Living at the beach
I'm one lucky guy
Our Surfoto summer of ‘68
Decades before GoPro, the eponymous action camera was created, or years before Nick Woodman, the company’s founder was born, my best friend since third grade and I created Surfoto.
Our surfing photography business wasn’t launched in a garage near Stanford, like H-P or Apple, but rather in a VW bus on Lido.
It was 50 years ago, and Bruce Lyon and I needed to find work between our sophomore and junior years in college. We both had boxed groceries the summer before, so we wanted to work closer to the beach this time around.
After a series of hits and misses, we came up with the revolutionary idea of randomly taking pictures of surfers and selling the 5 x 7 black and white photographs an hour later.
There were no cell phones or other similar devices on the market back then, so most surfers never had seen a photo of themselves riding a wave.
That is, until Surfoto was created. Surfoto was the combination of an East German camera, a Japanese telephoto lens, a blacked-out Volkswagen van and a Sears generator. Combined, these provisions became the first “paddle in and see yourself surfing” action photography business.
Here’s how it worked: Each morning at 9 o’clock, Bruce and I would drive our bus to Doheny or the Huntington Cliffs.
Soon 20 or more photographs would be taken of “anyone who happened to be in the water at the time,” my former Surfoto partner claims.
By 9:30, we would be in hot pursuit of our subjects with Bruce developing the negatives and yours truly paddling out to spread the word.
“Hey, I’m from Surfoto. In an hour we’ll have a photo of you surfing,” I would say.
News of Surfoto’s arrival would spread like wildfire. Thirty minutes and a few waves later, the two of us would trade places. Bruce would paddle out while I enlarged the negatives. It was no easy chore.
While Bruce developed the negatives in a hand-held box, I had to enlarge the photos in a three-solution bath inside the bus.
With the generator providing both the necessary power and unrelenting noise, Surfoto’s prints soon were ready for sale.
How do Bruce, a recipient of a special Academy Award for technology and the founder of Integrated Media Technologies, and I, now a retired corporate communications executive, remember Surfoto?
“The energy around Surfoto was incredible,” Bruce said. “Denny would be frantically throwing the prints out the window of the van, as surfers mingled around. I would pin the photos to a piece of cardboard and ‘push’ them like there was no tomorrow.”
Sometimes Bruce would sell the wrong print to the wrong person, but no one seemed disappointed because, “How many times could you go the beach, surf, and return home the same day with a picture for your scrapbook?”
For my part, I also have fond memories of that special Surfoto Summer of ’68.
As long as I live, I’ll never forget our first print. I could hear Bruce talking to people around the bus for about 10 minutes. Every few minutes he’d shout, “When’s it ready?”
Everyone was joking and waiting to see the first photo. When I passed our first photograph out the window, everything became quiet. No one said a word. All of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Someone recognized his picture. Surfoto was a reality.
In writing this piece I asked Bruce, “Was Surfoto profitable?”
“No, not in terms of dollars and cents,” he said. “Business wasn’t exactly what we had anticipated. But Surfoto did prove profitable over the long run.”
We thought Surfoto would take off like a rocket. While interest was sky-high, money was tight. We expected surfers to be poor, but not that poor.
“Surfoto was the first real opportunity to express myself in a visual manner,” Bruce says. “Home movies and pictures aside, Surfoto helped me realize people responded to my visual thinking. Ultimately, it laid the foundation for my work in animation and digital media.”
As for me, Surfoto taught me one really good lesson. No matter how great an idea appears to be, you need research to back up basic assumptions. Without this data, you really are flying blind.
Today’s technology renders something like Surfoto obsolete.
“Unless, of course, you believe there still is life in that old bus of ours,” Bruce said.
At that we look at each other and laugh. Both of us are happy to point out, that Surfoto Summer of ’68 really was a lot of fun.
-DF
The summer of ‘67 was something to behold
Fifty years ago this month, three of my USC fraternity brothers and I moved to Corona del Mar for the summer.
It was 1967 and love and commerce were in the air. We listened to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Doors’ “Light My Fire” a hundred times and watched as Fashion Island was being built.
