Surf Legends of Jax Beach is a short DIY documentary on Bruce Clelland, Larry Miniard, Joe Roland, and Dick Rosborough—the four guys who turned Jacksonville Beach into a surfing powerhouse in the mid-'60s. The archival footage was shot by David Silver, a local kid whose parents fully indulged his interesting in photography. At the beginning of Surf Legends, before the narration starts, is a short bit with cops and surfers and lifeguards running across a beachfront retaining wall, then a spot of board confiscation, and finally a couple of surfers getting a city-sponsored lift off the beach in the back of a police car. Score this round for the Man. Part of me loved that the episode is so fleeting and vague, but part of me just had to know what actually went down on the beach that day. Longtime EOS subscriber Thomas Altee, who grew up in the area, was good enough to fill me in. Meanwhile, I remixed David Silver's footage and got Mick Jones to do the soundtrack.

Surfing landed on the East Coast, and particularly Florida, like a ton of bricks. One year it was nothing and the next year it was everything. That David Silver footage is chronicling Year Two of the craze, 1964-'65. Local authorities were faced with a sport they knew nothing about, and lifeguards watched as boards by the dozens were lost in the soup and driven to the beach looking to decapitate unwary tourists from Pennsyltucky frolicking in the shore break. In 1964 the skill curve from kook to gremmie to waterman was mountainous. An old surfer in Florida in 1964 was 17—like Bruce Clelland, by way of example. Our East Coast elders (Dick Catri, Bob Holland, et al) were few in number and dispersed over a huge coastline.

City fathers panicked. They instituted draconian blackball rules. Between May 1st and Sept 1st there was no surfing allowed anywhere in Jax, Neptune or Atlantic Beaches between 9 am and 5 pm. And 

 no surfing within 300 feet of the Jax Bch pier. If you watch Silver's video of guys surfing the pier, you see guys riding past two poles set close together. At the top of those poles was a sign that said: "NO surfing from here to the Pier." We regularly violated that rule. The best sandbars, of course, were next to the pier. The war was on. It waxed and waned for 15 years.

I talked to one of the guys who was on the beach that day, which was 55 years ago. He thinks the two surfers involved had broken the pier rule. In those days beaches were considered roads in Florida and you could pretty much drive anywhere anytime on the sand, as long as you didn't go above 10 mph. The cops would cruise the beach, find surfers riding too close to the pier, arrest them, load the boards into a lifeguard truck, and haul everybody and their boards to jail. This was a regular occurrence. You'd go to court, plead guilty, pay a $10 fine, pay another $10 to get your board out of the impound room, and wait for the cycle to repeat itself.

Cat and mouse games were legendary. In the '70s, a friend of mine and his buddy were caught too close to the pier and the full might of the Jax Beach police force was brought out. The two guys paddled for open ocean and were tracked in an hours-long standoff that lasted into the night. My buddy eventually came ashore a mile up the beach, hid in the riprap boulders, then made a break for the beach houses on 1st Street. Safe! Score one for the surfers. Johnny Fisher, another friend of mine, was apprehended by the police. Lifeguards were called to the scene and ordered to load Johnny's board into the truck. They refused, claiming it was not their responsibility and that our local Red Cross Volunteer lifeguard truck was not at the beck and call of the Jax Beach police. At which point 

 were arrested. That one actually went to court and the judge dropped the gavel on the police department in no uncertain terms. The police basically surrendered at that point and we could ride the pier (more or less) unhampered of all authority except fishing lures chucked at us, and the odd hammerhead thrown back into the surf.

By 1974, there were way more surfers of voting age and way more parents tired of paying the fines and dealing with the police hassling their kids. An uneasy truce if you will. My father was elected to the City Council. In 1976-ish, Brad Roland (Joe's brother) and I convinced my dad to sponsor legislation rescinding all anti-surfing laws along our beaches with the caveat that you had to wear a leash. It passed, the police fully surrendered, and surfing became a legitimate mainstream sport in north Florida.

JAX BEACH '64: YOU WIN THIS ONE, JOHNNY LAW!

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