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May
2, 2004
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Save the Surf Bum: Not another day in paradise, the
end of cool
By CHRIS WATSON
Sentinel staff writer
There was a time, not many years ago, when surfing was a legitimate
Santa Cruz lifestyle.
Back then, the ocean rewarded wave riders who moved in rhythm with
Mother Nature with lives of spiritual grace.
Driven by the energy of the wind, sun and swell, surfers knew what
was important and what wasn’t.
They didn’t need a book of etiquette to tell them the rules
or a brochure to show them what was cool about the sport.
All they needed was a good board, a few good sets and the desire
to connect to something bigger than themselves.
It was a blissful time. One that’s all but disappeared as
crowds of recreational surfers push the old-timers off the waves
and out of the mix.
Nowadays — at least in Santa Cruz — you’re just
as likely to spot local surfers sulking on dry land as paddling
out.
Many of them do their sulking together at Heckler’s Point
— aka, any cliff above a crowded surf spot.
There you’ll find them — the last of the blue-bloods
— snickering at the surfers-come-lately falling off their
boards, stealing waves and spoiling the waters with their bad manners
and confrontational ways.
You can read it in their eyes: Paradise isn’t what it used
to be.
Better times
Fred Reiss remembers what it was like back in the day.
"Santa Cruz was where locals were willing to have less stuff
in order to live here," the 20-year resident-surfer said.
Sure, he said, clove-smoking hippies found the beach an attractive
place for their drum circles, but at least their "McMansions"
didn’t block your view, their cell phones didn’t scare
the seagulls and their car alarms didn’t drown the sound of
crashing surf.
In Reiss’ new novel, "Surf.com — A Surfer and His
Dog Take on the Digital World," Reiss details the changes that
have touched Santa Cruz over the last few decades and turned the
once close-knit community into a tourist destination catering to
transients seeking the latest buzz.
Reiss will be the first to tell you that dot-commers weren’t
the only ones to change Santa Cruz.
But it was a good place to begin his story.
Money, money, money
In his novel, Reiss focuses on how the love of money changed Santa
Cruz from a friendly town to just another place to get your double
mocha latte with steamed foam from a rude server.
His story takes place in 1999.
A one-time journalist, Reiss peppers his tale with those startling
housing statistics that so clearly mark the divide between then
and now.
Reiss also rails against parking permit programs and takes some
hilarious potshots at UC Santa Cruz students, Stanford trust-fund
babies, soccer moms who surf in groups, scholastic surf programs
and the ever-plentiful surfing classes.
A former stand-up comedian known for his rants on radio (as well
as in his other books, "Insult and Live!" and "Gidget
Must Die"), Reiss reserves his harshest criticism for the surfers
— not all from the technology sector — who’ve
polluted paradise with their soulless attitudes.
"First you noticed the traffic," Reiss said. "Then
you noticed all the people complaining. No one used to complain
about living in Santa Cruz before.
"Then you started noticing the prospectors moving in —
the ones who had to have a Home Depot and a Blockbuster, the ones
who treated the waves almost as if they were an off-ramp from where
they lived to where they wanted to go."
Everywhere you looked, he said — at surf spots like Steamer
Lane, Indicators, 38th, First Peak — new, rude surfers were
dropping in on others’ waves and greedily appropriating the
ocean like the newest must-have toy.
"These are people who don’t want to make a life but just
want it given to them," Reiss said, adding, "but there’s
a difference between living in Santa Cruz and just buying here."
In researching the book, Reiss talked to bartenders, psychologists,
people in technology, accountants, investors and even a member of
an area chamber of commerce who opined that, back in 1999, dot-commers
"came out here with the number of how much they expected to
make and the number of the date they expected to leave."
Reiss also talked to lots of surfers — most of whom think
the book is about them.
In a way, it is.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
"In the old days, kids were taught the sport by their dads
or uncles, someone who’d foster them and show them the ropes,"
said Danny Keith, co-owner of Santa Cruz Surf Shop and a Santa Cruz
surfer for the last 16 years.
