photos of the 1938 event<\/a>.<\/p>\nThere were no waves, at least on the first day of the event, but as the caption on one of his photos of the event noted, it was \u201ca good day for paddling,\u201d and they made do with surfboard and paddleboard races and other events. And with major press coverage by the Los Angeles Times and the Long Beach Press Telegram, the event drew crowds!<\/p>\n
Congratulations to the sponsors of the historic designation, the San Diego-based nonprofit Sea of Clouds, and the Surfrider Foundation, Long Beach Chapter.<\/p>\n
\tDiscover more from i L i n d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I learned this week that the State of California has now officially designated the site of the First…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-349686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ilind.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_8412.jpeg\")
<\/a>My dad, then a 23-year old active in the Long Beach Junior Chamber of Commerce, was one of the key organizers of the 1938 event. He learned to surf while a junior lifeguard in Long Beach. At the end of his life, he told me he had never been a good surfer. But he was an excellent and enthusiastic organizer who pulled together the Long Beach Surf Club and then drew the Junior Chamber into sponsoring a forward-looking First National Surfing Championship held in Long Beach in November and December 1938. <\/p>\n