Guinness

The big wave.

Up until this week the biggest wave ever surfed was right here in Southern California, believe it or not.

While SoCal beaches don't exactly comprise a big-wave Mecca, sometimes the spot known as Cortes Bank, 105 miles from San Diego, produces monsters. San Clemente's Mike Parsons set the biggest-wave-ever-surfed record there in 2008.

Now that benchmark was surpassed by only a foot or so:

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Updated at the bottom with details of the encounter. First posted at 10:58 a.m.

A 15-year-old girl was nearly breakfast for a shark off the coast of Santa Catalina Island over the weekend.

The shark bit her paddleboard several times about a mile from Avalon, while she was 200 yards offshore Sunday morning, L.A. County Fire Department officials said.

Lucky for her ...

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wilslost

Thanks to a few kids who like to fly down hills on their skateboards, as they've done since the dawn of the sport, the L.A. City Council today voted to ban such "bombing."

Not only that but, essentially, in the city of L.A., skateboarders will soon have to obey traffic rules just as a driver or bicyclist would.

That's right:

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Skateboards are for riding, not for fighting.

But the L.A. City Attorney's office today said that a Venice homeless couple -- 21-year-old Ashley Berg and 33-year-old Savoy Anderson -- was involved in using a board as a weapon in an attack on another pair last week.

It happened on a street becoming increasingly known for its homeless encampments: Third near Rose Avenue. According to a statement, the office alleges:

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Naoki Tomeno

A sick new move that has rocked the skateboarding world in a way not seen since Tony Hawk's historic "900" was completed near The Birdman's hometown of San Diego this week.

That's right, authorities allege that 24-year-old Thomas Robert Landry of San Diego executed the "5150" flawlessly, starting with an ax-wielding freak out in the center of the 15 freeway and culminating with a high-speed chase and a police dog take-down.

Unheard of:

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'Bird Man' Corliss.

Jeb Corliss, the insane Venice base jumper who calls himself "fearless," lived up to that adjective this week when he told ABC News that he will "jump again" following a caught-on-video (after the jump) accident in South Africa that left his leg bones in pieces.

He's expected to get out of the hospital today, more than a month after he slammed into a rocky ledge as he flew in his wing suit at an estimated 120 miles an hour.

The collision prompted a quick-thinking Corliss to ...

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Filming for 'Lords of Dogtown:' This could be illegal soon in L.A.

Bomb a hill, go to jail?

New L.A. city Councilman Joe Buscaino is proposing to outlaw high-speed skateboarding down steep hills following the tragic deaths of a couple teen skaters in his Harbor-area district.

But perhaps the most controversial aspect of his proposal:

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Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack

If you needed to place an iconic artifact of Southern California boarding culture in a time capsule, a pair of Vans shoes would certainly do.

Alongside the skateboard, a modification of roller skates, the modern surfboard, invented by L.A.'s Bob Simmons, and the t-shirt-as-billboard, arguably a product of SoCal surf and hot-rod clubs, Vans became an enduring product of the beach lifestyle industry.

Last week Vans' founder, James Van Doren, passed away, the company announced.

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Yo! Venice!

SkateLAvia?

How many Angelenos with skateboards does it take to create a world record?

Apparently not many.

Guinness World Records announced today that a skaters' gathering outside Venice High School last summer took the prize for "largest skateboard parade."

The number of participants?

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Red Bull USA

Wingsuits over Hollywood.

The one percenters (okay, maybe they're 10 percenters) who live around the Hollywood sign have been pissed off at all the tourists who nose around their neighborhood because they happen to live ... near the friggin' Hollywood sign!

(Listen folks, don't move near an iconic tourist attraction if you don't like tourists. You don't see us occupying Disneyland, now do you?).

Anyway, these NIMBYs were rightly treated to an airborne buzzing of epic proportions last week:

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ZJ Boarding House

The Watergate Ripper.

The scariest thing we usually see at the beach in Santa Monica is a Euro-tourist in a mankini, but ZJ Boarding House, the Santa Monica surf shop, has a far spookier happening planned:

Haunted Heats III, a now-annual surf contest that requires entrants to shred in costume. Sort of gives new meaning to the term "ripper."

It happens ...

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Channel Islands

In one of the dumber lawsuits we've seen in a while a surfer filed suit in L.A. Superior Court this week against Carpinteria board maker Channel Islands Surfboards.

Tom Gregg blames the equipment, specifically one of his board's fins, for a leg gash he suffered after pearling in France in ... 2009. This according to the Los Angeles Times.

Dude says muscle tissue was severed in the accident and he'll never regain full use of the muscles in that leg. Strange suit on a couple of fronts though:

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TMZ

Christopher.

Updated at the bottom with a statement from Arnold and Maria. First posted at 12:23 p.m.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's 13-year-old son Christopher was injured in a surfing accident in Malibu recently, TMZ reports. Injuries are said to have included "multiple broken bones" and a collapsed lung.

It's not clear if he was riding a hard board or a body board, according to the site.

The boy's 17-year-old brother Patrick tweeted:

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Great Skate / Facebook

There's going to be a lot of kicking and pushing across America in the next month, and we're not just talking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

A group of 7 skateboarders based in L.A. are setting off today on a ride across the nation that will benefit Friends of Foster Children in Alhambra.

This Great Skate will take them over mountains, deserts and plains, 3,200 miles worth, from ...

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