Wet Suit and Tie : Surfers do a balancing act--on the board and in their lives. They split their time between the demands of the office and the lure of the waves.

Go to work, or go surfing?

It was 6 o’clock on a winter morning at Surfers’ Point in Ventura and that was the question. The first rays of sunlight warmed the chill air. The waves, groomed to perfection by a light offshore breeze, rumbled toward the shore. Several surfers clustered together in the parking lot, clasping foam cups full of hot coffee, considering their options.

It was an easy choice.

“It can’t get much better than this,” announced 32-year-old bank manager Mike Brady. He tossed the rest of his coffee down and removed his tie. “I should be at work, but things are slow and the surf’s up.”

A few minutes later, Brady zipped up his black, skintight wet suit, grabbed his board and paddled out into the surf, joining half a dozen other surfers already in the water. There was a doctor, an accountant, a store owner and a college professor--not your typical surfers. Or are they?

For hundreds of Ventura County surfers, the sport has become not just a matter of grace and equilibrium in the water, but a test of balance in lifestyle, the board on one side, the office on the other.

“I guess a lot of people still think surfers are like the kind they see in the ‘Beach Blanket’ movies and hear in Beach Boys songs,” said Jerry Griffith, a certified public accountant, one recent morning.

Griffith, a 37-year-old Ventura resident, had just finished a two-hour surf session and was quickly toweling himself off. He had to be at work in half an hour.

“Anybody who was ever a surfer never really listened to any of that stuff, and I have never seen anyone get out of the water and dance on the beach at noon,” he said. “Most of us are regular people who work regular jobs who just like to ride waves.”

Paul Nielsen, owner of the Waveline Ventura surf shop and a surfer himself, estimates that nearly half of his customers are older than 25, many of them in their late 30s to mid-40s. A handful are in their 60s, said Nielsen, who is 39.

“On any given day, I’ll find deputy district attorneys, firemen and stockbrokers out at the point,” said Nielsen. “They’re in the water by 5:30 a.m. and out by 7 a.m. and off to work. They’re back out after work in the afternoon until dark.”

Furthermore, said Nielsen, “surfers can put together sentences with more than three words, and without the word ‘dude.’ They’re not shiftless beach bums anymore. Nobody can afford to be that way.”

Ventura insurance agent Bill Light, 33, makes a daily pilgrimage to Surfers’ Point on his lunch break. Keeping his board at the office, about a mile away from the shore, he is able to break for the beach at a moment’s notice.

“If I hear there’s a good swell coming in, I’ll put the pen down, turn on the answering machine and head to the beach,” Light said. “If work is too busy, I’ll still go there for lunch and just watch and cheer my friends on.”

Light moved to the La Conchita area six years ago with his wife, Olga. The couple learned how to surf together two years ago.

“Surfing has become more than just a sport for us, it’s a way of living,” Light said. “We’ve met a lot of friends through surfing. It’s become a big part of my life.”

Light said he gets jealous of Olga, a 29-year-old unemployed psychiatric nurse, because she spends more time at the beach than he does.

“One of the reasons I became a nurse was because it gave me plenty of time to surf,” Olga Light said. “Any job I get is going to be flexible enough so that I can surf almost every day. . . . I tried to explain the surfing lifestyle to my mom once, but she didn’t really understand.”

Out on the water, however, plenty of others do.

* Oxnard resident Ernie (Rocco) Cavallaro, a friend of the Lights and a fellow insurance agent, said he plans his work around the tides and swell and leaves at least two days a week open for surfing.

“Surfing gives me the opportunity to balance out my life,” said 30-year-old Cavallaro. “I’ll just come out here and surf and forget about work and all my problems for awhile. It’s the best form of therapy I know of. And it’s free.”

* Jack Cantrell, who arrived in Ventura in 1953 and became one of the area’s best-known surfers, worked in the oil business until retiring in 1989. But he, too, is still balancing his surfing against other responsibilities.

