MB Council approves Catalina Classic paddleboarding sculpture

Three life-size bronze figures celebrating the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race are proposed for the Manhattan Beach pier area. Rendering by Ivan Djikanovici / Michael Lee

Architects South Bay Boardrider Club president Tom Horton speaks at City Council. Photo

The Manhattan Beach City Council Tuesday night unanimously accepted a proposal from the South Bay Boardriders Club to install a bronze statue honoring the Catalina Classic paddleboard race and its role in local history at the far south end of the pier parking lot.

Renderings of the statue show a striking 18-foot high paddleboard being held by a man standing, surrounded on either side by a man and a woman knee paddling, each life-sized. The paddlers are facing east and slightly north, perfectly aligned as if coming directly across from Santa Catalina Island.

SBBC president Tom Horton said the club sought to bring attention to a sport and a race that are unique, and uniquely influential, to the area.

“Prone paddleboarding has deep roots in the South Bay, and Manhattan Beach in particular,” Horton said.

The 32-mile race from the Catalina isthmus to the Manhattan Beach pier is the signature event in a sport that began in 1928 when lifeguard Tom Blake began building hollowed  paddleboards as rescue devices, and then four years later convinced a few of his colleagues to test their usefulness by paddling from the Palos Verdes Peninsula to Catalina Island. Boards to that point had been solid wood, thus slower and less maneuverable; Blake would revolutionize all surfboard building with his innovation.

“This was the disruptive technology of its time,” Horton said.

In 1955, the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce and local lifeguard Bob Hogan organized a race from Catalina to the Manhattan Beach Pier. Even though the race proved extraordinarily challenging —  as Horton noted, legendary waterman Greg Noll got lost in fog and ended up at the El Segundo oil pier — it was also a big hit. Two years later, an estimated 57,000 spectators, including famous Hollywood starlets, showed up at the pier to witness the race’s finish.

“It became a really big deal,” Horton said.

Race organizers made it a bigger deal, adding three days of events that included a volleyball tournament, an ocean swim race, and outrigger canoe races — that is, the roots of what would later become the International Surf Festival. But pier reconstruction in 1959 and bad weather in 1961 would cause race cancellations, and the death of key organizer Cliff Webster of the MB Chamber soon thereafter resulted in the discontinuation of the race. But the memory of the legendary race would linger. In 1982, lifeguards Buddy Bohn and Gibby Gibson revived it, and it’s been running strong ever since, to the point where completing the Catalina Classic has become a right of passage for South Bay water folk.

“It’s a race that inspires a lot of people, watermen, and waterwomen, something that everyone aspires to do… It’s an iconic race, a historic race,” Horton said.

Paddler and artist Brian Kingston and architect Michael Lee, a Manhattan Beach native and a paddler, designed the proposed statue. The vision the architects and boardriders arrived at includes a compass rose and colored concrete base, and a new set of stairs arriving at the sculpture from the 10th Street walk street.

“We find the shape of the boards is compelling, dramatic, and iconic,” Lee said. “The board is a piece of art on its own. We didn’t want to just have a simple monument to the race. We are looking to create an urban space in the city where people could reflect on the ocean, and learn about the race.”

“As an urban planning move it’s a good one,” Lee said. “I also think it’ll be a great place to sit and have a cup of coffee in the morning.”

Several paddleboarders testified about the race’s importance both to themselves and local surf culture. Rodney Ellis, who has completed six Catalina Classics, said that it would help put Manhattan Beach on the map in the same way statues of George Freeth and the Meistrell twins do in Redondo, Tim Kelley in Hermosa, and even Duke Kahanamoku in Waikiki.

“If you walked along the beach cities it would fit right in… I think it would be a positive thing for the city, and the community,” Ellis said.

Cole Horton, Tom Horton’s son, said paddleboarding had been something particularly helpful in his childhood, when he was skinny and had a “huge ‘fro” and wasn’t very good at more mainstream sports. He was introduced to paddling at 8, inspired by his father, who used the sport to raise money to combat the disease that took his grandmother, ALS. Horton first raced at 11.

“This was something I could be proud of,” Horton said. “… I don’t want to put any bias or opinion on what is the most important thing we could put out there, but just the fact that this is so historic and unique. A lot of places have similar volleyball tournaments. A statue that stands this tall, it’s like a beacon of hope.”

D.J. O’Brien, a two-time women’s Catalina champion who has completed the race 13 times, said that the sport brings together people of all ages.

“Women can do this sport,” she said. “Anyone can —  if you are 21, 35, 50, 60… and when you all come together on the ocean, you are all the same, all like-minded and all passionate about something that is free in your community —  it’s the ocean. You can see where you started, the isthmus, and see the pier, and see what you’ve done. And it’s amazing, the feeling of finishing this race is really unparalleled. You should come try it.”

Councilmember Amy Howorth admitted that the paddleboarders’ testimony had moved her from thinking it was just a cool piece of art to something truly significant for the community.

“It’s clearly something unique for Manhattan Beach and it is so special… It speaks to what is really great about where we live, and what our history has been,” Howorth said. “This is something we need to celebrate, cherish, and protect.”

Councilman David Lesser expressed concern that committing to a large location in the pier area would foreclose the opportunity for other sports to be commemorated with statues. But Mayor Steve Napolitano noted that the pier itself has the names of Manhattan Open volleyball champions.

“I think it’s the right design for this location,” Napolitano said, noting that details could be worked out later, but approving the design in concept now would allow the Boardriders to begin fundraising. Their intention is to raise all the money for the sculpture, likely several hundred thousand dollars. The city, which has $1.1 million in its public art fund, will contemplate how much it can contribute to the surrounding infrastructure, including a proposed stairway with access for the disabled.

“It’s about time we have more disabled access to our beach,” Napolitano said. “If we are required to do it, or not required to it, we should have beach access.”

The council instructed staff to work out a memorandum of understanding with the Boardriders similar to a public-private agreement with the Friends of the Senior and Scout Community Center, a community organization with which the city is jointly building a new facility. In that agreement, the city has committed $1 million towards a $3.7 million project.

The council ended on an enthusiastic note, mostly.

“I’m not doing the race,” Howorth said.

“This is going to be very iconic,” Lesser said. “This is very exciting.”

Donate to the Catalina Classic Commemorative Statue.

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