"But now you see new surfers in their 30s, 40s and 50s —
stockbrokers, doctors, lawyers — paddling out to the big breaks
without any idea what they’re doing.
"They’ve got the physical strength of a man, but the
experience of a kid," he said.
While some in the community give Keith flak for renting surfboards
and wet suits to these new, untested surfers, he defends his business.
"People aren’t going to stop wanting to learn how to
surf and people aren’t going to stop renting boards."
But neither does Keith want his shop to be "farming kooks"
which, he says, is what lots of other area surf shops are doing.
Keith’s shop offers free etiquette classes that are also included
with paid surf lessons.
During April, May and June, a one-hour session teaches newbies how
to paddle, how to time a set, identify breaks, how to duck dive
or turtle roll through a wave, how to hold onto a board, not get
run over, avoid running others over and about the hierarchy of earning
a place in the lineup.
"It’s preventative medicine," Keith said.
Doug Haut — who’s been surfing Santa Cruz waters for
47 years and shaping boards for almost as long — has another
prescription for the ailing surf situation.
Artificial reefs.
Not only are they easily installed, he said, but they’d help
rejuvenate small fish habitats as well as stimulate tourism in the
sanctuary.
"We’ve got miles of beaches here that are barely being
used," the celebrated board shaper and owner of Haut Surfboards
said.
Imagine reefs off the Boardwalk, Capitola, New Brighton, Rio del
Mar, La Selva, Manresa ...
"We could experiment with one," he suggested. "It
could change the surfing situation dramatically."
Still, while Haut surfs every week, and sometimes every day, he
admits to doing more and more mental surfing from the cliffs these
days.
"Sometimes I stand on the cliff and project out to the waves,"
he said, "because it’s too cold and crowded out there
now and I can’t get enough waves to keep warm."
Coolbust.com
Will things ever change?
Have they improved since the dot-com bust?
Not according to Reiss, who believes that since the Interent gold
rush Santa Cruz remains as polluted as California was with mercury
filings after the Gold Rush of 1849.
Everywhere you look, he said, the waves are crowded with the "Trannies"
(transplants), "Instant Locals" and "You-Go Girl"
types he profiles in his book.
They’re easy to spot.
"Their wet suits sag, and they’re always pale,"
Reiss said. "They don’t have split ends and the cars
they drive have surf shop stickers plastered on the windows like
sergeants’ stripes."
Their waterproof watches give them away and so do the board bags
they wrap their boards in so the wax doesn’t get on their
car.
Plus, it’s always a hoot, Reiss said, to catch one walking
down the stairs to the beach with a leash cord tied to his ankle.
It’s funny enough, he said, to almost make you forget that
the good times are over.
"The lifestyle’s been eroded," Reiss said. "It’s
definitely a struggle to maintain a soulful feeling when you know
people are going to yell at you in traffic or on the waves.
"The battle is not to give up, not to be bitter."
Sometimes, though, the bitterness bleeds through and there’s
nothing you can do about it.
"It used to be that the happiest people in Santa Cruz were
the surfers," Reiss said.
Now — Reiss writes in his book — the people enjoying
Santa Cruz the most are "the yoga-and-body-movement-summer-Shakespeare-arts-and-craft-and-wine-festival-jazz-and-blues-concert-art-gallery-author-poetry-book-
reading-university-seminar-lecture-series-performance-artist-National-Public-radio
listening-candle-vigil-tribal-elder-MSG-free crowd."
"Now," he said, "the happiest people in Santa Cruz
are those who don’t surf."
Fred Reiss, author of "Surf.com, — A Surfer and His Dog
Take on the Digital World" (fredforyourhead.com), will read
from his book at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 18, at the Capitola Book
Cafe, 1475 41st Ave., Capitola.
Contact Chris Watson at cwatson@santacruzsentinel.com.