Cantrell and his wife are part of a team of volunteers working to open a surfing museum near the Ventura Holiday Inn in late January. Money, expertise and exhibits for the museum, including vintage surfboards and photographs of local beaches in the ‘30s and ‘40s, are being donated by longtime local surfers.

* Joe Marks, 20, attends Ventura Community College and works three jobs.

“Every surfer still dreams of it being like it was--traveling, surfing and just being lazy, but that’s not possible in California,” Marks said. “You have to work or else you wouldn’t have a board.”

* Brian O’Neil, 26, of Oxnard is a student and a hospital power plant operator who surfs about three times during the week, at midday between school and work.

“If you love surfing enough,” O’Neil said, “you have to work around it.”

“Surfing is what life is all about for me,” said Karl Hunt, 41, sitting on his truck’s tailgate one recent afternoon. He munched on a burger and fries and watched the waves roll in along the Rincon Parkway. “Without it,” he said, “I feel like half a person.”

It has taken Hunt years to strike a happy balance between his work and his surfing.

When he’s not at the beach, Hunt is a Ventura landscape contractor. About 10 years ago, Hunt recalled, “times were really tough. I was working three jobs just to feed my wife and kids and just didn’t have time for surfing. Even when things got better, it still took me a long time to get back into it.”

“Dawn patrols are what got me hooked on the sport again,” he said. “Up until that point I didn’t realize how much I missed surfing. Now, I’m out here almost every day before work, rain or shine. . . . Once you start surfing, you never want to stop, no matter how old or how busy you are.”

SHOWDOWNS IN THE SURF

On the beach and at parties, surfers share a camaraderie, chatting about the waves or swapping stories. But that peaceful coexistence often ends once they’re in the water.

There, Ventura County’s growing population and surfing’s increasing popularity have combined to make competition fierce for every wave.

“It’s like driving on the freeway sometimes,” said surfer James Muller, 23, of Oxnard. “You really have to keep an eye out. People drop in on your wave and almost take your head off.”

As morning breaks, the drama unfolds as scores of surfers paddle out to form a neon-colored mosaic across the water. Surfers on short boards, who are mostly younger, jockey for position with others on long boards, who are mostly older. The revival of the long board, which is easier to paddle and consequently easier to catch a wave with, has raised the stakes--and the tension.

The increasing ranks of boogie boarders--or “foamies,” as they are called by some surfers--have also added to the crowding.

“I don’t pay any attention to boogie boarders,” said short boarder Charles Perez, 19, of Ventura. “If they get in my way, I just run them over.”

“I run into a lot of attitudes out in the water,” said Michael Sands, 18, a boogie boarder from Ventura. “I have the same right to be in the water as everybody else.”

Sentiments are sometimes more mellow among longtime surfers--but not always.

Every ride begins with jockeying for position as swells roll in. The first surfer up on the wave usually has the right of way. When another surfer gets up in front and cuts the first surfer off, it’s considered an act of war.

Angered surfers use various tactics for revenge when they have been “burned,” “snaked” or “dropped in on.” The old “kick out,” in which a surfer pushes down on the tail of his surfboard, causing the nose to rise off the water, and aims it toward the offender, has given way to “board whips”--sweeping the board in a wide arc and sending a spray of water into the face of the rival.

Still, said surfer Alan Burnett, 28, of Port Hueneme, most conflicts in the water amount to all talk and no action.

“I’ve seen surfers yell and cuss at each other, trying to pick a fight over one stupid wave,” Burnett said. “But most of the time they won’t get out of the water and do anything about it because they don’t want to miss a wave.”

Surfer Paul Nielsen, who owns Waveline Ventura surf shop, agreed that fistfights on the shore are rare. However, he said, there are places where tensions runs high, especially at breaks where there is only one takeoff spot on a wave.

“When you have 25 guys all trying for the same wave, somebody is going to get cut off,” he said. “One guy with a bad attitude can start it all off.”

“There are more people going to the beach and that means more people in the water,” concluded Steve Baker, 42, a longtime surfer from Ventura. “It’s as simple as that, and you just have to get used to it.”