Slashing the Stereotype: Tommy Ostendorf Profile
Photo by Mark Kawakami We can all thank Hollywood for the perception of surfers as stony slackers. Tommy Ostendorf slaps back at this identity with one hit of the lip and one push into the whitewash. Ostendorf, 28, got his first taste of the soup at age 10, learning to ride the inside of El Porto in the city where he was raised and where his parents are from. His dad bought him a “fun board.” “It was a 7-foot-6, brown $50 special,” he said. “My dad helped me through the waves and pushed me into a few. I’d been surfing on boogie boards for years so getting up wasn’t the problem. Getting through the surf was the tough part.” Junior Lifeguards is where the young Ostendorf polished his chops, riding the unforgiving, yet safe, foam paddle boards with the octagon cut in half rails, no leash, handles on the deck, and a super flimsy, single fin prone to sliding out. “I was in the program for 6 years. It was and is a great program and it established my confidence as a waterman.” Ostendorf attended Manhattan Beach Middle School and was a member of the first surf PE class with Mr. Geller. Unlike the majority of his classmates, he acquired a taste for riding longer equipment. “My first real…
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