May
2, 2004
Santa
Cruz Sentinel
Save the Surf Bum: Fringe surfers cope with life
in a pricey beach community
SANTA CRUZ - They dropped out so they could
drop in.
They have no careers, no real estate, no ambition except to catch some
waves.
Home is not a penthouse on Pacific Avenue or a million-dollar home near
the beach. Home is the crash pad where they cram their sleeping bags,
their gear and a couple of books.
It could be a rented room in a red-tagged agricultural compound or a
couch in a friend's house. It could be the back of an old white van
parked near a public library.
The Santa Cruz surf bum still survives, finding a way to get by in spite
of the fact that half-million dollar homes have replaced the affordable
shacks that gave rise to the "surf ghetto" subculture.
These diehard waveriders love surfing so much, they're willing to deal
with the disapproving stares, the hand-to-mouth lifestyle and the financial
pressures that make their friends take several jobs at once, go corporate
or move to Silicon Valley.
The surf bums, having endured the changing times, may even have earned
some respect, said author and longtime Santa Cruzan Jim Houston.
"Now every guidebook has a picture of a surfer, a guy in the wetsuit
or a woodie parked on a bluff. It's an icon for California," Houston
said. "Being a surf bum now might have a bit more glory to it."
The irony, he said is that in the '50s and '60s, they were regarded
as problems.
"Back in those days, the guys hanging out on the beach were really
looked upon as marginal outlaws because they didn't bring any money
into town.
"They hung around the beach and most of them were marginally employed.
Their noses were all scabby, their clothes raggedy, all they thought
about was riding the waves and they rode these bad-looking automobiles."
Rick Stelter's 1991 Aerostar, which he bought used for $1,800, is his
house on wheels. He uses it for what he calls "power camping,"
curling up in a sleeping bag, moving the van from place to place.
Standing near the cliffs off Rockview Drive near Pleasure Point, his
hair and beard stiff from sea water, Stelter took a quick glance at
the beach homes he could never afford, with their million-dollar views
of reefs and rock shelves, palm trees and waves.
The median single-family home price broke $600,000 for the first time
ever this spring, with the average sales price at $685,186, according
to the Santa Cruz Association of Realtors and Real Options Realty. Compare
that to the $30,000 asking price for starter homes in the mid-1970s,
back when Stelter was in high school.
Stelter, who graduated from Soquel High in 1978, is 43 now, but he looks
younger. He's muscular and lean, with a full head of curly black hair.
He has laugh lines and an almost constant smile.
It's the look of a man who still lives in the crash pad and surf van
days of 1950s and 1960s Santa Cruz.
"Having your own mind, your free time, that's my version of success,"
he said. "A lot of people probably look down on me for not being
part of the grid ... but they're envious, the friends that are stressed
from working and high rent."
The son of a nurse and a truck driver, Stelter was born and raised in
Santa Cruz. He spoke of the days he thought about being a real estate
agent for a "fancy" company, "dressing like a mannequin,"
driving a slick car, trying to close a deal.
But those years are long gone.
"I live here because of the great waves. Do I want to stay here
and work 40 hours a week and not surf?" he asked.
He says police sometimes knock on the window of his van and tell him
to move along but that he's avoided getting a citation.
"I have a clean record, except one little pot thing. I tell them
I'm a local, born and raised. Most of the time I'm older than them anyhow."
Stelter bathes with a solar-powered shower that he keeps in his van.
He uses public latrines or coffee shop bathrooms. If people want to
communicate with him, they call on his cell phone, send a letter to
his P.O. box or slap a note on his van.
Fancy brand-name surfboards are out of Stelter's price range, so he
makes boards himself. It costs him about $160 to make each one. His
latest, "Wave Magnet," is sleek and white, decorated with
pictures of Monterey Bay reef fish.
But life without money is life on the margins in one of the most expensive
towns in America.
"It sucks being poor sometimes," he said. "As soon as
the money runs out it gets a little dicey. Bills coming in. You've got
to keep the car running. You need money to buy a nice lady flowers."
