DJ Dopamine (middle, DJ Patty Clover (left), DJ Jenny Pocket (right)

The 16th annual Nissan Super Girl Surf Pro contest and concert series ran from September 16 to 18, and played host to events such as Saturday’s Super Girl Sound Session, an all-female DJ competition. Booming bass trap frequencies shook the cement as I descended the stairway leading to the Oceanside boardwalk and pier. Roller skaters, dog walkers, groms, skateboarders, strollers, concertgoers, and surfers all packed the waterfront thoroughfare. As I zig-zagged through the boardwalk crowd, the DJ combo put me in mind of an electronic dance music event, or maybe the DMC (Disco Mix Club) World DJ Championship. Even so, this was its own thing. The multi-cultural surf extravaganza, which draws about 250,000 visitors from all over the world, created a novel platform for female DJs, where the fans vibed differently than the folks at EDM and DMC events.

DJ Dopamine flew in from Calgary, Canada with laptop in hand; it stored her 130-song playlist of ‘90s remixes and house and hip-hop mashup joints. “I came into San Diego at about 3:30 this morning,” she told me, “so I haven’t slept yet.” Judging from the Instagram flicks of her DJing at sold-out venues all around Canada and the U.S., it appears she’s accustomed to performing while jet-lagged. Or road weary: “So the first year of this competition, I drove down 27 hours non-stop and laid in Oceanside for a half hour, competed, and then I won it.”

That was pre-pandemic. Could DJ Dopamine produce that same euphoria on the dancefloor again, against this year’s other top seven DJs? By 2 pm, four of them were out: DJ Beatrix, DJ Krista Mac, DJ Tigerlily, and Lily Jade. The crowd at ground level filled the space to less than half capacity. More folks sat and stood along the coliseum-style cement seating backed up against North Pacific Street. The four DJs who made the semi-finals paced around backstage; DJ Dopamine was among them. “We’re creating a constant beat you can dance to,” she said. “We’re beat matching.”

To understand how a DJ wins in battle competitions, one must understand the purpose of a DJ: to entertain folks in a specific way. It starts with making them dance by playing the right choice of music, and involves engaging them by interacting with the crowd via the microphone. Then there is onstage showmanship and mixing. When you’re playing music via a computer, turntables, CD players, and cellphones, creative and technical tricks involving timing and blending come into play. Add a dope intro and outro to round out your three to four-minute allotted set, and that’s a wrap.

DJ Jane was up first, blending Meek Mill and Drake’s “Going Bad” lyrics over what sounded like a traditional soundtrack from Asia. It sort of worked: the crowd recited Meek Mill’s verses while swaying, but seemed dubious about the soothing background track. Jane then dropped a flurry of dubstep bass and saw-wave snippets, cueing the concertgoers to hop while fist-pumping to the now-blaring, 140-beats-per-minute dubstep joint. Finally, she backed up and jumped with the dancers in unison. This might’ve been detrimental to her set: when she returned to the equipment, she accidentally switched over the mixer, and remnants of another song seeped through the loudspeakers. Some dancers froze, and the set ended. Afterward, one of the three judges concluded, “I like your energy, your energy is awesome, but a little bit sloppy there.”

Next up was DJ Patty Clover, who took the stage with two pink-colored vinyl records on top of Technics 1200 turntables, but not the cartridge and needles needed to play the spinning vinyl. She explained the hi-tech setup to me; “The phasers are just an interactive way of moving a record. It’s just like a needle; it has an exact precision to it when you juggle. But you don’t have to worry about the tone arm coming up.” Even so, Patty and Jane lost in the semi-finals to DJ Dopamine and San Diego-based DJ Jenny Pocket. Jenny was on the ones-and-twos (two turntables), spinning vinyl records and finishing out her three-minute set with “Moment for Life” by Nicki Minaj, Jay Rock’s “Win,” and “Move” by Ludacris. Many in the crowd cheered for Jenny’s use of vinyl.

DJ Dopamine hopped onto the Pioneer professional all-in-one DJ system, connected her laptop computer, and went to town. Initially, she played a remix of “The Wall,” a Pink Floyd classic, fused with several electronica tracks. Then, she yelled into the mic, “What’s up, Oceanside?” The crowd cheered, which was what the judges were looking for. Then Dopamine played a Ciera dance song and looped a house track that chanted, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.” When she closed her set, and the crowd cheered.

Antonio Aguilera of Global BPM, one of the judges, noted one blunder, but even that showed her skills. “When you left the filter on, and the bass was not coming out, did you see how you didn’t shake your head, and went straight through it? Like it was pro. Pros hide it, then blend it in and keep going.” The judges proclaimed DJ Dopamine the champ, and Aguilera cited the hiccup as a factor in her win. “That’s when you see a professional DJ: when they mess up, you can’t even tell.”