{"id":426621,"date":"2026-08-07T17:54:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/426621\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T17:54:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:54:24","slug":"how-san-diegos-first-and-only-surfing-coordinator-brought-stairs-to-garbage-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/426621\/","title":{"rendered":"How San Diego\u2019s first and only ‘surfing coordinator’ brought stairs to Garbage Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Ladera Street stairs. (Photo by Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Diego City built a staircase at Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Ladera Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 from Kathy Blavatt\u2019s San Diego\u2019s Sunset Cliffs Park: A History, written for the Ocean Beach Historical Society<\/p>\n

There are other entry points to the beach below Sunset Cliffs, but none of them are as easy to navigate as the Ladera Street Stairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people use them every week. Families come to check out the tidepools, bringing young kids and old folks who might have trouble otherwise. And of course, there are the surfers, who use them to reach the break at Garbage Beach.<\/p>\n

There is no mention of Doug Smith in Blavatt\u2019s account of those stairs. And even after Adam Bloomberg and the Garbage Beach Surf Club held an event on March 29th of this year to honor Smith\u2019s contribution to the stairs\u2019 creation, you could be forgiven for never having heard of him. They intentionally kept publicity to a minimum, handing out only a few fliers to the regular Cliffs crew in order to reduce crowds and allow easy access for Smith and his friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had advertised, it really would have been out of control,\u201d said Bloomberg. (I learned about it from local surfer Richard Aguirre while I was out riding my bike.)<\/p>\n

The sun had yet to break through the Sunday-morning marine layer as a group of thirty or so cheerful surf enthusiasts spanning three generations gathered by the stairs. Small, surfable waves could be heard crashing below while seagulls cawed above. A man named Smitty, 76 and a longtime friend of Smith\u2019s, told me that before the stairs went in, it was hard getting down the cliff. \u201cYou\u2019d have to hand someone your board and hang onto a rope,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had big heavy boards back then.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The stairs were in place by the time event organizer Bloomberg arrived from South Africa in the early \u201880s, but that doesn\u2019t mean things were easy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Smith and Bloomberg. (Photo by Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first got here, it was rough,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know \u2014 it was really local\u2026 so you kinda had to earn your way in. But Doug was nice to me when other people weren\u2019t. He invited me to his house to watch some fights with his kid and all the younger generations. And then, I surfed with him over the years and we got to know each other. Eventually, somebody told me along the way over the years that he was responsible for the stairs at Garbage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recently, Smith pulled up at the bench above the stairs, and Bloomberg turned to some of the locals hanging out at the spot and asked if they knew who Smith was. They didn\u2019t. Bloomberg thought, \u201cMan, while he\u2019s alive, he should get the recognition. That piece of history should be kept, for sure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When his kid heard the story, he said, \u201cHey dad, you just unlocked something! Nobody ever heard that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We lived a lot on clam chowder\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Doug Smith holding a sign advertising the event celebrating his life and depicting Smith\u2019s stairs. (Photo by Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Doug Smith was born in Ocean Beach on St. Patrick\u2019s Day: March 17th, 1935. Already, his family had been in the neighborhood for three generations. His grandmother owned a horse stable where the 7-11 on Bacon and Voltaire sits today, just blocks from the beach. As for Smith, \u201cWe lived on Long Branch on the 4800 block, and then we got a one-bedroom beach bungalow on the 5000 block. There were seven of us living there. Cars couldn\u2019t get out into the sand; that was the beginning of the beach. But now it\u2019s homes and a parking lot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A large tidepool would often form at the end of Long Branch, and young Doug would collect pismo clams there. \u201cI could look at the sand and tell the spots where they were. I got pretty good at it. Luckily, that helped us survive through the times, because a war [WW2] was going on then, and things were expensive. So we lived a lot on clam chowder.\u201d <\/p>\n

