LEGENDARY SURFERS

"From Polynesia, With Love"

2010-04-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

A good overview of the history of surfing is Ben Marcus' "From Polynesia, With Love: the History of Surfing from Captain Cook to the Present" - posted at the "Surfing For Life" website. I recommend it.

When Surfboards Defined A Society

2010-04-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

Marion Stratford has a Surfing column called "Surfing Examiner" at Los Angeles' Examiner.com. Second in his series includes some neat artwork from Ron Croci. To view the original article, along with some comments, please go to: When surfboards defined a society

When surfboards defined a society

by Marion Stratford, April 12, 2010, Examiner.com

Imagine your surfboard defining your place in society.

In Ancient Hawaii, it did.

Under the kapu system of laws, the ali’i was above all others. The ruling class surfed on one type of board, and the commoners used another. Even the type of wood used determined social classification.

THE COMMONER

Commoner surfboards came in three lengths and were mostly constructed of wood from the koa tree. The introductory board to wave riding, or he'e nalu, was the paipo. 2’- 6’ in length, the finless paipos were much like today’s bellyboards and mostly ridden by children.

Once accustomed to the rhythm of riding waves, surfers would move on to the alaia. Suitable for standup, an alaia ranged 6’ to 12’ in length and was the forerunner of today’s surfboard.

After mastering the art of surfing, commoners would advance to the kiko’o, a board 12’ to 14’ in length, and, as you can imagine, much more difficult to ride. To master one of these definitely demonstrated one’s proper place at the top of society.

THE ALI’I

The ruling class had its own board made of its own wood, the olo. 14’ to 18’ in length, not only was the olo a bigger board, but it was constructed of the more buoyant wood of the wili wili tree and further defined the class separation of kapu.

The ali’i even has their own breaks, and under kapu, any attempt by a commoner to paddle out among the elite was punishable by, among other things, death.

Surfboards were sacred, their construction ritualistic. Kahuna would search for just the right tree, sacrifice fish as an offering to the gods and stand guard over the specimen overnight under prayer.

Only after successful completion of the ritual, could the tree be felled, and once it was cut down, more sacred behavior was practiced by the kahuna.

Finer shaping was done with blocks of coral and stone..

First the board was rough-shaped with an adz. Then, the wood was shaped and planed with blocks of coral or stone. Once shaped, it was applied with a finish, such as the root of the ti plant or the stain from banana buds. The board was then treated with kukui oil to give it a glossy finish.

When the surfboard had met the kahuna’s approval, it underwent a final ritual of dedication, and only then was it offered to the sea.

Brotherhood of The Board

2010-04-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

LEGENDARY SURFERS: "Brotherhood of the Board"

Aloha! And Welcome to this chapter of LEGENDARY SURFERS.

"Brotherhood of the Board" was written by Cynthia Dizikes and published in September 2005. It is a great look at the sport of paddling and legendary paddler Mike Eaton. Please give it a read:

BROTHERHOOD OF THE BOARD

John Whitmore

2010-04-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

LEGENDARY SURFER: JOHN "OOM" WHITMORE (1929-2001)

Aloha! And Welcome to this chapter of LEGENDARY SURFERS.

John Whitmore -- sometimes referred to as the father or "uncle" of South African surfing -- was “an energetic man with an adventurous spirit and an enquiring mind,” eulogized surfer, writer and his friend Paul Botha, following Whitmore’s passing on Christmas Eve 2001.

Affectionately known to South Africans as “The Oom” – the Afrikaans equivalent of “uncle” -- Whitmore spent the better part of his life pioneering surfing, Hobie Cat sailing, and bodyboarding on the Southern tip of Africa from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s.

Special thanks to Paul Botha and Dick Metz, both of whom provided images and background info on The Oom for this chapter in the LEGENDARY SURFERS series.

To read the chapter, please go to: Oom: John Whitmore

To view stats on his surfboards, please go to: SHF: Stoked-n-Board: Whitmore Surfboards

Related Resources

Go Back To The LEGENDARY SURFERS Homepage

The Early History of Peruvian Surfing

2010-04-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Aloha and Welcome to this chapter on The Early History of Peruvian Surfing!

Peru is rich in surf history. While we can only conjecture as to its earliest days of riding reed craft, the stories of the early days of Peru’s modern era are now legendary across the planet.

I am indebted to the following for their contributions to this 23,069-word look at the early days of modern Peruvian surf history:

First and foremost is Oscar Tramontana Figallo, whose work in documenting Peruvian surf history was invaluable. Coming a close second is Felipe Pomar, who took time out to answer specific questions I had about his early days and the nature of Peruvian surfing especially in the 1960s. Thirdly, I am in much appreciation of the archival photos from Carlos Rey y Lama.

