There's a parking lot at the end of 45th Street in Manhattan Beach where the surfers park before dawn. It's a small lot — maybe forty spots — and it fills up fast once the sun comes up. But at 6:15 on a Tuesday morning in February, there are eight cars. You can tell who's already in the water by the wet footprints on the asphalt leading from the trunks to the sand.
This is El Porto. If you've surfed in LA, you know it. If you haven't, here's what you need to know: it's a beach break next to a power plant, the water is colder than the rest of the South Bay because of the Hyperion outflow, and the waves are surprisingly consistent for a spot that's basically in the shadow of LAX. It is not a beautiful beach. The power plant stacks loom over everything. The sand is coarse. On certain days, the water has a greenish tint that doesn't inspire confidence.
I surf here three or four mornings a week, and I think it might be the best hour available in Los Angeles.
The window
The window I'm talking about is roughly 6:00 to 7:30 AM. Earlier than that and it's too dark to read the waves well. Later than that and the morning onshore starts to come in, the crowd thickens, and the texture of the whole experience changes.
During that window, El Porto is a different place. The surface of the water is glass — actually smooth, not just "kind of calm." You can see the swells coming from a long way out. They stand up over the sandbar, pitch forward, and break with a clean face that holds for three or four seconds. The rides aren't long. This isn't Malibu. But they're honest, and the paddle back out takes thirty seconds, not five minutes.
On a good morning, you'll catch fifteen waves in an hour. On a great morning — mid-winter, when the west swell is running and the Santa Anas have flattened everything — you'll catch twenty-five and not want to get out.
Why this spot
People who don't surf in LA assume you have to drive to Malibu or Ventura to get decent waves. And sure, those spots are better on paper. But the drive to County Line is an hour each way in traffic. Rincon is ninety minutes. By the time you get there, surf, change, and drive back, you've burned half a day.
El Porto is fifteen minutes from most of the Westside. You can be in the water by 6:15, out by 7:30, showered and at your desk by 8:30. It fits inside a normal life. That's not a small thing. The best wave in the world is the one you can actually surf on a Tuesday.
The other thing about El Porto is the crowd. Or rather, the lack of one at that hour. The dawn patrol regulars are mostly locals — guys in their forties and fifties who've been surfing this spot for decades, plus a handful of younger people who figured out the same math I did. There's a mutual respect that comes from seeing the same faces at the same hour. Nobody's dropping in on anybody. Nobody's hooting or whistling. You paddle, you catch waves, you nod at the guy next to you in the lineup. That's it.
What the hour does
I've tried to explain this to people who don't surf, and it never translates well. But I'll try.
When you're sitting in the water at 6:30 AM, waiting for a set, everything else stops. Not in a meditation-app way. Not in a "be present" way. In a literal, mechanical way. Your phone is in your car. Your email is in your car. Your calendar is in your car. There is nothing to do except watch the horizon and paddle when the water starts to move.
Your body is cold. Your arms are tired. The sky is turning orange over the Palos Verdes hills to the south. A pelican flies past at eye level. You are not thinking about anything productive. You are not solving problems. You are waiting for a wave, and that is the entirety of your job in this moment.
Then the set comes in, and for six seconds you are moving faster than you should be able to move on water, and your body is doing things that your brain couldn't consciously coordinate, and then it's over and you're paddling back out and the whole cycle starts again.
I don't know what to call that. It's not exercise, exactly. It's not meditation. It's something closer to what I imagine people mean when they talk about flow, except you don't have to read a book about it or attend a seminar. You just have to get in the water.
The rest of the day
Here's what I notice on the days I surf versus the days I don't: I'm quieter. Not tired-quiet. Settled-quiet. Like the volume on everything got turned down two notches. Traffic doesn't bother me. The small annoyances of the day — the email that could've been a sentence, the meeting that could've been an email — they still happen, but they land softer.
I think it's because you've already done the hardest thing you're going to do all day, and you did it before most people were awake. Not hard in a suffering way. Hard in a "you were fully alive for an hour and now everything else feels a little simpler" way.
I don't want to oversell it. It's not a life hack. It's not going to fix your problems. It's just an hour in the ocean before the world starts making noise. But I haven't found anything else that does what it does.
The parking lot at 45th Street will be there tomorrow at 6:15. Bring a 4/3 wetsuit. The water's cold.