Commentary: Preserve blackball at Wedge but not at 44th St.

I remember my first surfboard.

It was a beat-up piece of brown foam and fiberglass.

The foam was exposed on the nose and on the tail, so calling it waterlogged would be an understatement.

I was 12 years old. Growing up surfing in Huntington Beach, I knew that the blackball flag was part of, well, growing up in Huntington Beach.

Summertime just meant that you couldn’t surf after 9:30 or 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., simply because there were too many swimmers in the water.

And when Labor Day came, that meant I could surf my favorite H.B. breaks again anytime I wanted.

Why? Fewer swimmers in the water.

Hard-board surfers and boogie boarders shared the waves. But we shared them with an understanding.

And that understanding is called etiquette, something about which I could write another 500 words.

Basically, surfing etiquette dictates who gets which waves. It also dictates how one is supposed to paddle out when someone else is riding the waves.

And if you didn’t follow that etiquette, then honestly, you’d get taught a lesson.

A natural pecking order was established in the water, and the soft-board surfers and us hard-board surfers co-existed just fine in Huntington Beach and on the North Shore of Oahu, where I lived during my years at the University of Hawaii. Somehow in college I lucked into living directly across the street from the infamous Pipeline.

There was no blackball flag there. Nope. Just green, yellow and red.

Did the very Democratic city and county officials in Honolulu even think of legislating who gets to surf and when? Ha! I would have loved to see them try to explain that to members of Da Hui O He’e Nalu, a so-called surf gang.

And when the waves got big there, it wasn’t the hard-board surfers who dominated the spot. It was boogie boarders who caught the biggest and scariest waves.

I bring all this up because of the latest attempts by our Republican-dominated Newport Beach City Council to regulate our waves, telling us who can surf and when.

The blackball flag is intended to protect the swimmers. So at the Wedge, honestly, I’m OK with keeping it. It’ll actually keep the stupid hard-board surfers from getting killed.

Even if I could, I wouldn’t take my 6-foot-1 out there on a 25-foot day, just as I wouldn’t on a 20-foot day at Pipe.

But some less experienced surfer might.

But between 40th to 44th streets? Yeah, that permanent blackball needs to go. After Labor Day, the beaches are empty.

Just take a look at 10 a.m. on any weekend after Labor Day and through October. Are there more people on the beach or swimmers in the water? The Newport Pier or 44th Street?

And yet I can surf at Blackies on my uncontrollable 9-foot-6. I cannot on my more maneuverable 6-foot-1 at 44th Street. Better chance I’ll run you over with that big board.

At the very minimum, remove the blackball flag at 44th Street after Labor Day instead of the end of October.

Newport Beach resident JACK WU is a columnist for the Orange County Register and a former Daily Pilot columnist.