Pat Sparkuhl recalls his early affinity with surfing and the friendships he developed with other Laguna Beach surfers. Recorded in Laguna Beach, California.
Transcript
I remember my father bringing a surfboard home. It was a Hobie surfboard that had an abstract kind of pinkish brown striations on the bottom of the board. And I thought we were going to the snow, I had no idea what a surfboard was, but it sure seemed pretty interesting when he said we could go to the beach and you could ride waves with this thing. So, we came down to Laguna Beach and as soon as I hit the water at Main Beach, right at the main tower As soon as I got in the water, I said this is where I want to be the rest of my life, and I was about ten years old. It was a seminal experience for me in terms of what my direction was going to be. I soon thereafter became friends with a local guy who has an amazing history in Laguna Beach, the Goff family and Gary Goff, and he sold me my first surfboard for $25. And I remember how proud I was of that board. It was a Velzy board, a 7'6 wood board, pretty beat up, but it was a trophy for me that I dragged up and down the beach. Parading all the way down to Sleepy Hollow and back to Bird Rock to show off my new surfboard. It was an amazing experience. The first wave that I took at Thalia Street I stood up on, and I could not believe it. But it was an amazing experience for me to be able to realize that I had such an affinity and connection with what this activity was. It became my sole passion and my interest. I had very little interest in school, except for art. And the beauty of the politics in Laguna is that they located the schools in ideal locations to get ocean views. So, every time I would have a break from a class or go out to the gym class, I would go out to Park Avenue and look down and see what the waves were like at rock pile or Bird Rock, and it would give me an indication of what I would be doing after school. The reason it became so important to me is because I was doing it by myself. It was something that I didn't have to rely on someone else. It was something that I was doing independent of anyone else, in terms of telling me what to do. It allowed me a sense of expression in terms of individuality, that I tried to create my own style in terms of how I would surf. And I love the camaraderie that I had with the friends that I had developed at the time.
TEXT: Photographer Art Brewer
I felt very good about Art because he wanted to develop something for himself. So I befriended Art and we got along real well and as a consequence, he started taking a lot of pictures of me. And that was an honor too, that he would be out in the water and he would start practicing his photography. And so, as a result I have quite a few of his black and white images, which were early experiments. At the time, we were not seen as the athletes that they're viewed as today. We were seen as kind of marginal or bad boys, and not that we were, we were just trying to do something that we really enjoyed, spending hours and hours laying in the sand, looking at the rhythm of the waves, trying to imagine ourselves on a wave when you're watching the surf.
TEXT: Laguna Beach Surfing Club
We wanted to start a , revive the surfing club, which had come and gone. So we got together with Art, and Art had evolved into quite a name in terms of surfing recognition at that point, surfing photography. And he was working for Surfer magazine, I believe at 17 or 18 years old. And we wanted it to look like a good group so we all dressed up with white shirts and ties with our trunks and got our surfboards and we went to Woods Cove. And Art took some beautiful pictures of us as a group. That helped out a little bit but the challenge at the time always was to try to get surfing to be recognized as a valuable involvement. Some of my artwork reflects the interest that I have had in my youth with surfing, and it is because of surfing that I am who I am today. And surfing has taught me empathy and immeasurable levels of compassion for other people, particularly younger people that are trying to learn how to surf, and giving them opportunities out in the water. And ultimately, it has allowed me to live in an environment that I have always loved and feel very fortunate to have lived in: Laguna Beach.
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