Greg Deets - A Natural Water Brother
photos courtesy of Greg Deets
by Greg Deets
posted 2005-03-15

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I sometimes wonder if Greg Deets is of this world. I almost think he belongs in the oceans of the earth swimming with the creatures that go the fastest and exploring the aqueous areas that mere mortals can't get to. If ever there was a natural water brother then this guy is it. One of the Wedge-Men who pioneered a new era and way of riding the warping, sand-sucking, ass thumping monster that exists in Newport Beach on South Swells, Deets rides the spot as though he invented it. Many of his followers swear he did. He has surfed big Pipe and Lunada Bay on his chest. He takes incredible photos, studies the lineage of fish, raises amazing Dahlia's and loves to surf on anything and everything.

Greg Deets walks, talks, and hangs out on the ragged edge of an artificial reef he calls home, making him the unheralded king of the Shitpipe in LA. He is the hero to many a military man as he makes bar none the finest power swim fin on the face of the earth, The UDT. And if you're not smart enough to figure that out, it means Underwater Demolition Team and that spells Frogman as in SEAL. His fins are in high demand the world over.

Greg runs fast these days and is very busy with everything from hybridizing Dahlia's, to studying and testing water quality, to maintaining the UDT fins he has religiously resurrected from the dead. He surfs daily on everything from his Neumatic "Triscuit" mats, to Toby Quads, and of course his amazing ability to bodysurf. Deets must have gills for as much time as he spends in the ocean. Here, in his own words (and a few of his admirers), is how this human BS (Body Surfing) Seal has seen it all from out in the line-up because that is usually where you'll find him.
- KM

Diversification - A Segue to Resurrection

Holy mother of God, has it really been this long? I sit here typing up part of this invited interview, trying to find a way to make a semi-relevant watered-down autobiography of my life half-way interesting to the web-addicted out there in cyberburbia, and I realize... Christ almighty, I am in my 38th year of wave riding!!

I started at the age of 11 down in the then often empty waves of 40th Street El Porto, having absolutely no idea where that first wave bodysurfed straight in to shore with one shoe-fin (Cressi-Rondine dive fin) would inevitably lead. But for now, it will suffice to say, that the defining moment took me much further than the shoreline and it seems I haven't pulled out of that foamer yet. It magically seems to keep reforming.

Funny, I'm not sure how to kick off an autobiography concentrating on bodysurfing, fins, and other wave riding methods. In any case, it begins in the summer of 1969; I think... how's that Brian Eno song go again...

The passage of time
Is flicking dimly up on the screen
I can't see the lines
I used to think I could read between

And we're pulling out of the summer of love era and into glitter.

The AM radios all over the beach nearly create a stereo-effect as one cannot escape the constant barrage of KHJ blasting Crystal Blue Persuasion (which I immediately associated with my ocean love and life). I have an incredible love for bodysurfing. The feeling of the waves, the swimming, the sun, the sunsets, the organisms...I like the various weird marine invertebrates. One thing i really liked to do was to fill my mouth up with sand crabs and run up on the beach where our little group of guys and gals hung out and just lay next to one of the girls and open my mouth and have all the sand crabs come wiggling' out!! God, they would scream and run. Yeah! The girls just couldn't get enough of me...

As I matured, less sand crab events happened. Then my first pair of green Churchill's came. A gift from my now deceased parents on Christmas morning when I was 15. It was obvious that some vector, if not the vector, in my life was set. The summer of 1972 found me completely obsessed. 16 years old, long hair, blasting Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and really becoming a bit wild and socially unacceptable. My bodysurfing ability exponentially leaped that summer for one or two reasons... or both.

One reason is sort of funny, well at least with hindsight it is. My friends Hugh Berenger, Sick, Troy Atkeson, Paul Koppleman, Mike Parks, Tuna - the gay mahoney, Cumson, Greg Lappen and I would often get to the beach just before sunrise to get the morning glass. It was in these early hours a few older men of very questionable sexual affiliation would come over to us and sit by our towels and talk to us with their eyes glazed over!!! We knew something was not right and scary so we would flip on our fins and tear out into the water bodysurfing or kneeboarding. We would stay out for hours and hours and hours and hours until they finally shimmied away... we became very strong swimmers and good wave riders since we were too scared to go back on land!!!

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