Stelter has seasonal jobs - roofing, framing, fencing, foundation work,
home repairs. He makes some pocket money making custom surfboards and
repairing dings. But with no health insurance, Stelter has reason to
be nervous if the fin on one of his sleek homemade boards slashes his
leg if he wipes out in the surf.
Still, it's all about the surfing.
When it's glassy and peeling, when the wind is down and there's no one
else in the water, it all hangs on that one moment.
For Stelter, those are the moments that matter.
Stelter looked away from waves and the big beach homes and turned his
gaze to the groups of barely clad women in their 20s, walking to their
cars.
"That is a very, very big bonus, too, I'm not gonna deny it."
Linda Charman, co-owner and real estate broker for Vanguard Realtors
in Santa Cruz, has watched this area go from a beachtown and a "getaway
nothing place" to a more upscale area.
"Santa Cruz is becoming Laguna Beach, which is pretty chi-chi now,"
she said. "I have some very wealthy clients who are surfers. One
of them retired from a dot-com business."
Charman attended UC Berkeley in the 1960s. She remembers coming to Santa
Cruz back then and "it was a really cheesy little beach town, in
really bad shape."
But the Santa Cruz that rose up after the 1989 quake, and later experienced
the dot-com boom-and-bust cycle, is not the Santa Cruz she remembers
from the Flower Power era.
The rise in the cost of living means that it's now much more expensive
for those who wish to stick around town and make surfing their main
focus.
Wave rider Paul Meltzer, 52, remembers when he could work at a gas station,
deliver newspapers, work as a janitor and dish washer, and still be
able to split the rent for a Pleasure Point house.
But the price of that house, in the 1960s, was just $60 a month.
Things have changed for Meltzer, who is now a homeowner and one of the
most prominent defense attorneys in Santa Cruz.
While he acknowledges the presence of some "super-trust-funder"
surfers out in the breaks these days, he believes there is now a wide
mix of backgrounds and incomes out in the water.
"The demographics have gotten broader because it's so popular.
Just about every tradesman that worked on my house surfs. My veterinarian,
my dermatologist surfs. The guys at the grocery store, at the tire store,
all surf."
And those days of the lonely surf bum, out in the water all alone, or
with one or two buddies, are also ancient history.
Now on prime surf days, said Meltzer, you could walk from break to break
on the backs of all the surfers, a broad mix of "tree trimmers,
waiters, doctors "and people driving up to the surf with a truckload
of tools."
But some other longtime surfers, including construction contractor Boots
McGhee, 56, believe the demographic is skewing toward a wealthier crowd.
"It's awful sometimes," he said. "People rent boards
without any clue of what they're getting into."
In the past, said McGhee, surfers with time on their hands could scrape
by and still spend most of their time surfing. But during and after
the dot-com boom, "there was a new demographic, new people with
a lot more time on their hands: dot-commers with disposable income.
"I think they wanted to be cool but they were totally geeked out.
They took it over as their own and people just got resentful."
Time, and the money to buy that time, are two scarce commodities in
town. But there are surfers who have perfected the formula: sometimes
they're too busy to catch the prime waves, but at least their careers
reflect their passion for surfing.
One example is Jimbo Phillips, 34. Not only a surfer but a cartoonist,
logo designer and graphic artist who makes his living working for surf
and skate companies, Phillips has seen the subculture go to great efforts
to maintain its vitality.
He has a thriving career, but he knows of others who exist to surf and
don't think about the future.
"I know a guy who was living on the beach, who built a little hut
out of driftwood and had a little campfire. He was just surfing all
the time. People just think he's day camping. They don't realize he's
actually living there," Phillips said.
"The people who do know give him respect. They're pretty impressed."
Phillips knows it's not easy, from personal experience, too. He and
his family rent a house in Live Oak, and he's able to get by. He'd like
to buy the house some day.
He has to watch the budget, make sure the family is not spending too
much, and cope with his freelance paychecks that vary from month to
month.
"I don't want to get too carried away surfing all the time, which
can be hard when the waves are good."
