THE VERDICT -- robert gardner

You’d think Surf City invented surfing. No way. When Surf City consisted

of a few miles of oil wells and a saltwater plunge, there was surfing in

Newport Beach.

One day in the early 1920s, Duke Kahanamoku, world-famous Hawaiian

royalty, Olympic swimming champion and currently a movie star, was

driving along the coast and saw a long sandbar that reached out from what

is now the main beach at Corona del Mar. He made note of the beautiful

surf that built up on that sandbar and when the Corona del Mar bath house

was built in 1924, the Duke and some of his more muscular friends -- they

had to be muscular to handle those 250-pound mahogany boards -- began

surfing at Corona del Mar and leaving their boards at the bath house.

I know all this because in 1927, when I worked at the bath house, the

Duke would take me for a ride on his shoulders as thanks for taking care

of his board. Soon, some of the local men joined the Duke and by 1928

when the concrete jetty was completed, quite a few locals were surfing

the break at Corona del Mar.

And still, Surf City consisted of a few miles of oil wells and a

saltwater plunge.

In 1935, they dredged out most of the mud flats in what is now Newport

Harbor. In doing so, a lot of sand was deposited at the end of the Balboa

Peninsula, which created a bodysurfing beach known all over the world as

the Wedge.

And what was Surf City doing all this time?

Well, it still had the oil wells but got rid of the saltwater plunge.

Rumor has it that when the plunge was drained, they found the body of an

oil field worker. He had been there quite a while, but the water was so

salty that he just cured instead of decaying. I don’t vouch for the truth

of the yarn, I just repeat it.

Over the years, the Wedge has produced a group of superlative

bodysurfers. One time, the Newport Beach Bodysurfing Club put on a

bodysurfing contest with surfers from as far away as Santa Cruz and San

Diego. When the contest was over, Wedge regulars had taken first, second,

third and fourth in both the senior and junior divisions. They never had

the contest again.

Speaking of bodysurfing contests, a local woman, Sonja Betsch, is a

three-time women’s champion in the granddaddy of all bodysurfing

contests, Oceanside. We have a two-time men’s champion on our life guard

force, and any day with decent surf you will find as good a group of

surfers surfing between the groins and RJs as you will find anywhere.

So, go ahead and call yourself Surf City because of that big contest you

hold each year. Just remember that we were here first -- and you don’t

have a corner on good surfers.

* JUDGE GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and former judge. His column

runs Tuesdays.