For those silly few that believed America’s sense of North American manifest destiny dissolved at the Western coastline, let it be known that a band of bros has taken up the cause of shore surf supremacy, extending their dominion beyond the beaches of sunny SoCal to capture the waves that wash upon its shores, public access laws be damned.
Image by Bryanwake via Wikimedia Commons
Visitors to the beach at Palos Verdes Estates in Los Angeles County will find that a loyal group of dedicated douchebags have made it their generational purpose to deter visitors — specifically surfers — from the waves at Lunada Bay. Known for manly feats of territorial defiance such as pelting rocks, destroying clothing, and vandalizing cars, these Bay Boys have been in action for decades. They’re rarely reported, because little has been done by the local police force to discipline them.
“They’re pretty much grown men in little men’s mindsets,” one officer recently told the Guardian. “It is like a game on the schoolyard to them and they don’t want you playing on their swing set.”
And, anyway, according to the chief of police, there have only been four complaints in four years.
After requesting incident reports for the strip of town that surrounds Lunada Bay, MuckRock received approximately four reports from the last year and a half, two of which explicitly mention hesitation to report the crime but desire to prosecute should the perpetrators be apprehended.
“We know all of them,” the officer surreptitiously taped by the Guardian had said.
In January 2014, one surfer reported that handsome, young actor-types had gathered in a gang of nine to intimidate him.
One in particular took the altercation to the ocean, where he unironically called the surfer “an arrogant bastard,” before graciously sparing the surfer’s life due to the high quality of the surf they were on.
Another complaint described a trio of fully-grown men pettily destroying the sneakers of another fully-grown man.
These reports only cover actual incidents reported to the police, which doesn’t really give a full sense of the successful intimidation perpetrated by the mini-gang mentality that has been around since before this latest crop of crusaders was even born. Back in the early nineties, one Bay Boy defended his behavior by claiming something akin to a religious right, saying, “Surfing is a spiritual thing … .Normally, my conscience would say don’t do this, but my heart would say it is the right thing to do because my heart is what is into surfing.”
And so continues the great quest of the American male to impose his divine right on the space before him.
Have you had your own run-in with the Bay Boys? Let us know. Then follow our request for all surf-related incidents in the area, and you’ll be alerted when the results come in.
Read the full incident report on the request page, or embedded here:
Header image by Karl-Ludwig Poggemann via Flickr and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
