Steamer Lane |
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First of all, it's Steamer Lane -- not Steamer's Lane. Steamer's is acceptable if you must, but call it Steamer's Lane in public, and you'll be laughed out of town or thrown off the point. Legend has it that the name emanated from the steamships that navigated around the huge surf at Third Reef before turning into the bay. During the '30s, it's said that early surfers saw giant waves breaking out in the steamship lane, so they called it Steamer Lane. However the name originated, Steamer Lane has served as the crucible of Santa Cruz, Northern California and international surfing during the 20th century.
During the '50s, pioneering big-wave surfers such as Peter Cole, Ricky Grigg and the Van Dyke brothers got their first taste of the big stuff at Steamer Lane. Cole and Grigg were students at Stanford, and the Van Dykes traveled from San Francisco to test themselves against a wave that was considered one of the best preparations for Makaha and the North Shore. These guys were surfing the place when surfboards were wood, wetsuits were nonexistent and leashes were still for dogs. Jack O'Neill moved his family and business from San Francisco to Santa Cruz in the late '50s. O'Neill reopened his surf shop at Cowell's Beach, where the West Coast Santa Cruz Hotel now stands. He continued experimenting with neoprene and design, but only expected to sell the wetsuits to local surfers. As surfing exploded in the '60s, O'Neill produced increasingly sophisticated wetsuits for the growing surf population. The modern surfing wetsuit had its genesis at Steamer Lane and Santa Cruz, and those innovations have opened up surfing in cold-water locations around the world. In the '70s, surfers like O'Neill's son, Pat, became frustrated with losing boards into the rocks at Steamer Lane and Pleasure Point and began experimenting with ropes and cords to attach them to their surfboards. Santa Cruz had a hot crew of surfers during the '70s, and into the '80s, guys such as Robbie Waldemar, Kevin Reed, Vince Collier, Steve Colton and Richard Schmidt established a foundation for all that was to come. Reed, in particular, was way ahead of his time: aerial, loose and innovative. And Schmidt made an annual pilgrimage to Hawaii, rising above the pack at Sunset and Waimea and sounding a wake-up call to future Santa Cruz big-wave surfers. Into the '80s, Steamer Lane played host to the O'Neill Coldwater Classic, an ASP world tour event that attracted the world's best pro surfers and threw them into the Gladiator's Pit in front of thousands of stoked spectators. Although Steamer Lane had a tendency to hold back on the swell during these events, there were some great clashes between the likes of Sunny Garcia, Gary Elkerton, Tom Curren, Tom Carroll and Richie Collins. During the '90s, the surf media could no longer ignore Steamer Lane. Following a path blazed by Reed, a new generation of surfers -- including Jason "Ratboy" Collins, Adam "Rodent" Replogle, Ken "Skindog" Collins, Darryl "Flea" Virostko and Shawn "Barney" Barron -- pushed the limits of high-performance aerial surfing. During the Expression Session of the 1994 Billabong Pro, Ratboy pulled off a backside aerial 360 on a Middle Peak left that made the cover of Surfer magazine. That move and cover image, as much as anything, proved that Santa Cruz had arrived as one of the performance centers of the surfing world and that its surfers were at the cutting edge of innovative surfing. At the other end of the scale, it was Steamer Lane surfers such as Tom Powers, Dave Schmidt, Richard Schmidt and Vince Collier who were among the first chargers to tackle the giant surf at Maverick's. Like psycho baby-sitters, Collier and the Schmidts dragged along groms such as Peter Mel, Virostko, Replogle and Collins. The gnarly elders insisted that the youngsters paddle out at Maverick's to prove their mettle and many of them exceeded expectations. Virostko's victory at the first two Quiksilver Maverick's events in 1999 and 2000 over some of the world's best big-wave surfers is testament to that. At the turn of the 21st century, Santa Cruz has grabbed international attention as one of the world's hottest locations for high-performance and big-wave surfing. Flea, Skindog, Barney, Ratboy and Rodent are now household names; surf stars coming from a place that was invisible for so long. Steamer Lane is the center of attention, and the spot is becoming a victim of its own success. For young surfers throughout California and the world, Santa Cruz is the place to visit for a week, or spend four years and get a degree at University of California at Santa Cruz. As a result, the spot is suffering, bending under the weight of thousands of wetsuited, leashed, long- and shortboarding surfers scrabbling for a piece of the action. On the smaller, more accessible days, it is a zoo, a microcosm of all the people who are taking to the water these days. Steamer Lane is one of the most crowded surf spots in California. But every once in awhile, the lion roars -- Middle Peak comes to life at 8 to 10 feet and washes away all but the strongest humanity. -- Ben Marcus, October 2000
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