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Sages of the Waves

Top names in the surfing industry give their take on what it means to be part of Laguna’s legendary surf culture.
By: Shelby Stanger

Forward by Bolton Colburn, long-time surfer and current director of the Laguna Art Museum

Smack in the middle of San Diego and Los Angeles, Laguna is surrounded by vast swaths of suburbia. But as a cloistered coastal city, it has retained its unique identity as the West Coast’s premier art colony.

The arts go deep in Laguna, perhaps deeper than anywhere else in southern California. Surfing goes deep here as well. It’s a funny thing because Laguna, which faces the south, misses extreme north swells. Add to it the offshore islands that diminish the west swells. And small intimate coves—too concise and steep for extensive reefs or point breaks—leave Laguna somewhat flat, save for the occasional south swell.

But surfers are drawn to Laguna for many of the same reasons that artists helped settle the town at the turn of the 19th century: Laguna Beach has easy access to the outlying metropolitan areas but maintains its own distinct sense of place. At some level the incredible landscape and seascape of Laguna, which have remained by and large miraculously intact, seem to demand an equal aesthetic from the community that inhabits it.

Laguna is also a place to develop your own aesthetic. Surfers found a home here because they sensed that freedom and independence. It’s no surprise that Laguna has ended up being the town where most of the scions of the surf industry have chosen to live. For those surfers, Laguna functions much like it did for the early artists founders—a refuge from their busier lives elsewhere. A place to relax and enjoy life, culture, community and surfing. And above all else, it was, and is, a place to reconnect with the creative impulse. Writer Shelby Stangler gathered some of Laguna’s surf icons to explore how the sport and the lifestyle have impacted this town. What follows is a chronicle of a journey that is only beginning; it will only reach its end where the shore meets the swell. Read More...