A Virginia Beach surfing icon feels a wave of affection

VIRGINIA BEACH

Pete Smith isn't psyched. He's stoked.

What else would an old surfer be? At the moment, on Thursday morning, he's walking through a shop at Hilltop where a lot of his old surfing magazines, T-shirts, decals and stickers are laid out like it's the Smithsonian of surfing.

But really, until a few weeks ago, all this stuff was just Pete's "collection."

You mean, someone says, it was in Pete's garage?

Yeah, Pete says.

The surfing items will go on sale this afternoon at the Cavalier Beach and Cabana Club, followed by a silent auction of more than 150 vintage pieces tonight. The Virginia Beach Noblemen arranged the sale, and the take will go to help out Smith in retirement.

Smith, 70, is credited with fomenting the surfing culture that made Virginia Beach the East Coast hub of the sport. When he was 24, he and a friend opened Smith and Holland surf shop at the Oceanfront. Smith bought out his partner a few years later and set up Pete Smith's Surf Shop on 28th Street.

Smith had stashed the auction items in bins years ago and didn't even remember having some of them until he walked in Thursday. His hair is white now, but he showed up wearing the surfing clothes that he's

always sported: in this case, a T-shirt from the East Coast Surfing Championships, an event he helped start, loose pants and flip-flops.

"These are the guitars we had donated," Al Midgett, head of the Noblemen, gestured to Smith.

"Oh, yeah, I hadn't even seen these," Smith said. "Oh, man, look at that. Oh, man."

Midgett points to a door leaning against the wall. It has a well-worn frame and a handle smoothed by thousands of hands, its glass covered with stickers saying "Pete Smith's Surf Shop" and "Billabong" and "Wave Magnet," "Gotcha," "Mr. Zog's Sex Wax," "If it Swells, Ride it" and "Bubble Gum," a surfboard wax with a slogan that can't be printed.

"That's the original door into Pete Smith's Surf Shop," Midgett says.

Smith glances at the door and becomes extremely happy, elated, gyrated, in other words, stoked.

"Or 'Cowabunga!' " Smith says, "which I say a lot. I don't do it intentionally. A lot of people call me Captain Cowabunga."

Smith has a story for almost every one of the items, like a surf car oil painting that Mike Boyd, who later drew the Hang Ten feet, did for Mickey "Mongoose" Boyd. For some reason, Smith says, Boyd didn't like the painting and gave it to Smith.

"I had a VW Beetle, and it almost wouldn't fit into it," Smith remembers. "I couldn't put my head all the way back when I drove, but that was OK."

Or the giant sea turtle shell that used to hang on the wall of the surf shop. Smith got that in Puerto Rico - after a restaurant had used it for meat - for $12 in 1968. He taped a couple of bottles of rum inside the shell and carried it onto the plane to get it home.

"That's the best $12 I ever spent," Smith says.

There are cloth Hobie patches, old surfing magazines, an original poster and flier for John Severson's 1960 film, "Surf Fever."

Then there's a piece of functional art, with sea shells embedded in it. "The toilet seat," Smith says, "which I have actually seated upon."

Lon Wagner, (757) 446-2341, lon.wagner@pilotonline.com