So much had happened since I’d graduated from high school the year before. America’s presence in Vietnam was growing by the day. “The Dick Van Dyke Show” had just aired its final episode. The Supreme Court ruled the Miranda warning was the law of the land.
Those weren’t the only things that happened back in June 1966. The House of Representatives unanimously approved the Freedom of Information Act, Stokely Carmichael first invoked “black power” in a speech and the American Football and the National Football leagues announced they were merging. Closer to home, UC Irvine held its first Commencement with 14 students.
But this was ’67, and I was living the dream at the beach. Some of my SC friends wanted to become architects, doctors, lawyers or real estate developers. A few others dreamed of becoming pilots or sailing around the world. As near as I can tell, most of their dreams came true.
Not surprisingly, a few didn’t live long enough to see theirs materialize. One tragically crashed and died after falling asleep at the wheel. Another was stabbed to death on fraternity row.
Many have since passed away due to medical complications. Every time I hear that another old friend has died, I wonder why I am still here and he or she is not?
When I think about that summer in CdM, I remember surfing nearly every day, working as a grocery store box boy in Eastbluff, and thinking I am one lucky guy. I didn’t know it then, but nearly everything I did that fateful summer prepared me for living at the beach the rest of my life.
Life certainly was a lot simpler half a century ago. A typical Eichler home where I grew up (in Palo Alto) most likely sold for $30,000 back then, compared to the more than $2 million some fetch today.
Gas cost approximately 30 cents a gallon 50 years ago. During the summer of 2012, it was nearing $5 a gallon at some local stations.
When my kids ask me for $20 now, I sometimes hesitate. I realize that’s not much by today’s standards, but it was a lot when I was young.
How so? When I sold shoes as a high school student, I got paid $6 for an eight-hour shift.
Several of my college friends never left the beach. They either inherited their parents’ home, or bought it from them, and then raised their children in the same neighborhood they grew up in during the 1950s and ’60s.
For them, the question, “Can you take the surf and sand out of the boy or girl?” was moot. As it turns out, it was for me as well.
People say the beach and surrounding communities don’t look the way they did back in 1967. That’s OK by me. Fashion Island, Linda Isle and I don’t look the same either. I guess you could say we all have grown up together.
-DF
I first moved to Laguna 50 years ago
The first time I visited Laguna was in August of 1960. I remember telling my 11-year-old self, "Some day I'm going to live here." Turns out it took 10 years, but I finally arrived in June of '70.
It was a month after the horrific shootings at Kent State, seconds after I had graduated from USC and two months before I was ordered to report for my physical exam at the height of the Vietnam War.
Way back then, there was a Denny's at the corner of Coast Hwy. and Bluebird, the Community Clinic had just opened its doors, Marriner's Stationery and Shields Hardware were mainstays on Forest Avenue, Corky's Cafe was next door to the Safeway market at Boat Canyon, you could play handball at the high school and there were gas stations on the ocean side of PCH at Main Beach.
Over the decades, good things have happened to me here in Laguna. For example:
- In 1974, while I was teaching preschool at Anneliese's on Manzanita, the mayor appointed me to the city's golf committee. This was decades before Mark Christy and his team turned The Ranch into the jewel that it is today;
- Four years later, as a member of the Laguna Beach Citizens Alliance, I was asked to interview on Cable TV all the candidates running for city council. I remember artist Marlo Bartels calling me the next day chanting, "Vote, vote, vote" for the candidate of your choice;
- In 1985, I was retained to coordinate the No on Offshore Oil Drilling campaign on behalf of Laguna, San Clemente, Newport, Huntington Beach and the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Thanks to the continuing efforts of council members like Bob Gentry and Toni Iseman, there are no oil rigs off the Laguna coastline. To this day, this remains the single most important political campaign of my life;
- After commuting from Laguna to Long Beach and Los Angeles, where I held marketing and fundraising positions from 1988 to 1998, I decided to stay "local" so I could turn my attention to matters closer to home. Lucky for me, the Laguna Art Museum (LAM) was looking for a development officer, so I accepted the job offer;
- The next time you walk into LAM, look down at the sand-colored tiles in the front lobby. With the help of Bolton Colburn and many at the museum, I unveiled the first 108 personalized tiles, which sold for $1,000 each, during a raucous community celebration;
- Within minutes of the Bluebird landslide in 2005, I was on the phone with then-mayor Elizabeth Pearson. By dinner time, we had a plan in place to help those who had been forced from their homes. Three days after the disaster, hundreds of Laguna neighbors gathered in Bluebird Park to offer temporary shelter and/or clothing and other supplies to those in need. Clearly, if another landslide happens in town, we have a road map for recovery;
- Days after Barack Obama was elected president, 25 of my friends and I decided to host a black-tie, inauguration gala at [seven-degrees] on Jan. 20, 2009. According to Audrey Prosser, a long time member of Laguna's Democratic Club, the event I brainstormed attracted 300 guests and was, at the time, the most successful fundraising night in the organization's history. I'm guessing my friends are anxious to host another inaugural gala next year; and,
- Last July, the Arts Commission voted to study a concept I presented (modeled after what artists have done by painting or decorating 6,000 manhole covers throughout Japan). Stay tuned as I am hopeful that here, in the Home of the Artists, colorful works of art will begin appearing on our sidewalks in 2021.
