The San Diego Evening Tribune ran this article on June 21, 1965. Later that year, writer Tom Wolfe arrived in La Jolla to research his "Pump House Gang" essay (read 

), based in part on local surfers associated with the Mac Meda Destruction Company, described by Wolfe as an "underground society." It wasn't underground so much as it was amorphous—Mac Meda organization didn't extend much beyond making stenciled-logo T-shirts—but local authorities, as this article shows, were concerned nonetheless. The version below has been slightly edited and reformatted. Click 

 for a look back at what Mac Meda actually was, and was not.

The Mac Meda Destruction Co. sounds like a joke, started as a joke, thrived as a joke and ended up like a joke.

Some of the teen-age, members of this loosely organized group boast the motto, “Drinking Destruction and Sex”.

Here’s the joke punch line, written Jan 10: On that day, beer flowed freely among the young Mac Meda crowd – nearly 200 of them minors – at a secluded grazing pasture of Carmel Valley, just north of the San Diego City limits.

Fifty police cars raided the teen-aged car caravan “beer blast”. Four youths were arrested on charges of possession of alcoholic beverages and will be tried on March 2 in a North Country Municipal Court, Oceanside.

A juvenile arrested in the raid told one officer the Mac Meda Destruction Co. members are “foot soldiers for the Hells Angles," a motorcycle band operating out of Los Angeles.

Since that day, no one is laughing. Police and school authorities are voicing concern. Dr. Richmond Barbour, San Diego city school chief counselor, said, teen-aged organizations such as the Mac Meda Destruction Co. breed nothing but trouble. Barbour claimed many teen-aged organizations, which supposedly start out harmlessly wind up with potentially serious repercussions.

“The real problem is with law enforcement,” Dr. Barbour said. “Citizens have to help police and sign complaints against the offenders. Then, the courts have to back up law enforcement agencies and get convictions."

Police said in the three years that the organization has functioned; only one citizen has inquired about Mac Meda. No complaints have been filed.

Bob Flood, San Diego police juvenile investigator, said one member told him initiation to the group required, “tossing a cherry bomb into a police car, and knocking over mailboxes.

Don Fields, a sheriff deputy juvenile investigator for the North Coast areas, said one member told him the group dresses in dirty old sweatshirts, sports beards, and are generally scroungy-looking. Last spring, large crude-letter signs advertising the Mac Meda Destruction Co. were scrawled on Madison High School building walls.

The membership cult spreads from Tijuana to Malibu, according to the teenagers themselves. “Nearly every kid in La Jolla and Pacific Beach is or has been a member of the Mac Meda,” one investigator said. Originators of the Mac Meda Destruction Co. boast about chapters from Costa Rica to San Francisco, and from Aspen to Australia.

The Mac Meda Destruction Co. is not organized in the sense of electing officers and holding meetings, according to the police and school authorities.

John Snyder, assistant principal of Madison High School, said membership apparently is obtained by stenciling the name of the group on the backside of a class schedule card cut into two-inch squares by pinking shears.

However, word of the Mac Meda function can spread like wildfire through any number of communication pipelines. For example, the Jan 10 beer party in Carmel Valley originally was advertised by a sign in a Pacific Beach beer tavern.

Jack McPherson, a mailman for the La Jolla Post Office, said the butt of the “joke” was from his formal roommate, a fisherman called Albert MacMeda.

“Albert, who is about 5-foot-4 and 190 pounds, is sort of a clumsy. You know how some people are always spilling drinks or breaking glasses at parties,” MacPherson said.

Friends called Albert the “Mac Meda Destruction Co.” MacMeda is an extrovert; “kind of a fanatic about spreading his name around” his friend said.

The original Mac Meda expanded its “membership” by stenciling the name on T-shirts.

MacPherson said the last time he heard from Mac Meda was during the summer when the fisherman was in Costa Rica. McPherson also said he “couldn’t care less” the way teenagers have adopted members but says what they do is their business.

Police evaluation of the teenager organization, meanwhile, is twofold.

Lt Robert Randle of the sheriff’s office regards the group as a “serious potential threat to the community.” However, he regards membership as “mostly talk.”

San Diego police crime reports fail to pin any form of teenage “drinking, destruction and sex” on Mac Meda as an organized gang.

School authorities regard Mac Meda membership as “curious.” Cy Harris, boys vice principal of La Jolla High School, said, “I don’t like it. The entire thing is a bad attitude, but really there is nothing much you can do about it."

"MAC MEDA DESTRUCTION CO. A JOKE? AUTHORITIES DON'T FIND TEEN GROUP FUNNY"

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos