The Gentlemen's Hour (4 page)

Get it—K2 had Samoan gangbangers out there on Saturday mornings with trash bags, cleaning up the beaches around O'side and laughing the whole time. K2, more silver than black in his full head of hair by then, had black kids from Golden Hill in the water on body boards, talking about saving their money to get the real thing. There was a downturn in gang violence, most of it having to do with sheer demographics, but the local police laid a piece of it right on K2's doorstep.

K2 showed up at the charity events and the walkathons, always found some piece of memorabilia to donate to school auctions, never said no if he could find a way to say yes.

He became a fixture at the PB Gentlemen's Hour, standing around the beach talking story, more often out in the water catching rides, his style still elegant if less hard-charging. Boone would see him around from time to time, at Jeff's or The Sundowner, or just on the beach or some surf event. K2 would always ask after his parents, they'd exchange a few words. Every now and again they surfed together.

Boone admired him, looked up to him, learned from him.

He wasn't alone in that. For good reason, San Diego loved that man.

He was a hero.

Maybe a saint.

Then Corey Blasingame killed him.

It happened outside The Sundowner.

Which makes what happened all the worse, because the restaurant-bar-hangout is an icon of the San Diego surf scene. Faded photos of great local surfers riding their waves decorate its walls; famous surfboards that have provided some of those rides hang from its ceilings.

It goes beyond memorabilia, though. The Sundowner stands for the brotherhood—and, increasingly, the sisterhood—of surfing. A hangout like The Sundowner stands for the surf ethic—peace, friendship, tolerance, individuality—an overall philosophy that people sharing a common passion are, indeed, a community. In short, everything that Kelly Kuhio taught by example.

In Pacific Beach, that community gathers in The Sundowner. To share a meal, a drink, some stories, some laughs. From time to time, a few tourists might come in and get overrefreshed, or some chucklehead from east of the 5 might walk in looking for trouble—which is where unofficial bouncers such as Boone, Dave, or Tide might be asked to intervene—but surfers never cause problems in The Sundowner. Sure, a surfer might have a few too many beers and get silly-stupid and have to be carried out by his buddies, a guy might yack on the floor (see Mai Tai Tuesdays), a boy might try to surf a table and end up in the e room for a few stitches, but
violence
just doesn't happen.

Well, didn't used to.

The ugly, painful truth is that violence has been seeping into the surf community for some time, really since the mid-eighties, when the drug-blissed hippie surfer era gave way to something a little edgier. Over the years, grass gave way to coke, and coke gave way to crack, crack to speed, speed to meth. And meth is a violent fucking drug.

The other thing was overpopulation—too many people wanting a place in the wave and not enough wave to accommodate them; too many cars looking for a place to park and not enough spaces.

A new word crept into surf jargon.

Localism.

Easy to understand—surfers who lived near a certain break and surfed it their whole lives wanted to defend their turf against newcomers who threatened to crowd them out of a piece of water they considered their
home
—but it was an ugly thing.

Locies started to put up warning signs: “If you don't live here, don't surf here.” Then they began to vandalize strangers' cars—soap the bodies, slash the tires, shatter the windshields. Then it got directly physical, with the locies actually beating up the newcomers—in the parking places, on the beach, even in the water.

Which, to surfers such as Boone, was sacrilege.

You didn't fight in the water. You didn't threaten, throw punches,
beat people up.
You
surfed.
If a guy jumped your wave, you set him straight, but you didn't foul a sacred place with violence.

“Fighting in the lineup,” Dave opined one Dawn Patrol, “would be like stealing in church.”

“You go to
church
?” Hang Twelve asked.

“No,” Dave answered.

“Have you ever
been
to church?” High Tide asked. He actually has—since he left his gangbanging days behind, Tide goes to church every Sunday.

“No,” Dave answered. “But I knew this nun once—”

“I don't think I want to hear this,” Tide said.

“Well, she wasn't still a nun when I knew her—”

“That I believe,” Boone said. “So what about her?”

