Riding the Rhythms

The Mischievous Adventures of the Boogie Couple

By Evelyn McDonnell

The song starts with a gentle, rhythmic cackling. Low notes tumble and cascade off each other, building to a quiet cacophony then ebbing into silence. If you’ve been to Cabrillo Beach lately, or anytime when the storms have washed the sands off the stones, you’ll recognize the noise the cobbles make when waves topple them together. It’s the sound of rocks rolling, of ankles getting bruised and beaten, of winter at a Southern California beach – as cyclical, native, and potentially treacherous but also hypnotically beautiful as icicles falling in Michigan.

Rick Bunce loves this sound so much that he sampled it for the appropriately titled Tourettes of the Feet. It’s the twelfth track on The Miracle of Tape, the new album by Goosewind, the band he formed in 1991. Bunce knows the noise from his regular visits to Cabrillo, where — if the rocks and the waves are too treacherous — he walks regularly with his wife and bandmate, Melody Bunce.

But mostly Rick goes to the beach to catch waves. His ride of choice is the same as it has been for years, beginning when he was a kid from Upland visiting the ocean with his family: a boogie board.

“I prefer boogie boarding to everything.  I like being on the same level as the water — zooming by and seeing the water really close to my face,” says Bunce, 55. “I found that getting in the ocean in any way, especially boogie boarding just melts away the tension.”

Melody, 61, an artist, took up bodyboarding (as the sport is also known) a few years ago, after she and Bunce became engaged — though her time in the ocean was unexpectedly cut short.  “I love catching a wave,” she says. “That’s the best feeling, like sledding on a good, long hill. I think my favorite part is just being out there and waiting for a wave and just floating — I never go out far enough where I can’t touch the ground — but just kind of suspended in the water. It’s so beautiful. It’s glassy and it’s calming; I just think about things. The world seems so much better.”

That dissolution in the universal solvent binds many who turn to the sea for recreation — whatever the size and make of their flotation device, if they even have one. In surfer lingo, it’s the “stoke.” In The Book of Waves, author Stefan Helmreich, professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and himself an amateur bodysurfer, discusses how “the aesthetics of the sublime — of individual union with scary phenomena — have contoured risk-taking leisure.” 

Or as Rick Bunce says on a crystalline April day, floating on his board waiting for a set: “The ocean is the ultimate anti-depressant, and the prescription never runs out.”

The Birth Of The Boogie

The modern boogie board was invented by a surfer looking for a quicker, cheaper way to ride. In 1971, Californian Tom Morey was living in Hawaii, where he was probably exposed to the tradition of the alaia: a wooden, finless board rode by Hawaiians in the 19th century. An engineer, Morey ironed some spare polyethylene foam, and voila, a light, inexpensive way to ride a wave was born. The jazz drummer dubbed his creation the Boogie Board, after boogie woogie jazz; the board predates the 1970s disco boogie craze.

It’s interesting that Goosewind’s maestro prefers what may be the only sport named after a musical form. Before I met Rick, when I would see him every week leaning patiently on his board, waiting for a lift – a beatific presence among Cabrillo’s never-dull cast of characters – I nicknamed him the Boogie Man, after the KC and the Sunshine Band song. With his shaggy blond hair and his board tucked under his wetsuit-covered arm, Bunce can look like a ’70s SoCal prototype but in a friendly, not buff, way. He has a big-kid Peter Pan demeanor, a shy grin, and a positive attitude. “Skipping rocks is really fun too if you can’t boogie board,” he notes, correctly.

Rick grew up landlocked, in Upland. Music was his first passion. He named his band in response to the name of another space-metal band. “It’s a riff on Hawkwind. Basically, I thought it’d be funny because a hawk is known for being kind of streamlined and serious and a raptor hunter. And a goose is known for just, like, being goofy, I guess. Nipping at shoelaces, and being mischievous. Our band is kind of mischievous and annoying.”

As a bodyboarder, Bunce was a late bloomer. He bought his first ride 17 years ago, after he moved to Venice, as a way to relieve the stress from his job working with homeless individuals. He used to ride it every day at lunch. “I have a tendency towards some depression stuff. And it just kind of keeps it away. Makes you feel better every time.”

Rick moved to San Pedro with his daughters 14 years ago and immediately fell in love with the town, especially the beach. “It’s just so small and friendly. It’s like a little secret. Even the surfers are really nice, you know, like they don’t have an attitude towards me. I’m the only guy on a boogie board with a bunch of surfers around and they’re never mean, they’re always just really cool. And I got to know them a little bit. Venice, I had a little bit of attitude thrown at me once in a while, being a boogie boarder among surfers. Not here. Not once.”

