New Traditionalists
It’s Friday evening and an impromptu party is in the works in the typically quiet beachside village of Playa La Saladita. Though it’s after 10 p.m., the sun only just sank below the horizon, the lack of light pushing a portion of the small-but-growing assembly inside a modest three-bedroom beachfront house, where The Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” is audible over clinking bottles of Mexican lager, the revelry of card games, conversations revolving around shared travel experiences—“Where’d you fly in from? When did you get in? How long are you staying?”—and dinner machinations for subsequent hours.
As the group swells, filling the small living room and dining area, the gathering spills to the front porch and onto the sand. I join Kevin Skvarna and Noah Cardoza, two Southern California longboarders based in San Juan Capistrano and Dana Point, respectively, on the house’s front steps.
“It’s funny, every year we come down here, this house—I mean, whatever house our crew is in—ends up being the gathering place,” Cardoza says. This year, it’s an adobe style bungalow that has become known as “The San O House” among those gathered in Saladita for the Mexi Log Fest. The house has been so dubbed, due in large part to the tight-knit group of surfers renting the place—a group that frequents the longboard-favoring breaks of San Onofre State Beach. “I think it has a lot to do with the vibe of San O,” Cordoza continues. “It’s the original gathering place; the birthplace of the beach hang.”
Cardoza, along with his twin brother, Ben, who is here as well, is a month shy of 25. Skvarna will be 21 the day after the contest ends. Yet, they could be considered grizzled vets of both the Mexi Log and the broader classic log contest circuit—an emerging, loosely affiliated slate of international gatherings promoting classic surfing atop long, heavy, single-fin equipment, sans leg rope.
Noah got
