While the return of Frankenstein’s POTUS was going on in Washington DC last week, with that delightful chappie pardoning traitors and cop-bashers and blaming everyone else for everything, including the LA fire department for incompetence in allowing the fires to happen, real people on the ground were revealing stories which illustrate the devastating human toll of this disaster.
On a personal level, one of my closest friends who has lived in Pacific Palisades for more than 30 years returned to his home (still standing) to begin the heartbreaking work of cleaning up the ash-ruined interior. I asked in a text how he was coping with the devastation:
“Overwhelming sadness. But in situations like this something strange happens. Brain fog. This is the third time I’ve had it. 9/11 and the days after it, January 6 when the morons stormed the Capitol, and now. It deadens your feelings and you just go through the motions without really taking things in. I’m sitting at my kitchen table writing this and the silence is deafening. No traffic, no bird calls, just the odd police chopper going over.
“This morning I walked Ollie [family dog] around the neighbourhood and we were the only ones on the streets. The only vehicles I saw were LAPD black and whites. I’m only now making sense that everything is gone in our village and that thriving community will never be the same.”
Meanwhile writer Peter Maguire, best known for his book Thai Stick, who lives in Australia these days but grew up in the Palisades and Malibu, tracked down three of the Palisades/Malibu elders of the surf/skate tribe. He wrote: “Jim Ganzer, Lance Carson, and George Trafton lost everything in the fire and are now homeless. Ganzer’s rancho up Los Flores Canyon burned to the ground along with his art and surfboard collection. When I spoke to him two days ago, Ganzer did not talk about what insurance would cover, rebuilding, or his loss. Instead, he apologised for letting ‘Old Yeller’, my favourite Robbie Dick longboard that I kept at his house, burn.”
Jim Ganzer is probably best known as the founder of surfwear brand Jimmy Z, but he is also an artist of note, a surf pioneer (Costa Rica) and a sometime Hollywood actor who was the real-life inspiration for the character of The Dude in the Cohen brothers Big Lebowski. Maguire says that Ganzer was saying “the Dude abideth” when Jeff Bridges was still in nappies.
Most surfers of a certain age will know the name Lance Carson as well as they know Midget Farrelly’s. Alongside Miki Dora, he was the true style master at Malibu in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and provided the inspiration for the “Lance” character (“Charlie don’t surf”) in Apocalypse Now and “Matt Johnson” in Big Wednesday, both made by his friend and Malibu beach-mate John Milius. He has also been a much-in-demand surfboard shaper for more than 50 years.
George Trafton might be one you’ve missed but the son of NFL hall-of-famer George “The Brute” Trafton was the best skateboarder on the roaring hills of the Palisades at least a decade before Dogtown. A true renaissance man, George shunned surf competition but became one of California’s best-known underground surfers, doing long stints of lonely tube time at Scorpion Bay and The Ranch when not surfing the ‘Bu. He was also the scorching lead guitarist in Malibu surf band Blue Juice.
George was found staggering along Pacific Coast Highway with severe burns to most of his body early in the morning not far from his burnt-out cottage. He remains at UCLA Medical Center undergoing skin grafts. Jimmy Z and Lance Carson were physically unscathed, but both are still coming to terms with losing their homes of half a century along with all their possessions.
Peter Maguire, who has set up a fund to help the trio, wrote: “In many ways, Ganzer, Trafton, and Carson defined what their old friend H2O Magazine publisher Marty Sugarman, best described as Southern California’s ‘Waterfront Culture.’ While money came and went, properties were bought and sold, Ganzer, Carson, and Trafton were Dionysian men of action. For better or worse, they chose sensual action and experience-filled lives over material ones. None of them have Santa Barbara beach houses, Sun Valley ski houses, much less White Lotus-like resorts they can retreat to. They will now have to start over.”
For more information on helping out these iconic fire victims visit Pete Maguire’s faintingrobin.org
Finally, as I write this Cr Tom Wegener informs me that young California film-maker and entrepreneur Justin Misch (Spoons and the remastered Morning Of The Earth) also lost everything in the Palisades fires. Just a few weeks ago, when Justin and his wife Lauren were holidaying in Noosa, we all sat in a park by the river drinking wine and making plans. Justin texted: “It’s been a humbling reminder of impermanence. Thankfully Lauren and I and our puppy are safe and healthy. We have each other and our beautiful memories.”
FOOTNOTE: By the time you read this the WSL 2025 season should be underway with the Lexus Pipe Pro. As I write the forecast is not great and the event will be minus two of its best Pipe performers in Gabby Medina (injured) and reigning world champ John John Florence (taking a year off). But trust me, fresh out of my Big Bash addiction, I’ll be watching every wave.