Although I credit everyone in my footnotes, I also want to thank – in the order of the appearance of their contributions – the following: Matt Warshaw, Ben Finney and James Houston, Peru Surf Guides, Glenn Hening, Marcus Sanders, Olas Peru, Fred Hemmings, Mike Doyle, Augusto Villaran, Oscar M. Brain and Juan Forero.

This is the first priced chapter in several years, at LEGENDARY SURFERS, at a cost of $7.95 U.S. Dollars (or equivalent). The chapter will be emailed to you as an electronic PDF file that you can read on-line, print out, and share with others. The chapter also includes hyperlinks to related material that you can click within the file, itself.

I hope you enjoy this read as much as I did writing it!

RELATED RESOURCES

KIT HORN (1929-2010)

2010-03-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

"Kit Horn passed away yesterday morning [3/26/2010] at age 80. Kit was one of the best, most reliable and unbiased resources of Malibu history of the 1940's. He was a fine surfer and a great guy admired by all. We will miss him." -- John Elwell

Kit's mentioned throughout the LEGENDARY SURFERS collection. To find and read the entries, please go to: LEGENDARY SURFERS Search: KIT HORN

Kit Horn photo courtesy of Tom Keck

If you have a favorite Kit Horn story or memory to share, please leave a comment, below. Make it as long as you need and thanks.

The classic "Kit Horn at Lunada Bay" story Greg Noll told is here: LEGENDARY SURFERS: 1963 - Kit Horn at Lunada Bay

Excellent article on Kit at Ocean Mag: "In Memorium: Kit Horn"

There's also a thread at SURFER, with some additional stories and reminiscences. Please go to: SURFERMAG Community: Kit Horn.

Kit's obit in the NEW YORK TIMES:

( Peter St. Pierre and Kit Horn, 2009 )

A story about Kit Horn from Corky Carroll:

Corky Carroll's SURF'S UP

By

Corky Carroll, Orange County Register Columnist, April 17, 2010

One of the things that is necessary for me to do, but I don't like doing – kinda like paying bills and being responsible for myself – is reporting on the passing of our local surf legends and heroes. Well, this is one of those weeks. Another of our flock has pulled out: the great Kit Horn.

Kit led a very long and fruitful surfing life that dates back to the very beginning of the balsa wood surfboard era. In fact, there is a story that was relayed to me by Tom Morey that indicates that Kit was actually directly involved in the advent of the first balsa wood board.

The story goes that Kit and his buddy Bo Beck were young surf gremmies who used to get rides to the beach with the infamous Bob Simmons, who is credited with being the first to make balsa wood boards, along with other innovations. At the time, which I am thinking had to be the late 1940s or so, the boards were very heavy solid redwood and other combinations of heavy woods. The average board weighed 80 to 150 pounds.

One of the places they used to surf was Palos Verdes Cove. The cove had a long trail down a cliff to get down to the beach, and of course back up afterwards. There was a thing that the locals used to do for fun in those days. The first ones back up the trail would toss rocks at the stragglers coming up the trail. It was all in fun and the rocks were not thrown to hit anybody, just to make it interesting.

These days, they aim for ya and mean it. But back then, there was no localism and everybody was pals. So one day, Kit and Bo got to the top first and Simmons was coming up the trail lugging his huge heavy board, which was not easy as he had one bad arm. Kit and Bo started the rock-tossing game and were laughing their heads off. But one rock, not meant to hit Simmons, glanced off another rock and actually hit him in the shin. This caused him to drop his board, which slid down the cliff and got extremely damaged.

Simmons was red-hot angry. When he got to the car, he didn't say a word, just drove the boys home and dumped 'em off. They did not see Bob or hear a word from him for three months. Then one day, he shows up all smiles and friendly and asks if they wanna go surfing.

All is good and nothing is said about the damaged board incident. The boys are all happy thinking that all is forgotten. When they get to the cove, Bob has a new black surfboard on the car. They all go down to the cove and have a great surf session.

Afterwards, they are all hanging out getting ready for the trek back up the trail. All of a sudden, Simmons grabs his board and literally sprints up the trail to his car. When he gets up there, he starts raining down rocks across the trail so that the boys can only move at a snail's pace, making the chore of lugging their heavy boards even harder.

Simmons is in hysteria, laughing so hard. When they finally get to the top, worn out and sweating, Bob lets 'em in on the fact that his new board is actually made out of balsa wood and only weighs 45 pounds. He painted it black so they couldn't see what it was.

