SWELL.COM: You first learned to surf at Windansea.
PETER KING: Yeah, just north of it at a little break called Turtles. It only breaks in the summer at low tide. It was small.

When did you move over to Windansea?
Like, the next day. I grew up in La Jolla, and I would just bodysurf the shorebreak. But I used to skateboard, so I had some balance, and I decided I wanted to surf like all of the cool older kids. My sister took me out at Turtles, but I couldn't swim, so I had to wear a leash, which was very frowned upon.

Who were the cool older guys surfing Windansea at that time?
My older brothers, John and David King, Chris O'Rourke. There are too many to mention.

What about old-timers?
Butch Van Artsdalen had already passed away, but I heard about him. He was a gnarly guy. Windansea had a pretty tough reputation, so the idea was, if you were going to be a kid and surf there, you were going to be tough, too. Everyone that had gone before had been pretty rowdy -- tough guy, macho sort of thing. Localism was in its heyday when I was growing up. There used to be fights there all the time.

So, did you fall in line?
I could see where it made sense, that's for sure. [Affects a redneck sort of voice: "Didn't want them kooks coming out." Laughs.]

Where do you think Windansea's localism is right now?
Any spot that is worth its weight in agua has people who have surfed it for a long time, and those people deserve and pretty much demand respect in the lineup. I don't think there is a spot in the world where if you don't show that to people, that you can just be fine. [Steve] Hawk in his years of tirades at Surfer tried to act like everybody should be able to surf everywhere. I understand his point. But the original point of localism is: don't come here and be a jerk. And people were being rude and leaving trash, and that's -- you know -- nobody should put up with that. You can't get away with being a jerk. But it's open season [now]. It's no harm, no foul at Windansea anymore.

What do you think the connection is between Windansea, the break and the first generation of big-wave surfers who went to Hawaii?
It was the focal point in Southern California for reef surfing. Big Rock, Simmons, Middles, Windansea -- the whole area has great big storm surf, and reefs. So, everyone was drawn here. A lot of people took that act to Hawaii. Even Hawaii wasn't pioneered until a bunch of crazy Californians came over there and started going for it.

Do you think Windansea is still contributing to surfing the way it did back then?
No. Well, in different ways, yes. The Windansea Surf Club nowadays is very community-minded. It's a bunch of good guys, still hardcore watermen, but they do a lot of nice fundraisers for people in the community in need, especially surfers. They do a lot of unique events, including teaching kids from the St. Vincent de Paul center to surf. But we're definitely not producing a bumper crop of world-class surfers at Windansea, absolutely not. And that's because the focus has shifted from that kind of surfing to beachbreak surfing. Beachbreak surfing is where all of the latest pros are coming from, I think. That's where all of the aerials are being done. It's hard to actually do an aerial at a spot like Windansea, because it's a sloppier wave. Beachbreaks are just natural launching pads. So, I don't think Windansea is at the forefront of creating a lot of hot new talent in surfing, let's say. It's still contributing to the world of surfing. It's still a focal point in Southern California. It has history. That's one thing that surfing has, is history.

How does a spot transform from the gathering place for tough guys, to the center of a community?
You've got to understand that everyone was a tough guy then. Surfing in the '50s and '60s was all about being a tough guy. Look at the old, funny surf movies. The guys are all ripped and lifting weights, drinking 3,000 beers and lifting VWs over their heads. That was just part of the culture. For Windansea to be the classic surfing spot -- Malibu, too --it had its fights going on, and people [who were] protective of their thing. Localism is its own type of thing. The Windansea surf club, the way it changed, was, it went away for a long time. It didn't exist for about 15 years. So, when it got started back up, the people who started it back up just weren't into being a boxing club, you know. They wanted to be a surfing club.

When were your all-time favorite sessions?
I guess everyone thinks the waves used to be better when they were growing up. I remember a couple of sessions when I was about 15 or 16: getting my new Bessell, running down there and having the surf being a 6-foot south swell, pumping, with all of my friends [out]. That's when I first started surfing the outside peak instead of the inside right -- going to the outside and catching them all the way through. I pretty much surf the reefs peripheral to Windansea nowadays, because Windansea seems a bit slopped to me. The swell size has to be big enough for me to care about Windan'.

What advice would you give someone who has never surfed the area?
Go surf somewhere else. Go to PB Point and have a blast.

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