He remembers the Navy firing artillery from PB Point down the shoreline past Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, and Ocean Beach. \u201cYou could see tracers at night, and all the explosions in the sky. A plane would pull a sleeve that was about 15 or 18 feet long, and they would fire at the sleeve. I often thought, \u2018Gee, that\u2019s kind of risky for the pilot!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Down below, Doug took up surfing. \u201cI didn\u2019t get any assistance from anybody. I came from a big family, and I never owned a board. I always was using somebody else\u2019s surfboard\u2026a lot of friends had boards, they were always willing to share, and so that was my opportunity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A self described \u201cbeach nut,\u201d he happily recalls his years with OB lifeguard legend Mouse<\/a>: \u201cAll the diving we did for abalone, lobster, surfing. Yeah it was a good life. Just a clean, good, fun life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He became an OB lifeguard himself, working from 1954 until 1975. \u201cI worked with a really good crew, and a bunch of really great guys, good camaraderie. I loved the life, and if I were to start all over again, I would become a lifeguard again. I love the outdoors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Smith as a lifeguard. (Photo courtesy Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very professional and really kind of a rewarding feeling to be a part of it all. I gave lectures in the local high schools on rip currents and ocean safety. They\u2019d come down and surf as part of their PE class. I developed the inter-high school surfing competition,\u201d which still takes place today, along with a surfing safety school for kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But his biggest contribution to local surf culture is the stairs.<\/p>\n

Good surf, poor access<\/p>\n

At the ceremony, a few old friends told stories of the old days, and offered expressions of gratitude to the guest of honor. Then Doug Smith, 91 years old, adorned with a luau and a kukui-nut necklace, stepped confidently up onto the bench and delivered a brief speech.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Doug Smith giving a speech. (Photo by Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019ll first say that San Diego has some of the finest surf in the whole coast of California,\u201d Smith began. \u201cSome of the other cities have surf, but one thing that\u2019s unique about the surf here at Sunset Cliffs is that it\u2019s all reef break. Of course, reefs create the size of the surf, and also create the shape of the surf. And that\u2019s what makes the surf in San Diego so unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the \u201860s, San Diego had good surf but poor access. \u201cA lot of surfers cut their own trails, and they were really, truly very dangerous. I was a lifeguard, and a position came up known as the \u2018Surfing Coordinator.\u2019 I put my name in for that and I got the position\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sitting at my desk one day, and thought about the uniqueness of this area right here, where we have two breaks side by side \u2014 one for the goofy foot going left, and one for the other break, for surfers going to the right, known as a regular foot. Being a city Surfing Coordinator, I sat down, took a piece of paper and a pen, and I wrote up a requisition to request the city to put in a set of stairs. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t very long before I received a notice from one of the secretaries at the clerk\u2019s office that it was accepted, and I was very grateful for that. It was such a shame, again, to think that we had all this great surf here and really no safe way to go down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A photo showing Doug Smith as surfing coordinator, wearing a tie with a group of surfers on the beach. (Photo courtesy Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Five years later, the position of Surfing Coordinator was dissolved due to lack of funding, and Smith went back to lifeguard work. But the position\u2019s first and only occupant had done what he set out to do. \u201cThey got going with the project, and they amazed me how fast they did that,\u201d especially given the site\u2019s tricky topography and composition. \u201cThanks to the city of San Diego,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Ladera Street stairs. (Photo by Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

The crowd, however, was there to thank the man who got it all started. They applauded and cheered for Smith, who was flabbergasted at the turnout. \u201cSo I\u2026 uh, gosh, I\u2019m just, I\u2019m overwhelmed, I\u2019m just overwhelmed. I would like to thank the brothers of the Sunset Cliffs Surfing Association for making this possible. I feel like I don\u2019t deserve this. Thank you all for being here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I left, I thanked Doug again for his efforts to get stairs put in at my favorite place to surf. We shook hands and he wrapped both his hands around mine. With a big, heartfelt smile, he looked me in the eyes and said, \u201cKeep surfing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ladera Street stairs. (Photo by Shona Neufeld\/Times of San Diego) \u201cSan Diego City built a staircase at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[135649,170003,74,76,75,58851,90492,13006,170004],"class_list":["post-426621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-doug-smith","tag-ladera-street-stairs","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sunset-cliffs","tag-surfers","tag-surfing","tag-surfing-coordinator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426621","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=426621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}