Encinitas: Our History and People

S T O N E
S T E P S
I N V I T A T I O N A L S U R F I N G C O N T E S T
If you grew up and lived in Encinitas from 1967 to 1979, the Stone Steps
Invitational Surfing Contest was an event that you just didn’t want to miss.
It was the Woodstock of Encinitas—Music—Beer—Big crowds—
There was just nothing else like it.
If you hadn’t seen a local Encinitas friend or two for a while, you were
guaranteed to run across them here, on this day. If you didn’t, it was
because they were either in the hospital, in jail, or had died.
The contest was a huge, challenging event to organize and set up. It
was not sanctioned by the State of California, which had jurisdiction
over beach access, making it illegal, and therefore had to be set up in
secret under the cover-of-darkness the night before the event.
Everything had to be walked down the stairs—all 100 kegs of beer.
The band stage had to be carried down, along with the speakers and
everything else it would take to put on the party.
The rules of the contest were simple: When the starting gun goes off
signaling the beginning of your heat, you have to guzzle a resin bucket
full of beer—then go surf. The winner of the heat goes on to drink more
beer and surf more heats, until finally, from the last group standing—
and that can still surf, a “winner” is selected.
Encinitas historian and Stone Steps contest organizer John Peugh sums
it up quite nicely when he says, “This thing was started purely to have fun.
It wasn’t about who won, or if it was, you wouldn’t be drinking all that beer
before you went out into the water!”
G
Top, right and bottom: The Stone
Steps surfing contest gained
popularity in the 1960s as interest
in surfing exploded.
1975 - PHOTO BY KYLE THOMAS
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