A surf story for the ages—all ages

Just imagine the sand that’d be flying these days if a band of wild, salty teenagers turned a 9-bedroom mansion in the exclusive Malibu Colony into their flophouse, lazily draping themselves across a couch they’d hauled out front or dropping a new engine into their Woodie for the whole neighborhood to see and hear.

Back then, they were too young to know—or to even give a hoot—that they were creating a culture that would come to define Southern California in the ‘60s and beyond. These were the real beach boys and girls, mastering one of the world’s best surf breaks during the sport’s breakout years. They were the young, the proud, the hard-partying members of the Malibu Surfing Association.

This weekend, the association will once again be hosting its annual MSA Classic, bringing together the best surf clubs in the world to compete at Malibu’s legendary “First Point” at Surfrider Beach. But this time, expect a few more graybeards in the lineup and on the shoreline.

This year’s contest commemorates the 50^th anniversary of the Malibu Surfing Association, a multi-generational stretch that has seen the sport explode into a multibillion dollar industry. In addition to hosting contests, the MSA prides itself on its active involvement with a variety of environmental issues impacting the water and beach of Surfrider. According to MSA President Michael Blum, the group’s invitation-only membership ranges in age from 8 (“he’s still on the learning end of surfing”) to 80 (he sometimes has some trouble getting his waves”).

“What it all comes down to,” Blum says of the club’s mission “is that we have Malibu in our name, and that beach means a tremendous amount to us.”

Among the many current and former members who’ll be on hand this weekend is Butch Linden, one of the MSA’s eight founders and its first president. It was Linden’s home in the Colony where young surfers from here and abroad would drop by, sometimes staying for months.

“My mom loved kids,” says Linden, now 68 and still surfing. “They were going to get breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever.”

Linden, one of the first to tackle the treacherous Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore, says that when the group was formed in November, 1961, surf clubs from San Diego to Santa Cruz were competing against each other. Linden and his highly skilled pals figured they could take on all comers. “We were the extreme kids,” he says.

Two years after its founding, the MSA held its first invitational at Surfrider, where the land was still owned by the Rindge-Adamson family, owner of Adohr Farms, one of the country’s largest dairies. Concerned about liability and looking for a way to dissuade the young surfers, the family said the boys would first have to obtain a $1 million insurance policy from Lloyds of London. With the help of an adult sponsor, Linden says, “we pulled it off.”

Before long, dozens of kids were flocking to the club’s weekly gatherings at the Malibu Inn. “We met every single Tuesday for eight years,” says Linden. (Now it’s once a month.) The membership included teenagers from a few famous neighborhood families, including the Hilton brothers. “We had so much fun. We had parties all the time. It was really something.”

Surf clubs, of course, aren’t for everyone. The sport is highly individualistic, with most of the accomplished surfers—and even those who are not so accomplished—always working to position themselves for the maximum number of waves during a session. That’s particularly true at Surfrider.

“You have to be ready for it. You have to have your mindset ready to battle the crowds out there,” says MSA member Julie Cox, who prefers the mellower scene at Leo Carrillo, north of Surfrider.

Cox says she grew up in team sports, playing high school basketball in Agoura Hills. So joining the MSA in 1996 at the age of 16 to surf competitively seemed a natural fit.

“It helped push my surfing level forward,” says Cox, 31, operations manager of the California Surf Museum in Oceanside. “And you get really stoked if another Malibu girl makes it through her heat. You get to root for your friends.”

This weekend, Cox will be competing in both shortboard and longboard events. But it’s the bigger board, with its smooth glide and lineage to the past, that she and the MSA favor. “It suits my personality,” says the graceful surfer. “A little more laid back.”

Cox says she wouldn’t miss the contest.

“I know how hard the club has worked on this. You can’t go wrong with September at the beach in Malibu. The waves are beautiful, the water temperature is warm and most of the crowds have gone home. It’ll be a great reunion.”

Surfer Gary Sellern says he’ll be in the water, too—shoulder be damned. It’s bone-on-bone, he says, the result of “surfing insanely for 50 years.” Sellern, now 77 and a former MSA president, says his physical problems have kept him largely dry-docked for more than a year. “My wife is almost kicking me out of the house,” he says. “The club and surfing, that’s been my life for half a century.”

This weekend, however, Sellern is lugging a huge 11-foot board that will take less paddling strength to build speed in the water, hopefully allowing him to catch more waves. But even during these frustrating months out of the surf, he says, the camaraderie and support of the MSA has helped him flow with his advancing years.

Without it, he says, “I’d go crazy.”

Posted 9/8/11