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ALL ABOARD: Perlee's shop promotes
surfing in Washington state.
Courtesy The Surf Shop |
Al Perlee may be the dean
of Northwest surfing. From his perch in Westport, Wash.,
a fishing village with 2,137 people and 18 miles of
beach, Perlee has surfed for 26 years. For the past
17, he’s owned one of the state’s earliest
businesses devoted to the sport, The Surf Shop.
He came to the area on a whim, after hearing Delta
Tau Delta fraternity brother Mike Carrigan, ’70,
describe it. It was a fortuitous location for a man
who first rode a surfboard at age 9. “It happens
to be the most consistent surf break on the Washington
coast,” Perlee says. “It was like a gift
from God.” The surfing is comparable to any hot
spot on the West Coast, although, he concedes, “It’s
windy here a lot. It’s cold.”
For several years after graduation, Perlee made Santa
Cruz, Calif., his home base, always returning to it
after months on the road working, traveling and surfing.
At first, it was the ideal place, with rents running
just $150 a month. Then, when rents inched to what he
thought was the stratosphere—$350 a month!—he
made his exit.
“There are those who say I was a nomad,”
Perlee says. “I bounced around the West Coast—San
Diego, Santa Cruz, Alaska.” His initial weeks
in Washington were inauspicious. “For the first
two weeks, it rained every day, hard. Then one day,
it just lifted up. I drove to the jetty and there were
these perfect waves.”
Perlee—who played defensive line for the Stanford
football team, including two Rose Bowl-winning years—learned
to surf during a classic California childhood. His family
split their time between their home near Los Angeles
and Huntington Beach, where his father rented a trailer
that sat on sand. His father, also named Al, was—and
remains—a devoted waterman who passed on his love
of the ocean to his son.
In turn, Perlee passed on that passion to his own children.
Dane, 25, is an internationally known longboard surfer,
and Hana, 21, is a former junior women’s champion.
The Surf Shop, run by Perlee and his wife, Kathy, is
crowded with gear and heated by woodstove. A sign at
the door asks patrons to leave their dripping wetsuits
outside. As a gathering place, the store has influenced
the region’s young athletes, who previously considered
only traditional sports like baseball. “There
was a vast experience here waiting to be tapped by the
local community,” Perlee says. “Since the
day it opened, it’s been a blessing . . . it’s
a vessel. What’s inside here is the spirit of
the people who come through the door.”
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