“She used to talk about it.”

“She used to talk about stealing in church?” Johnny Banzai asked. “Christ, no wonder she was an ex-nun.”

“I'm just saying,” Dave persisted, “that fighting while surfing is . . . is . . .”

“ ‘Sacrilegious' is the word you're searching for,” Johnny said.

“You know,” Dave answered, “you really play into a lot of Asian stereotypes. Better vocabulary, better in school, higher SAT scores . . .”

“I
do
have a better vocabulary,” Johnny said, “I
was
better in school, and I
did
have higher SAT scores.”

“Than
Dave
?” Tide asked. “You didn't have to be Asian, you just had to show up.”

“I had other priorities,” Dave said.

Codified in the List Of Things That Are Good, an inventory constantly under discussion and revision during the Dawn Patrol, and which conversely necessitated the List Of Things That Are Bad, which, as currently constituted, went:

1. No surf

2. Small surf

3. Crowded surf

4. Living east of the 5

5. Going east of the 5

6. Wet-suit rash

7. Sewage spills

8. Board racks on BMWs

9. Tourists on rented boards

10. Localism

Items 9 and 10 were controversial.

Everyone admitted to having mixed feelings about tourists on rented
boards, especially the Styrofoam longboards. On the one hand, they were truly a pain in the ass, messing up the water with their inept wipeouts, ignorance, and lack of surf courtesy. On the other hand, they were an endless source of amusement, entertainment, and employment, seeing as how it was Hang's job to rent them said boards, and Dave's to jerk them out of the water when they attempted to drown themselves.

But it was item 10, localism, that sparked serious debate and discussion.

“I get localism,” Tide said. “I mean, we don't like it when strangers intrude on the Dawn Patrol.”

“We don't like it,” Johnny agreed, “but we don't beat them up. We're broly.”

“You can't own the ocean,” Boone insisted, “or any part of it.”

But he had to admit that even in his lifetime he had witnessed the gradual crowding out of his beloved surf breaks, as the sport gained in popularity and became cultural currency. It seemed like everyone was a surfer these days, and the water
was
crowded. The weekends were freaking ridiculous, and Boone was tempted sometimes to take Saturdays and Sundays off, there were so many (mostly bad) surfers hitting the waves.

It didn't matter, though; it was just something you had to tolerate. You couldn't stake out a piece of water like it was land you'd bought. The great thing about the ocean was that it wasn't for sale, you couldn't buy it, own it, fence it off—hard as the new luxury hotels that were appearing on the waterside like skin lesions tried to block off paths to the beaches and keep them “private.” The ocean, in Boone's opinion, was the last stand of pure democracy. Anyone—regardless of race, color, creed, economic status, or the lack thereof—could partake of it.

So he found localism understandable but ultimately wrong.

A bad thing.

A malignantly bad thing, because more and more often, over the past few years, Boone, Dave, Tide, and Johnny all found themselves playing peacemaker, intervening in disputes out on the water that threatened to break into fights. What had been a rare event became commonplace: preventing some locies from hammering an interloper.

There was that time right at PB. It wasn't the Dawn Patrol, it was a Saturday afternoon so the water was crowded with locals and newcomers. It was tense out on the line, too many surfers trying to get in the same waves, and then one of the locals just went off. This newbie had cut him off on his line, forcing him to bail, and he sloshed through the whitewater and went after the guy. Worse, his buddies came in behind him.

It would have been serious, a bad beat-down, except Dave was on the tower and Johnny was in the shallows playing with his kids. Johnny got there first and got between the aggro locies and the dumb newbie and tried to talk some sense. But the locies weren't having it, and it looked like it was on when Dave came up, and then Boone and Tide, and the Dawn Patrol combo plate got things settled down.

But Boone and the other sheriffs from the Dawn Patrol weren't at every break, and the ugly face of localism started to scowl at a lot of places. You started to see bumper stickers proclaiming “This Is Protected Territory,” and the owners of those cars—too often fueled by meth and beer—felt entitled to enforce the edict. Certain breaks up and down the California coast became virtual “no go” zones—even the surf reports warned “foreigners” to stay clear of those breaks.