A few years ago Bunce was reintroduced to Melody Kriesel, whom he had met a few times when they were both growing up in the Pomona area. In San Pedro, she reconnected with her childhood love of swimming and soon, Rick had a partner on the bodyboarding line.

“I was really timid because I was scared of the pull in the ocean water, that I was going to get caught in a riptide and wind up out there,” Melody says. “And I’m not a strong swimmer. But as we started coming regularly I noticed that I wasn’t so scared anymore.”

In this small but brave artist with the musical name, the boogie man found his boogie woman.

Neither of them standup surfs, or are interested in trying. The boogie couple ride flat, as opposed to bodyboarders who ride with one knee bent or even standing. Melody and Rick can be in the water for hours but stay close to shore. She fears the riptide, he worries about sharks. “I just saw too many Jaws movies, and I’m still like, I’m gonna be the one that’s taken down by a Leviathan or something out there. The unknown: It freaks me out.”

The boogie couple mostly seek their moments of Zen floating on soft, buoyant boards — though the rush of adrenaline is part of the thrill. Melody describes the experience of losing control of a wave. “I would just go running out there, and the water oftentimes, especially at Torrance beach, I would get tossed,” she says. “And then it would be pulling me and I’m in the sand, and I’m trying to get up, and every time I think I’m getting footing and I can pull myself up, another wave comes in and pulls me down and I’m like ahhh! I remember that it’s fun to go farther out each week, get a little braver.”

Bunce’s antidepressant is the gateway drug to water sports; you don’t need much surf to have a great time on the boogie, and, with a strap velcroed around your wrist, it acts as a kind of life jacket. The foam provides a buoyancy that your body alone doesn’t have, and of course, it’s easier to lie down than stand up on a surfboard. Still, accidents happen. A leash once twisted around Rick’s finger in a strong wave, giving him a spiral break.

Eighteen months ago — seven weeks before their wedding — Rick and Melody were both out on the water. She decided to catch a nice, small wave in. But with waves, size can be deceiving. This one turned out to be a powerful shorebreaker, sending Melody crashing into the sand upside down, head first. Rick and a swimmer helped her to shore. A couple days of pain later, she went to a doctor and discovered she had broken her T5 vertebrae. She wound up wearing a back brace on their honeymoon in Italy and hasn’t been on a board since.

“What a luxury, what a gift to be able to swim in the ocean,” she says. “We should all feel, and treat it with, enormous gratitude.”

“Nature deserves our utmost respect,” says Rick. 

THE PERFECT WAVE

Nature is a fickle boss. On a late-winter afternoon, Rick and I decided to brave the cobbles and cold and catch some waves down at the bend, while Melody took photos of a waterlogged agave plant that had recently slipped down the Point Fermin cliffs. I hadn’t waded more than ankle-deep when a wave threw a sharp rock into my shin, drawing blood. “Tourettes of the Feet”, indeed. Winter storms have wreaked havoc with the ocean bottom at Hurricane Gulch; the floor dips and rises like a stingray roller coaster. We made it out to the sandbar where the waves break, but what had looked like mild surf turned into killer sets. Bunce caught one “terrifying” ride in, flying on his boogie into the stones. I gave up and walked back to shore, praying not to damage my lower limbs any further.

A few weeks later the solstice had worked its magic. The water was cold but crystal clear, the cobbles manageable, the waves occasional but, yes, sublime.

“The perfect wave is one that never ends,” Rick said as he barreled through the surf, wielding his board with surprising strength and grace. “It breaks forever right or left.” 

Then Goosewind’s guitarist let the curl take him in, hooting with joy, his arms spread wide, like a kid shouting, “Look Mom, no hands!”

Nowadays Melody walks the beach while Rick rides, or they both walk and skip stones. At home, they make music together. The Miracle of Tape — lo-fi, rollicking, mischievous, a little dated, but also classic, kind of like boogie boarding — is released on CD by Shrimper Records on April 19. On the title track, he plays blistering surf-guitar (of course) licks; she responds with a melodic (of course) “who-hoo.” Melody designed and shot the album cover: A photo of styrofoam mannequin heads floating in the kelp.

Evelyn McDonnell is the author or editor of eight books, an internationally recognized award-winning journalist, and a professor at Loyola Marymount University. She writes the series Bodies of Water – portraits of lives aquatic – for Random Lengths.

Copyright Evelyn McDonnell 2024