Evenings on 44th Street
Nick breaks eye contact and lifts his head to scan the incoming set.
“Wow, look at that wave,” he murmurs in palpable awe and anticipation.
It’s Saturday at El Porto beach and the torrential rain has stopped for a brief but welcome 24 hours. The water is like chocolate milk, a brown soup of churned sand and urban runoff from the pollution of Los Angeles. This is a huge problem for not only the health of aquatic life, but also surfers who know they should not go in until three days after a rainstorm, but can’t resist the perfect after-shock of good swell.
Double to triple overhead with 17 knots of onshore wind, the waves aren’t beautiful in the conventional sense of the word, but pounded with a deranged ferocity, raw and barbaric. We stare at a single rideable wave that stands inaccessible in the wild and dangerous ocean.
Nick Votto, a 40-something Los Angeles native and surfer, moved to El Porto in 1997. After 20 years of being a block away from the most consistent surf-spot in Los Angeles, it’s clear why he’s so enchanted with his backyard: this type of swell doesn’t hit the West Coast every day, and even though it’s not perfect, it’s a spectacle for crowds to enjoy.
Photo by Soraya Simi
People of all shapes and sizes brave the intense wind and biting cold and I am in the company of the 44th Street Crew, the neighborhood locals who watch the sunset each evening from the parking lot. Despite our many layers, we are chilled to the bone. No complaints from anyone, though: this is, after all, the weather god’s thundering reply to the drought in Southern California.
The wave’s stage time ends and Nick’s attention returns.
“Sorry, what was the question again?” he asks.
“Oh right,” he remembers, “the parking lot cliques… well, there’s the North Side – where we’re standing – the Bathroom Group, and down there, that’s Tyler Country.” He points to the south side of the parking lot, near the exit, where apparently the owner of Tyler Surfboards in El Segundo reigns. According to Nick, Tyler “kills the jetty,” meaning he surfs through the pier with precision.
Photo by Soraya Simi
“Lots of tension among the groups. I’ve seen fights break out here.” Nick pauses, noticing his Rottweiler dogs, Magnum and Kaimana, carefully sniffing another neighborhood dog. He greets the owner with a familiar “hey,” and she smiles back.
I’ve been here for ten minutes and already feel that the nexus of middle to older-aged men and women of 44th Street is congenial and inclusive. Could this be the same aggressive group of surfers that trigger fights in the parking lot just in front of us?
As if reading my mind, Nick adds, “The people from the neighborhood don’t want any trouble… We’ll drive north or south of the parking lot to avoid any tension. As a community, we understand that we don’t have any ownership over the water. We just respect it.”
The residents of El Porto are not there to prove it’s theirs. Rather, El Porto is a venue in which the community comes together to appreciate what brought them all here in the first place: the ocean. We watch as the sun dips beneath the horizon, an underwhelming sunset as it’s hidden behind the clouds. No one seems to mind the lack of perfection; they take it as it comes, and they’ll all be back tomorrow evening.
