Of course skimboarding started in Laguna Beach. What else do you do with a shore break?
You can Google it if you want but yeah: Laguna in the 1920s, a couple of bored lifeguards made the first skimboard. Now we have a global phenomenon.
The skim community is unique. It’s like a fun, rambunctious family with distant cousins spread out in Japan, Chile, Australia, Portugal, Philippines, Spain and Mexico.
Every year they come together for the Victoria World Championship of Skimboarding, aka “The Vic,” at Aliso Beach. This year the competition will be held Aug. 28-29, 2021. For a list of winners, visit the Vic site.
When you go, there are champions everywhere.
Former world champion George Bryan of Laguna, who now focuses his time on filming the sport, said at a past event that the sport’s camaraderie is an outgrowth of its difficulty.
“It’s so hard to do that everyone who is into it is willing to give their time,” he said. “Almost everyone has a mentor who took them under their wing. It’s easy to give a little advice and make people a lot better.”
If you didn’t know it, you would not believe this was a full-throttled competition.
It’s obvious that skimming is more closely aligned to the skateboarding community than surfing has been. If you have ever been to a skateboarding competition, then you know.
It’s not as if the skim contestants don’t care about winning – they do. It’s just, well, different.
This is not like traditional team sports with overzealous parents shouting obscenities from the stands. More likely, there is a competitor who is board clapping another’s ride because it was so awesome.
Make no mistake: Skimboarding is tough – in a strategic, athletic, yoga kind of way.
If you think about it, in one fluid motion it combines earth, water and sky like some ultimate Greek sport.
It takes endurance, anticipation and enormous creativity and courage.
It also takes extended families that are supportive and open. They bring tents, lawn chairs, coolers and coconut water.
They realize that it’s more than just the sport; it’s the community.
Zach Platt can barely use his arms, but that doesn’t stop him from skimboarding. In an explicable display of finesse, determination and years of practice, Platt manages to use his feet to push a skimboard down the sand, then hurl himself onto the board and into a wave. Read his story.
