Rincon Point: The Queen of the Coast

  The Beat Generation comes to Rincon Point By Vince Burns Facebook Twitter Email Photo taken by Dick Metz of his friends and surf fans at Rincon Point, 1951.   Dick Metz/Surfing Heritage and Culture Center Archives Facebook Twitter Email Print Save These exuberant surfers were not the first to surf famous Rincon Point but they were among the first to rediscover the point after World War II, riding the waves of the Queen of the Coast on their monster wooden boards. Probably the most well-known of the 1950s Rincon surfers was Dick Metz who snapped this photograph in 1951. Dick grew up in Laguna Beach but found his way to Santa Barbara in the early 1950s to attend what was then the Santa Barbara College of the University of California. Like many beach lovers after him, Metz picked Santa Barbara for his studies mostly because of the excellent surf.   When not feuding with college officials over requirements like having to wear shoes on campus, Metz found plenty of time to surf Rincon with

  Selected images sought by historian Vince Burns will be used in the book “Rincon Point,” a pictorial history of the iconic surf spot. Facebook Twitter Email Print Save Local author and historian Vince Burns is looking for old photographs of Rincon Point – from the earliest days to the 1980s – that might be used in “Rincon Point,” a pictorial history to be published by Arcadia Publishing in its series, “Images of America.” The same series recently published two books on Carpinteria and La Conchita. “Key to the project are photographs, and the importance of family collections cannot be overemphasized,” Burns said. “Vintage photographs become increasingly fragile and by scanning and reproducing them in a book, they become available for all to see and are preserved forever.” Burns has worked in book and database library publishing for many years and recently retired from ABC-CLIO in Goleta. Along the way, he was involved in bringing out more than 10,000 books in his career. Burns also wr