SURF’S UP : For Old Guard, Riding Waves Continues to Be a Way of Life

The way Mickey Munoz has it figured, a life of working 9 to 5 would mean 40 hours a week that could be better spent.

A lot of waves could go unridden in 40 hours and, to an old surfer, that’s unthinkable. And Munoz, 48, is an old surfer. He has been going from one wave to the next since he was 11. In between, he has tried to make the most of his time, which he considers life’s most precious commodity.

“You’ve only got so much time to live,” Munoz said. “It’s best to live a more balanced life style, which, to me, means lots of play.”

Munoz does most of his playing in the ocean. He’s one of a core of Southern California surfers who set the tone for the massive growth of the sport during the ‘60s, and has been riding that wave ever since.

He has gone on surfing safaris that have taken him from Canada to South America, from Hawaii to the Philippines. He has designed and built Catamarans. He has tried skin diving and scuba diving. He even used his surfing talents to get a job as a stunt man in the movies.

Remember Sandra Dee in the original “Gidget” movie? The distant shots of her catching waves were actually Munoz decked out in a bikini and wig. “I guess there weren’t any women around the time who could do it,” he said.

The “Mickey Does Gidget” routine led Munoz to join the Screen Actors Guild, where he landed surfing stunt work in other ‘60s movies and in the short-lived television series “Mickey,” starring Mickey Rooney. But the movie career began cutting into Munoz’s surfing time.

“I was just hooked on the beach,” he said. “I couldn’t bring myself to drive into Hollywood and do the romancing you had to do to get work. I just phased into something else.”

From shaping surfboards to managing a Seal Beach surf shop, Munoz, who now lives in Capistrano Beach, never strayed too far from the pursuit of waves. That has enabled him to closely monitor the development of the sport, to notice its influences and trends.

A current trend: the resurgence of the long board, the extra-long model Gidget and her friends used to ride and that once appeared to be on its way out. The trend, Munoz said, is being spearheaded by older surfers whose boards have collected dust while they have been out in the working world.

“As they grew older, they had more responsibilities,” he said. “Families, work, etc. They had less time to surf.”

The shorter boards that emerged in the ‘70s were easier to maneuver but harder to paddle and catch waves with. Part-time surfers had trouble adapting. The solution, according to Munoz, was bringing back the equipment from a different era of surfing, and applying modern technological advances to it. Hence, longboarding is making a comeback.

“It can allow a person who isn’t able to surf every day like the kids to go out on weekends, be a recreational surfer, and still enjoy it,” Munoz said.

From the doorway of his Huntington Beach surf shop, George Draper can look out onto Main Street and watch people walk through the heart of Surf City, USA to the Huntington Beach Pier. It’s a view Draper has had since 1967.

Draper is the owner of George’s Surf Center, one of nine surf shops within a two-block stretch on Main Street. It is here that Draper, another member of surfing’s old guard, has watched the sport at which he has made his living undergo some major changes.

Said Steve Pezman, publisher of Surfer magazine: “He’s been there for almost 20 years. He’s watched it all come and go.”

Draper remembers an era in which surfers like David Nuuhiwa and Corky Carroll had signature model surfboards--much the way baseball bats bear Reggie Jackson’s autograph--that were in huge demand.

“That was when surfing was really at its height,” Draper said. “The stars had their boards, and we would sell them like hot cakes. It was nothing to sell 10 or 12 boards a day. We were just rolling the boards out the front of the store.”

Draper has seen the surfing industry become more fragmented during the ‘80s. Shops like George’s that once specialized in custom-made surfboards now rely more on beach and surfing apparel for their profits. “It was a good era,” Draper said. “But like anything else, time has a way of diminishing things.”

The size of Draper’s merchandise also has diminished in the past two decades. The boards that once sold like hot cakes, Draper said, were between 9 and 10 feet in length. Today’s young surfer wants more maneuverability and rides a much smaller, lighter board. Draper says most of the boards he sells these days are between 5 1/2- and 6-feet long, and the surfers that ride them have changed, too.

“In those earlier days, it seems like things were more relaxed,” Draper said. “There was easier communication between surfers. It was really a form of therapy then.

“Nowadays, it’s definitely more of the fast lane. It seems like there’s more aggression out there now.”

There are considerably more surfers in the waters of Huntington Beach now than when Draper helped then-owner George Panton open a surf shop in what was an auto parts store 19 years ago. That has meant fewer waves to go around and more competition for each of them.

But the waves were the lure of Surf City even 20 years ago, according to Draper.

“If there were waves,” he said, “Huntington was the place to go. It was magic here, and everybody knew it.”