So top-tier Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is hoping to quadruple the size of his La Jolla home, which he purchased three years ago, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Spanish-style house near surfing Mecca Windansea beach and bodysurfing spot Marine Street seems to have already had an effect on the former Massachusetts governor.

Earlier this month he said this:

Someone said to me that politics is like surfing, and I said, 'Well, what do you mean by that? How is politics like surfing?' And they said, 'Well, to be successful in politics, you have to be a good politician and you have to catch a good wave, just like surfing.'


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It ain't no box of chocolates, that's for sure.

Maybe Romney can join up with the kids of The Real World, which is filming down the beach, at Bird Rock.

Does anyone find it a little ironic that the man who could be the leader of the red-state nation spends at least some of his home time in a place famed for its countercultural influence?

La Jolla's no Berkeley, to be sure, but it did inspire Tom Wolfe's Pump House Gang and provide a base for the legendary surfing pranksters known as the Mac Meda Destruction Company.

Nearby Windansea played a large part in the evolution of the modern surfboard, which went from wood plank to foam hybrid under the development of Bob Simmons, who died surfing there in 1954.

And the contemporary t-shirt-as-billboard might not be if it weren't for the surfing clubs that cropped up in the post-war era in places like Windansea.

Anyway, it's not like Romney is going to be hosting Tea Party radicals at his beach house any time soon. He's socially moderate. Still, you have to wonder if the salt air and hippie history will rub off on him.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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