizes and hanging the banners.

Then his buddies crashed the party. "It's a family event, with dancing and surf movies," recalls Simpson, now 66. "Well, the a-holes from the Wedge showed up and—Katie, bar the door! There was a slide show, and the boys are all chanting, 'Oceanslime! Oceanslime!' [a putdown of the host city], and then Kennedy streaking across the stage, guys thumping their asses, spilling beer, babies crying, women screaming."

Simpson didn't participate in the madness, but he caught an earful from the organizers after the fact. "They said, 'Simpson, tell your people to stay away.' I said, 'Hey, I don't even know those guys.' But the truth is, I love it. My attitude is, 'Hey, I don't know who left the gate open, but the dogs are back.' "

The Crew kept a firm grip on the Newport Wedge until the eighties, when a new threat emerged: the recently invented boogie board. With a little practice, just about anyone could flop down on one of these foam platters and catch a ride. Before long, mobs of "boogers" had so cluttered the Wedge that bodysurfing had become nearly impossible. In retaliation, the Crew lobbed sand-filled socks at the interlopers as they launched themselves into the wave—and even spiked the beach with nails and glass.

In 1993, worried that their way of life might disappear, Wade, Kennedy, and Thoman formed the Wedge Preservation Society. Petitioning the municipality, they won for all bodysurfers what amounts to legal title to the Wedge, for the best part of the year.

"The City Council finds that 'The Wedge' is an area particularly suited to bodysurfing and that flotation devices . . . pose a danger to bodysurfers at The Wedge," reads City of Newport Beach Resolution No. 93-33, passed in May of that year. In the name of public safety, the bylaw prohibits all board surfing—including boogie boarding—at the jetty between 10a.m. and 5 p.m., from the start of May to the end of October. Wedge bodysurfing stands today as a protected cultural treasure—a rare instance in which one recreation group is effectively handed the only keys to a public resource.

Not that everybody always plays by the rules. On one of the mornings I visit the Wedge, three boogie boarders refuse to leave the water. Wedge Crewman J.T. Nickelsen, a 35-year-old, 200-pound former Wall Street trader, wades into the surf to drag them out himself.

In less than a minute, a six-four, tattoo-covered boogie boarder is screaming at Nickelsen: "Why don't you do something about it, faggot?"

"You do something, you jerk-off."

"Oh, yeah," the booger replies, pumping his massive ham-hock fist at crotch level. "I'm a big jerk-off! I'm just a big jerk-off! Oh, God, I'm so scared. Here, look, let me turn around and take off my wetsuit. OK, faggot? Here I go, see? I'm not even looking. My back's turned. It's your big chance to drop me."

Nickelsen stands his ground. "Take the first swing, buddy," he says. "I'm right here."

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