Chaffee Woods still lives rent-free in the studio on his parents' property.
Now that he's 21, he's not sure how long the arrangement will last,
but he's enjoying it while it lasts.
A Santa Cruzan since he was 4, he hates the thought of moving "inland."
He tried this for a while, going to Pacific Union college, which, in
spite of the name, is in landlocked Napa.
"Lots of good wine up there, but that's it," he said. "It
did not work out because I wasn't able to surf."
He'd like to go back to school, but for now, at least, Woods is back
to Santa Cruz, working at the O'Neill surf shop on 41st Avenue.
"I don't know how else to explain it," he said. "(Surfing)
just takes priority over everything. It is definitely very addictive.
If all of a sudden you're not doing it, it affects other areas of your
life."
Each surfer has a slightly different story. While some live free with
family, some in vans and others own lavish homes, there are thousands
of others who are somewhere between the extremes of surf tycoon and
surf bum.
Some tales are apparently too ticklish to tell.
One philosophic surfer gave a Sentinel interview about his highly unusual
living arrangements, but got cold feet and canceled later on, after
leaving the following message for the newspaper:
"A friend of mine used to always say, 'las cucarachas van a sobre
vivir,' meaning the cockroaches are always gonna survive, heh heh ...
the last thing a cockroach needs is attention or publicity or even understanding.
I'm gonna blow everything if I let anyone know what I'm up to."
Surf bums may survive by staying out of sight or cutting corners, but
their circumstances have changed.
" 'Surf bum' may be a self-contradictory term," Houston said
with a laugh. "If you have to make $600, $700 a month to pay the
rent, you're sort of moving out of the 'bum' category."
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May
17, 2004
Well
yahoo, check out new look at Google
By Therese Poletti and Michael Bazeley
Mercury News
Surf.com:
A new novel has Santa Cruz surfers and geeks abuzz. Published a
few weeks ago, ``Surf.com'' is a scathing portrayal of the dot-commers
who infiltrated Santa Cruz during the technology boom, and how they
ruined local surfing. While the book is fiction, some over-the-top
descriptions of arrogant, entitled, twentysomethings from the dot-com
bubble rang so true we had to call author Fred Reiss, a Santa Cruz
surfer and writer.
Reiss, a Santa Cruzan since 1985, said he did a lot of research
to create true-to-life characters over the five years that he worked
on the book. He hung out with friends at Silicon Valley companies,
went to Macworld and other trade shows, and followed dot-commers
around in Santa Cruz, listening to their conversations and surfed
among them. He also talked to many locals, including bartenders,
masseuses and accountants.
Was the CEO of the fictional networking start-up, Surf.com -- a
loud, dorky, ``40-minus something'' character -- based on anyone
in particular? Reiss said the character, who in one chapter has
the ``lumbering grace of an elephant seal'' is a composite of many.
But after observing Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs in action at Macworld,
Reiss has his Uber Geek repeating Jobs' famous line: ``Oh, and one
more thing'' to giddy Surf.com employees.
Reiss also said he had Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina partly
in mind when he created an attractive ``execudiva'' character Andrea.
The character is a ``younger version of her, in a way,'' said Reiss,
who reads at the Capitola Book Cafe on Tuesday evening.
San
Jose Mercury Review
May 2004
Cruz control
As someone who lives in Santa Cruz and spends a fair amount of time
in a wetsuit, I couldn't resist diving into Fred Reiss' ``Surf.com:
A Surfer and His Dog Take on the Digital World'' (Santa Cruz'n Press,
323 pp., $16.95), a hilarious spoof of what happens when the dot-commers
of Silicon Valley invade the hang-loose, Santa Cruz surfing community.
The year is 1999, and the technology industry is booming. Bored
and greedy for new adventures, employees of a prototypical start-up
called Surf.com decide to buy their way into the surfing world,
sending property values through the roof, clogging the best surfing
spots and causing the laid-back locals to go ballistic.