What evolved were virtual gangs claiming ocean turf.

It was ridiculous, Boone thought. Stupid. Everything that surfing isn't. Yeah, but it
was.
A scar on the body oceanic, even if Boone didn't want to look at it.

But he
never
expected to see it in The Sundowner.

The Sundowner is old school. Go in there, you'll find guys from the
Dawn Patrol, from the Gentlemen's Hour, surfers from the pro tour, out-of-towners on a pilgrimage to a surf mecca. Everyone is welcome at The Sundowner.

Maybe Boone should have seen it coming. The signs were all there, literally, because he started to see them in the windows of other joints in Pacific Beach, reading “No Caps. No Gang Colors.”

Gang colors?!

Freaking
gang colors
on Garnet Avenue?

Yeah, and it was a problem. The past few years, gangs started to come to PB. Gangs from Barrio Logan and City Heights, but also local gangs, surf gangs—
surf
freaking
gangs
—claimed clubs and whole blocks as their partying turf and defended them against other gangs. More and more bars began to hire full-time professional bouncers and security, and the streets of laid-back, surf-happy PB got sketchy at night.

But that couldn't happen at The Sundowner.

Yeah, except it did.

Petra slides into the booth across from Boone.

He pretends to study the menu, which is ridiculous because Boone has had breakfast here almost every morning for the past ten years, and always orders the same thing.

The waitress, Not Sunny, is a tall blonde, leggy and pretty, and Petra wonders if there's some sort of secret breeding facility in California where they just crank out these creatures, because there seems to be an inexhaustible supply. When the original Sunny left her job at The Sundowner to go off on the professional surfers' tour, the new tall, blond, and
leggy replacement appeared immediately, in a seamless progression of California Girls.

Nobody seems to know her real name, nor does she seem bothered that she has been tabbed Not Sunny, doomed to exist in Sunny's shadow, as it were. Indeed, Not Sunny is a pale version of her namesake; on the surface as pretty, but lacking Sunny's depth, intelligence, and genuine warmth.

Now Not Sunny stares at Boone and says, “Eggs
machaca
with jack cheese, corn
and
flour tortillas, split the black beans and home fries, coffee with two sugars.”

Boone pretends to study the menu for an alternative, then says, “Just flour.”

“Huh?”

“Just flour tortillas, not corn.”

Not Sunny takes a moment to digest this change in her world, then turns to Petra and asks, “And for you?”

“Do you have iced tea?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I'll have an iced tea, please,” Petra says. “Lemon, no sugar.”

“Lemonnnnn . . . no sugar,” Not Sunny says to herself as she walks away to place the order, which, in fact, the cook had thrown on the grill the second he saw Boone come through the door.

“Oh, put the menu down,” Petra says to Boone.

Boone puts the menu down and looks at her. It isn't a nice look.

“Why are you so angry?” she asks.

“Kelly Kuhio was one of the finest people I ever knew,” Boone answers. “And your piece-of-shit client killed him.”

“He did,” Petra says. “I'm by no means convinced, however, that he's guilty of first-degree murder.”

Boone shrugs. It's a slam dunk—if the DA can put Corey on death row, good for her. Mary Lou Baker is a tougher-than-nails veteran prosecutor
who doesn't lose a lot of cases, and she is coming
hard
on this one.

Hell, yes, she is, because the community is
outraged.
The killing made the headlines every day for two weeks. Every development in the case makes the paper. And the radio talk show jocks are all
over
it, demanding the max.

San Diego wants Blasingame in the hole.

“I'll tell you what I
am
convinced of, though,” Petra says. “I'm convinced that this city has formed a collective lynch mob for Corey Blasingame because he's bad for the tourist industry upon which the economy depends. San Diego wants families to come to Pacific Beach and spend money, which they're not likely to do if the area gets a reputation for violence. So the city is going to make an example of him.”