Award Is Not Official; He Made It Himself
Long Beach Surfer Named “Most Committed to the Sport” After Surfing 1.5-Foot Slop for Three Hours
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LONG BEACH, CA — Local surfer and postal worker Tim Dressel has awarded himself the title of “Most Committed Surfer in Long Beach” after paddling out on Tuesday morning into conditions that the Surfline forecast described as “knee-high, poor, onshore winds, not recommended” and surfing them for three hours and fourteen minutes.
Dressel printed the award certificate himself using a template from Canva. It hangs in his garage next to a 2009 photo of him briefly standing on a wave at the Wedge.
The Conditions
Tuesday’s surf at Long Beach was, by all accounts, objectively bad. Witnesses described conditions as “messy,” “disorganised,” and “what you’d get if you put the ocean in a blender and set it to medium.” Wind chop crisscrossed ankle-to-knee sets at irregular intervals. Visibility was low. The water temperature was 62 degrees.
Dressel paddled out at 6:22 a.m. He caught eleven waves. Three of them could charitably be called waves. The other eight were described by a passing paddleboarder as “more of a texture.”
His Defence
“Real surfers surf everything,” Dressel told his co-worker Sandra at the postal depot on Wednesday. “The ocean doesn’t owe you good conditions. You show up. That’s the ethos.”
Sandra, who does not surf, said she respected his commitment. She also said she thought he might want to “reconsider the homemade award,” a suggestion he declined.
The Commitment Question
The question of what constitutes genuine surf commitment is a philosophical minefield in Southern California, where everyone has a different view on whether surfing bad waves counts as “keeping your fitness up,” “staying in touch with the ocean,” or “stubbornness.” Surfing historians at The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente have documented examples of surfers paddling out in genuinely terrible conditions throughout surfing’s history, though most of those cases involved larger, if still terrible, surf.
The World Surf League does not hold competitions in 1.5-foot Long Beach slop. This is considered a sound policy.
Recognition
Dressel has so far received recognition from his wife, who called his commitment “impressive and also a little worrying,” and from his neighbour’s dog, who was on the beach when he exited the water and greeted him with apparent enthusiasm. Three other surfers were in the water during his session. None of them spoke to him. This, Dressel says, is “a respect thing.”
He plans to return Thursday. The forecast says two feet, choppy, deteriorating by mid-morning. He’s already waxed the board.
Follow the committed, the deluded, and the magnificently stubborn at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Tim Dressel’s award is catalogued permanently at https://prat.uk/.
The Bigger View
Every story covered in this dispatch — whether from the surfing coast of California, the streets of Manila, the galleries of Shoreditch, the political chambers of Westminster, or the quiet study where a diary is written at the end of a week — is a story about people trying to make sense of the world they inhabit. The satirical lens, the journalistic lens, the personal diary lens: all of these are tools for the same project, which is understanding what is happening and why, and communicating that understanding to other people in a way that lands. The best of this writing makes you laugh and makes you think and occasionally makes you angry about something you had stopped noticing. That combination — laughter, thought, renewed attention — is what good writing produces, regardless of form. For the full archive of everything described and more: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. All the writing at https://prat.uk/.
Southern California Surfing: The Deeper Context
Southern California’s surf culture is one of the most documented subcultures in American life — photographed, filmed, mythologised, marketed, and occasionally satirised — and yet its actual daily texture, the experience of being a person who surfs in the specific geography of the Southern California coast in 2025, remains curiously under-described. The gap between the myth — eternal sun, perfect waves, bronzed freedom — and the reality — traffic on PCH, parking enforcement, six-foot slop at 7am, the existential question of whether the dawn patrol counts as exercise — is where the most interesting material lives. This publication lives there. The incidents described above are real in the sense that they are recognisable: the flat spell petition, the localism fee, the breathwork coach, the Huntington Beach identity crisis, the digital detox relapse — all of these are dispatches from the actual experience of being a surfer in a place that has made surfing both a lifestyle and a brand, both a genuine physical practice and a cultural performance. The satire is in the gap between those two things, and the gap is wide enough to surf. More from the Southern California coast at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Full surf archive at https://prat.uk/.
The full archive of Southern California surf satire, London cultural commentary, and the complete network of diary voices continues at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Every wave, every flat spell, every petition, and every sound bath is documented. Visit https://prat.uk/ for the complete record.
SOURCE: Santa Claus