Sharp-witted Vic -- surfboard shaper, shop owner, soul-surfer and
dog lover -- gives voice to the frustration:
They came from Silicon Valley. The dot-comers arrived at Bings
the same way they downloaded the surf spots, the streets and the
shops of Santa Cruz. Suddenly, rudely, and in groups. The rapid
pace of their invasive half conversations was blaring, cocky, intense,
tightly clipped, and more focused than it needed to be. And God
were these dot-comers loud! The static gibbering of their high-tech
voices drowned out the yow-ing cries of seagulls, the damp barking
of seals under the municipal wharf, and the waves slapping against
the pier's piling.
Reiss, who has worked at a variety of "challenging dead-end
jobs'' and is the author of another surf spoof, "Gidget Must
Die,'' has definitely captured the atmosphere that makes Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, from the colorful downtown characters to the crusty,
complaining middle-aged surfers on the cliff to the newcomers causing
chaos in the waves. Those familiar with local lore will also get
a kick out of the play on names. It's fun to see familiar names
jump off the page. For example, under Reiss' merciless pen, local
politician Mardi Wormhoudt becomes meter maid Marty Wormhold.
The plot turns are definitely predictable: Idealistic surfer falls
for materialistic dot-com babe, sleazy CEO takes a fall. But the
story is really secondary to the acerbic tone and wealth of local
references. Illustrator John Severson, founder of Surfer Magazine,
has contributed some really terrific black-and-white surf sketches.
Read this novel on the beach this summer. But a warning to ``trannies''
(Santa Cruz lingo for people from ``over the hill''): When you turn
red, it might not only be the sunburn. You might just be embarrassed
seeing yourself as Reiss and the locals see you.
BACK TO
TOP
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May
27, 2004
Good Times
When Bad Things Happen to Good Surfers
Local Fred Reiss pens a tale of Santa Cruz woe in ‘Surf.Com´
By Bruce Willey
Reading “Surf.Com: A Surfer and His Dog Take On The Digital
World” (Santa Cruz´n Press) without getting a heavy dose
of deja vu is like surfing without wax on your board—separating
fact from fiction gets slippery. Set in 1999 in Santa Cruz when dot-com
money was quickly turning “Surf City” into “Silicon
Beach,” the surf pulp novel pits techie web surfers against
wave surfers in a pitched battle over housing prices, waves and the
soul of Santa Cruz. Sound familiar? It is, and you may find yourself
still reading this book after you´ve put it down.
Case in point: I was in the middle of the book, a long, drawn out
scene about downtown Santa Cruz, when I got hungry for the same burrito
that Vic, the protagonist is always craving after a surf session.
When I stepped outside on Pacific Avenue I stepped back into the book
where reality became fiction and fiction became reality. It was a
swirling, disconcerting experience, sort of like Santa Cruz itself.
The book´s author, Fred Reiss, perfectly captures the knotty
vicissitudes, or in this case the “vicissi-dudes,” of
Santa Cruz in all its shallowness and depth. There´s the earth
mother goddesses, the you-go-girl surfers, the shorts and sandal guys
who live only to surf, the wide-eyed UCSC students, and of course,
the evil dot-comers who have taken over Santa Cruz and have inexorably
changed the place for the worse. These characters are rendered with
the blunt precision of someone who has lived here a long time—perhaps
too long.
Reiss, who is a surfer and author of two previous books with explanation
points, “Gidget Must Die!” and “Insult and Live!”
has embraced the surfer lifestyle to the core. He´s supported
himself with a wide variety of jobs including stand-up comic, working
in a winery tasting room, surf shop employee, morning radio talk show
host on KSCO and journalist. He now works for Clear Channel radio.
“Surf.Com” took Reiss five years to write and the copious
amount of research he put into the book shows.
“Things started changing in Santa Cruz around 1994,” he
says. “I´d see these people ordering $50 worth of sushi
a la carte for lunch and talking on their cell phone then paddling
out onto the water and yelling at me. And I said, this is the story.
