by Elka Worner
A burned out pro-surfer orchestrating a drug heist on the high seas, a strung out jazz musician arrested after a brawl at the Lighthouse Café, and a convicted bank robber working at a beachfront bike shop, are hardly the types of characters you’d expect to find in stories about surf and beach culture.
But these lost, drug-addled souls — seeking redemption, sobriety and instant wealth — are a natural fit for the surf noir anthology “The Silver Waves of Summer,” unveiled Thursday at the Hermosa Beach Historical Society.
“We think it’s all beautiful and glitzy, this California lifestyle,” the book’s editor David Olsen said. “But surfers have had a long history of being on the seedy side of things.”
Last year, Olsen came up with the idea for a collection of short stories with “crime, surfers and beach communities at its heart.” He shared his vision with local author Michael Scott Moore while surfing in Northern California, one of the few beaches not closed during the pandemic. Both agreed the book would have to include a painted cover to give it a “fun, pulpy, mid century feel.” The stories themselves would mirror that sentiment.
During Thursday’s event, author Antoine Wilson read from his short story, “In the Bank,” which features Buddy, a former pro-surfer seduced by the lure of easy money. He and his partner in crime, Felix, head out on the Pacific to intercept a cartel shipment.
“This would be like Felix said, an easy score, a one time deal, four million dollars’ worth of marijuana making its way up the coast, a drop in the bucket for the big boys, the guys who cut off faces and stitched them onto soccer balls, this was a numbers game for them, they expected a certain amount of — what had they called it when Buddy was working at Walmart? — shrinkage, that was the word,” Wilson read.
The heist quickly turns south.
“It’s about the broken dreams of a former professional surfer who missed the money years and turned to crime, to disastrous results.” Wilson said of his work.
Moore, who penned “Lighthouse Scene for Miles,” entertained the audience with a bit of performance art, setting the mood with a jazz compilation by Miles Davis and about 30 slides to accompany his reading. He even donned a fedora to add a jazz critic, noir element to the presentation.
His story about jazz legend Miles Davis is set in the 1950s, and finds the trumpeter at a low point in his career. “Most of his days were spent scoring heroin and drinking at the Lighthouse bar,” where his friend jazz drummer Max Roach had a regular gig.
One night, Miles refused to pay the bar tab. The burly bartender, Billy Jarvis, a Korean vet who was prone to “combat stress,” called him a “black motherf…,” and all hell broke loose.
“A bouncer broke up the fight, and when the police arrived, things looked bad for Miles. Although Jarvis had thrown the first punch, he wasn’t strung out. More importantly, he wasn’t black,” Moore read.
“A situation involving a black man at the Lighthouse equaled a situation caused by a black man at the Lighthouse, and the logical solution was for Miles Davis, the future of jazz, to get hauled off in a paddy wagon.”
Although Moore’s work is a historical fiction, it is based on extensive research on this California chapter of Davis’ life.
The story not only touches on a jazz musician’s heroin addiction and his efforts to get clean, but also illustrates the ugly side of segregation and racism coursing through American life during the 1950s.
Tod Goldberg’s “Summer of ’86” tells the tale of Mitch Lenney, a street smart ex-con who works at his sister’s bike shop.
“I’d been out for about six weeks, sleeping in my childhood bedroom in Walnut Creek, trying to figure out what the next 50 years of my life would look like with a felony conviction and penitentiary time on my record…” Goldberg read.
When his sister’s boyfriend, Hank Niculescu, disappears, Lenney is hounded by the dogged detective Garrison, who suspects the ex-con may be involved in Hank’s disappearance.
“Garrison took a notepad from his pocket, flipped through it.
“Lucky you,” he said, “have your sister’s boyfriend go missing, and you slide right into a nice job with an ocean view.”
Suspicion, innuendo and characters with hard-to-place accents lend a noir aspect to Goldberg’s story.
“It’s about bad people, surrounded by worse people, making terrible choices in view of the ocean,” he said of his work.
If you’re looking for a sanitized version of California beach culture, you won’t find it in “The Silver Waves of Summer.” Instead, you’ll find stories about characters who inhabit a world of crime, addiction and broken dreams, a grittier version of life in paradise. ER
“The Silver Waves of Summer is available at Pages bookstore in Manhattan Beach.
