LOS ANGELES (CN) — A lifelong surfer testified on his frightful encounter with hostile locals when, on an early morning in January 2016, he dared to test his skills at Southern California's premier big-wave break down the steep cliffs of the wealthy city of Palos Verdes Estates.
Cory Spencer took the stand Tuesday morning at a bench trial in downtown Los Angeles over his claim that Palos Verdes Estates violates California's Coastal Act by conspiring with the so-called Lunada Bay Boys, a collection of local surfers, to keep outsiders away from "their" waves by intimidation, threats and violence.
Spencer, a retired LA and El Segundo police officer, testified how he had long known about the perfect waves at Lunada Bay, but that concern about the locals' hostility toward outsiders has stopped him from going to the secluded beach at the Palos Verdes peninsula.
Nonetheless, during the 2016 surf season, when he knew there was going to be a large winter swell at Lunada, he teamed up with an acquaintance who had been to the bay before, as well as a man who knew jiu-jitsu and who they paid $100 to watch the car, and arrived before dawn at the bluffs overlooking the beach.
Immediately as they got out of their car in their wetsuits and carrying their boards, Spencer said under questioning from his attorney Kurt Franklin, a few locals appeared, asking "what the f... are you doing here?" and "why do you come to surf here?"
The taunting continued as they made their way down the "goat trail" that descends from the 100-foot high cliffs and onto the beach, with locals calling them "kooks," a derogatory term for novice surfers.
Once in the water, the waves didn't disappoint but the hostility only got worse, Spencer said.
"I was only in the water for a few minutes when I got the best wave of my life here in Southern California," he testified.
After he rode a second wave, however, one of the locals riding the next wave steered his surfing board directly at him while he was still paddling away, Spencer told the judge. He had to roll of his board to protect himself but the back of his wrist got cut by the other man's board, he said.
According to text messages by members of the Bay Boys cited in Spencer's lawsuit, the local surfers had gotten wind that his acquaintance, Chris Taloa, would be coming to surf at Lunada Bay that day and had planned their harassment.
"There are two kooks he's got a little baldheaded white guy with them he looks like a boogie board or to fuck [sic] what a joke!" according to one of the texts that referred to Spencer.
Some of the local surfers tried to prevent Taloa from riding any waves at all by circling closely around him as he was waiting in the water for a wave, Spencer testified.
When they were back on the bluff where there car was parked, he said, one of the Lunada Bay Boys confronted Taloa and asked him why he kept coming around.
"We're going to make it hard on you every time," the man, a former defendant in the case, said according to Spencer. "This is what we do. It's not going to get better for you."
Under cross-examination by Christopher Pisano, an attorney for Palos Verdes Estates, Spencer said he had spoken with some of the city's police who were on the bluff overlooking the beach.
He testified that he didn't ask them to arrest the surfer who ran him over or to file a criminal complaint.
Spencer is joined in the lawsuit by another surfer who claimed she was harassed by the locals when trying to surf at Lunada Bay as well as by the Coastal Protection Rangers, a nonprofit.
The claim Palos Verdes Estates, a city of about 13,000 people, has been reluctant to crack down on the Bay Boys, though some police chiefs, hired from outside the department, have tried. They say the city protects the Bay Boys as locals, but also appreciates the fact that the Bay Boys keep out tourists and dissuade outsiders from visiting their quiet beach town.
They say the city, in turning a blind eye to the Bay Boys' actions, which included building a "Rock Fort" on the beach to hang out, had illegally allowed unpermitted development on its property — both literally and figuratively.
A California Court of Appeals last year reinstated the lawsuit, finding that the city, as landowner, violated the Coastal Act by maintaining the unpermitted rock fort on its property for decades. As for the harassment, the court said that it may qualify as a development under the Coastal Act.
Follow @edpettersson
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