Look at these people, they have no soul and they´re taking stuff
from people that lived here who were willing to make less money just
so they could enjoy the beauty of the area. Whereas this new crew
(dot-comers) comes in and they just compare it to the area they dumped
on. It´s like Hayward with an ocean.”
One job Reiss managed to avoid, though, was working for a dot-com.
So in order to get into the heads of dot-comers, Reiss would hang
out in coffee shops or follow them down the street and listen to their
conversations. “I mean, they´re easy to spot,” he
says. “Bad hair jobs, pot bellies, and they carried themselves
like they thought they were some kind of royalty.”
In addition he interviewed bartenders, masseuses, dry cleaners, real
estate agents, anyone who had constant contact with dot-comers, and
listened to their stories. And of course his days working behind the
counter at Santa Cruz Surf Shop came in handy.
The book is told through the smudged lens of Vic, a Vietnam veteran
in his late 40s, who watches his favorite surf spot at Pleasure Point
begin to be overrun by “trannies,” rude newbie surfers
on foam or epoxy factory-made surfboards who snake his waves and buzz
kill the fun right out of surfing. At first, Vic is a difficult character
to love. He´s bitchy, self-pitying and prone to prima-donna
fits of self-righteousness. Soon, however, another more multi-dimensional
side of Vic is revealed. Here´s a man who is capable of falling
in love with the enemy, Andrea the dot-comer, while retaining his
identity of a surfer. And a tender man who is forced to put Ranger,
his canine companion, to sleep.
Plot-wise, much of the book suffers from chronic plod, and some of
the dialogue is stilted and overwrought. Yet Reiss´ book is
a good, readable story, proudly standing on its own ground amongst
other surf noir novels. If anything, writing about surfing has its
inherent narrative dangers, but Reiss proves he´s a maverick
in the genre. Plus it´s an entertaining, no-holds-barred account
of Santa Cruz in the midst of a permanent transformation. The days
of bidding wars for million dollar one-bedroom beach shacks may be
over, but the housing prices haven´t dropped, and the surf is
every bit as crowded.
“The book is really about trying to keep your soul in a soulless
world,” says Reiss. “Surfers, I think, succeed at keeping
their souls, while other people, who are just into stuff, die with
their stuff.”
Which is, in the end, what “Surf.Com” is all about. A
sun-rinsed cautionary tale as told by a surfer just trying to catch
another fleeting wave in a town where the only constant is the rise
and fall of the crowded tides.
BACK
TO TOP
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Dot-com boom
Doomed beach town,
Novelist
claims
Biz
Ink
|
click to enlarge |
May
21, 2004
Biz Ink
Author and surfer Fred Reiss is irked about how his beloved city
has changed in recent years, but he hasn’t lost his sense
of humor.
Most people agree the dot-com boom and subsequent bust turned the
Bay Area upside down. But local author and former stand-up comedian
Fred Reiss takes it a step further, unabashedly claiming the dot-comers
ruined Santa Cruz, the sleepy surfer town he has called home for
two decades.
Reiss is the author of “Surf.Com: A surfer and His Dog Take
on the Digital World,” a novel that takes place in 1999. at
the height of the Internet boom. In the late 1990’s, dot-comers
from “over the hill” in Silicon Valley descended on
and subsequently spoiled Santa Cruz, according to the book. It’s
a reality that the main character, a surfer named Vic. Must come
to terms with.
Although the witty and hilarious book is a work of fiction, Reiss
says its message reflects his utter disdain of the dot-com culture.
Biz Ink, managing editor, Jennifer Margoni recently spoke with Reiss
about the book.
Summarize the plot of “Surf.com.”
It’s about how the dot-com world came into Santa
Cruz, pretty much took it over and ruined it. People were trying
to buy into the California lifestyle. People who used to live in
Santa Cruz because they were willing to make less to enjoy the beauty
of the area were squeezed out in every way. They were outnumbered
and driven out through the [increased] housing prices. Essentially,
it’s about how someone can hang onto their soul, and not get
bitter in a world filled with soulless people. And [the book] is
funny.
