"If Everybody Had an Ocean . . ."

By Kathleen Brady.

Jim Callon, welcome back to where you always knew you belonged. A Southern California record producer, Callon, 43, grew up surfing on the beaches around Los Angeles. But then life got complicated -- a job, marriage, children -- and Callon gradually let the waves roll by without him. Recently, however, he took up the sport again; on weekends, when he is not riding the Pacific, he may be found in a Hermosa Beach surf shop, buying gear for his three children. Says Callon: "If a week goes by and I don't surf, I feel like I'm missing something."

Callon is not alone. Surfing, the quintessential California pastime, which seemed to crest two decades ago, has attracted beaches full of new (and once lapsed) fans this summer. Stats are elusive, since only the diehard board cowboys join local clubs. But listen to beach-shop owners, and there is no doubt that surf's up as never before. "We're seeing a whole new crowd," says Gary Cimochowski, owner of the Brave New World, a supply store in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. "Young guys are taking up the sport, and older guys are coming back to it."

Teenagers seem especially drawn to the waves. In the Eastern Surfing Association, an East Coast club based in Rhode Island with 6,000 members, the average age is 17, down from 21 five years ago. E.S.A. Executive Director Colin Couture believes that young people flock to the beaches because they are tired of highly regimented school sports. Says Couture: "In surfing, it's between you and the wave." Couture, who has persuaded the Boy Scouts in California, New Jersey and Florida to sponsor surfing programs, thinks the image of the sport has improved and is thus attracting more participants. "There is no longer the stereotype of the semiderelict surfer from the 1960s," says Couture. "For one thing, all those surfers have grown up and become lawyers, doctors, executives and teachers. And they are still surfing."

No self-respecting beach bum would be seen without at least some of the latest paraphernalia. A six-foot board, which costs between $250 and $350, is only the start. Next come the wildly colored drawstring trunks, the boldly patterned shirts, beach cruisers (bicycles with balloon tires and wide seats ( priced at $125 or so) and Zinka, multicolored zinc oxide applied like war paint. Those of drinking age reach for Corona beer, a favorite Mexican brew at Hussong's Cantina, a surfing hangout in Baja California. Noting the influence of the bar on surf culture, Moctezuma Imports, which markets Corona, has introduced a new brand called Hussong's.

Who can blame Moctezuma for trying to cash in? Americans will spend an estimated $1 billion on surfwear this year; many of the buyers are beach potatoes who are nonetheless attracted to the images of eternal youth and endless summers. "Surfing is a metaphor for a style of living," says Surfer Magazine Publisher Steve Pezman. "Therein lies the appeal of the surf fashion."

Even lack of water does not stop the determined. The town of Williamsburg, Iowa, staged a beach party last month when organizers trucked in 3 million lbs. of sand and declared that the pile was No-Wa-Wa Beach. Amid the tall corn, frolickers in bright trunks and coconut-shell bikinis played volleyball and rode around in convertibles. "It's easy for states that have oceans to have beach parties," says Organizer Steve Gander. "But in the middle of Iowa, we have to try a little harder."

Other landlocked beach bums flock to wave pools. These are giant tanks the size of football fields into which water is pumped, flushed or paddled to produce breakers three to six feet high. Today there are more than 100 tanks around the country, up from 30 five years ago. Geauga Lake, an amusement park near Cleveland, has even staged exhibition surfing in its wave pool.

No pool, of course, can replace the real thing on the West Coast. As the Beach Boys sang in their 1963 hit Surfin' U.S.A., "If everybody had an ocean/ Across the U.S.A./ Then everybody'd be surfin'/ Like Ca-li-for-ni-a." Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, 44, whose group celebrates its silver anniversary this year, bought a house near California's Rincon Beach, partly to be near one of his favorite spots. "Surfing is probably my only feeling of freedom," says Johnston. "My mortgage payments are not in the water with me." John Milius, 42, co-writer of Apocalypse Now and writer-director of Big Wednesday, the 1978 surfing epic, calls himself a surfer first and anything else second. "I'll be surfing until they carry me away," Milius says.

The new beach look leaves some veteran wave climbers bemused. Ed Hagan, 33, of Queens, N.Y., remembers how at the age of eight he transported his % surfboard on a converted shopping cart to Rockaway Beach. "All you ever needed was a board, trunks, wax and the urge to get wet." What? No multicolored zinc oxide?

With reporting by Scott Brown/Los Angeles and William Sonzski/Boston, with other bureaus