Back when I first moved to town, 15,000 people called Laguna home, Ronald Reagan was governor, gas cost 35 cents a gallon and a modest, two bedroom home sold for under $100,000. Ten years later, Reagan was elected president, gas cost nearly $2 a gallon and small homes were on the market for $200,000. I won't insult your intelligence by reminding you who the president is now, or how much gas or a home costs today.
What I will say is this: Despite the many differences of opinion in the 1970s, I always found people in town willing to listen to each other. Yes, the 1971 height limitation measure was contentious; but, foes kept talking. Today, not so much.
Whether it is a parking structure, public art in front of city hall or Mo Honarkar's proposed development plans, people are quick to demonize their neighbors for having different points of view. As a result, I have seen several friendships fractured to the point of no return. Dare I ask, should the Friendship Shelter take up a new cause?
No one can turn back time, but life in Laguna in 1970 was much simpler than it is today. Still, it remains a slice of paradise for those of us lucky enough to call Laguna home. I, for one, always will be grateful for having first moved to town half a century ago.
-DF
Here in Laguna: You Gotta Love The Ranch
I love The Ranch. It’s sorta/kinda like being at Cheers and Augusta National all rolled into one.
During the summer months, I’m usually at The Ranch once a week either playing golf or just listening to music on the patio. Having first moved to Laguna 50 years ago next year, my favorite place in town used to be the beach. Nowadays, it’s on a fairway or simply watching foursomes tee off after 4 p.m.
Growing up in Palo Alto, sports always came naturally to me. My parents used to say I could swim before I could walk. Maybe that’s why I taught myself to surf when I was 13 or ended up playing water polo at USC five years later. Today, at 70, I don’t do either any longer. What I do play is golf.
Everything I do on the course now is what I learned the last time I had a lesson (when I was 12). Thankfully, The Ranch is only 9 holes. It typically takes 2 hours to play. Sometimes I count my strokes and other times I don’t. All I know is I usually hit enough good shots each round to want to play again the following week or so.
The same is true on the patio. The staff is friendly, the music is great, and the food is tasty. Taco Tuesdays and Tri-Tip Thursdays are among my favorites. While I haven’t tried Martini Mondays and Whiskey Wednesdays, I hear they’re popular as well.
But more than the food and adult beverages, I really enjoy the people who drop in like I do. From the millennial moms and dads with young children, to the grandparents celebrating half a century together, there always is something for everyone at The Ranch.
Just last week, I watched a future groom propose to his bride-to-be on the 9th fairway. I thought he would wait until they were on the putting green below us, but no. With about 50 yards to go, he dropped to one knee and popped the question. When she jumped into his arms, everyone on the patio, whether they knew each other or not, began shouting and applauding. Yes, it really is that kind of place.
It’s hard for me to imagine, but if you live in Laguna and haven’t been to The Ranch yet…you need to go. Trust me, on any given day or night, you are bound to run into someone you know.
The Ranch is a true touchstone for me now. I hope it will become one of yours soon.
-DF