What drew these dot-comers over the hill to Santa Cruz?
I think it was really big just to seem cool. They know
that cool is having a surfboard, taking yoga classes and living
in Santa Cruz, so that’s what they wanted. This was their
“California experience.”
You said the dot-comers believed they could buy into the
California lifestyle. Give me an example.
It’s like out in the water. They cut somebody off on the wave,
and rather than apologize, they [justify it by saying] “I
live here.” But in reality, the ‘bought here.’
They are rude and they won’t fess up to anything. It’s
all about the stuff for them—their fancy cars, fancy homes,
cell phones, expensive sushi. They’d ask things like, ‘How
come my wife still left me after I gave her two cars?’”
I realize this book is a work of fiction, but how much of
it reflects your feelings about dot-comers with the internet boom?
All of it. I worked on it for five years and I wanted to
get it right. It’s all of me because I put my name on it.
I had to learn about the people [dot-comers] I didn’t like.
I talked to everybody, including cops, firemen, masseuses, waiters,
waitresses, bartenders, meter maids, car salesmen—everybody
these dot-comers dealt with. I asked how they behaved, what they
wanted, how they dressed. I went to some of the tech conferences
and watched them myself. I listened to the way they talked and watched
how they interacted. These guys prided themselves on being so bright,
but when they didn’t get their way, they’d throw a tantrum.
Why did you write this book?
I had started writing another novel, a real dark noir novel.
And then I just began to see what was happening in Santa Cruz and
I went, ‘This is the story.’ This is something I love
and it’s being destroyed by people who don’t value it.
It was the story I wanted to write—and write well. I realized,
for example, that I didn’t have enough tech knowledge. So,
I learned as many software programs as I could and learned the language.
I just waited for what struck me as funny.
What happened when the bubble burst?
The people who bought in during the late 1990’s weren’t
the real money. They were the wannabes. They just assumed that the
next year, they’d be making $200,000. And so, when the bubble
burst and they weren’t, they sold out. They were prospectors;
they didn’t want to build a life [in Santa Cruz]. Once they
left, the real money came in and said, ‘Hell, I’ll pick
that [house] up for a $900,000 investment.’ It used to be3
a retirement community where the surfers lived in all these beat-up
houses. Now, it’s big money, and no one is living in those
houses at all. You’ve got all these big houses with big gates
in front of them to protect all the stuff that’s inside. These
people don’t share; they don’t even want you to park
in their neighborhoods.
You live in Mount Hermon—north of the city of Santa
Cruz in Santa Cruz County—and work in San Jose. S, what do
you say to people who say, ‘He’s note really a Santa
Cruz guy.’?”
I had cancer when I was 28 years old and I asked myself what I wanted
to do. I decided I wanted to move to California [from the East Coast],
do stand-up comedy and surf. So, I did [in about 1984]. I came for
the wine, the girls, the comedy and the beach. And I’m still
here; I’m not going anywhere. I did stand-up for 12 years.
Worked temp jobs in Santa Cruz to get by, worked in a surf shop
for seven years and then did radio. And I surfed for 20 years. I
came for the lifestyle and stayed for the lifestyle.
In the book, dot-comers are portrayed as extremely arrogant.
But weren’t the locals, who looked down their noses at these
young techies, also a bit arrogant?
I don’t think so. Within any subculture, there are jerks.
But I think the dot-comers would [call the locals arrogant] to justify
their own behavior. But most guys I know—myself included—went
into a deep funk. We watched something die in front of us. The surf
spots will never be the same. But are you going to sit on the cliff
and yell at the world or are you going to move on? You have to move
on. You have to find other things in your life to fill the void.
I know guys who went back to restoring Schwinn bikes. I wrote a
book.
What’s the moral of the story?
I don’t know if it has one, other than that you have
to stay close to the things you love and not get corrupted by the
things you don’t love.
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