Kit went on to become a great surfer here in California and in the big surf in Hawaii. When I was very young and first riding big waves, I had many sessions surfing with Kit and respected him greatly as one of the best. He would become a top competitor in the senior divisions when surfing contests became big in California and became the top judge from the West Coast.

He represented the United States Surfing Association at the International Big Wave Championship in Peru and other events around the world.

One of my favorite memories of Kit was one freezing-cold rainy day at Huntington Beach. The surf was so big, it was breaking past the end of the pier and there was nobody around. Kit talked me into jumping off the end of the pier with him to ride the stuff.

I don't know what scared me the most, the surf or the jump off the pier. Neither fazed him. He was stoked. In fact, in all of my memories of Kit Horn, he was stoked.

Great guy, great surfer.

And, here's a write up from Brad Melekian:

‘Kit’ Horn, 80: Big-wave pioneer in California

By Brad Melekian, April 12, 2010

On March 26, consummate California surfer and waterman Christopher “Kit” Horn died at his home overlooking the surf in Leucadia. Horn, 80, a renowned surfer who began riding waves in Southern California in the early 1940s, continued surfing until last summer when he fell ill with cancer.

Horn’s surfing legacy will be his pioneering of surf breaks, particularly big-wave surf breaks, in California. Horn was among a legendary group of tough-minded original surfers who sought out and rode big waves in California and on the North Shore of Oahu in the late 1950s and early ’60s. He is famous for having ridden many waves in frigid Central and Northern California waters by himself in the same time period.

“He was known as one of the original big-wave underground guys,” says Matt Warshaw, author of the forthcoming The History of Surfing. “Everyone knew who he was and everyone knew he rode big waves, but he never went in for the big-wave celebrity thing.”

Horn, a lifelong athlete, began riding waves in Santa Monica in 1941, when the sport was primitive and relegated to a small band of surfers up and down the coast. An avid waterman, Horn would dive for abalone and lobster in Santa Monica Bay at a time when he could fill a gunny sack with either in an hour, said his son Brit. While he was committed to riding big waves, Horn, who earned a business degree from USC in the 1950s, where he was a member of the swim team, established a life in San Diego County, raising a family and working in sales.

He continued to surf throughout California through the decades, and Horn will be remembered by those he surfed with more recently for his ability to stay enthusiastic and excited about the sport well into his 70s. Many of the surfers he had ridden waves with in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s dropped out of the sport as it went through its permutations, but Horn reveled in surfing’s changes.

“He was 40 when the shortboard revolution came around,” Brit Horn said. “And he went with that change. When he was in his 70s, he was riding boards that were under seven feet in length.”

Horn also continued to ride big waves well into his later years. Brit Horn, who lives in Sonoma County, says his father kept a complete quiver of surfboards and always had at least four big-wave “guns.” Brit says he surfed with his father in the notoriously heavy surf at Point Arena in Northern California until his father was 72 or 73.

“I’m 51,” says Brit, a lifeguard and well-respected surfer in his own right. “I surf several days a week, and up until a few years ago, I could say that my dad surfed more than I did. He surfed pretty much every day that there were waves.”

By surfing consistently into his late 70s, Horn became an icon in the North County surfing community, known for his resilience and his enthusiasm for the sport. Locals admired Horn’s ability to surf consistently into his older years.

“A lot of people around him would look to my dad,” Brit Horn says. “A lot of people surfed in the ’60s and ’70s, but stopped. It gave people inspiration. You know, ‘Kit’s still going strong and as stoked as ever.’ ”

Brit says his father’s enthusiasm for the sport came from what he got from riding waves. “Surfing kept him young,” he says. “It keeps all of us young, but my dad had a spirit about him that he got from surfing.”

Horn is survived by his wife, Gwen, and his four children, Pamela Kelso, Lizabeth Lamberty and his sons Kirk and Brit.

DORIAN PASKOWITZ

2010-03-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

Aloha and welcome to this chapter on LEGENDARY SURFER DORIAN PASKOWITZ.

There are 12 entries (as of March 2010) for information about Dorian, at LEGENDARY SURFERS. Please view them at: Dorian Paskowitz entries @ LEGENDARY SURFERS

Vintage Doc Ball Video

2010-02-18T11:32:00.000-08:00

Some of John "Doc" Ball's surfing video footage has resurfaced via The Surfer's Path:

To read about surfing's first dedicated surf photog, please go to:
LEGENDARY SURFER: John 'Doc' Ball

Additional resources:

LEGENDARY SURFER: MARK CUNNINGHAM

2010-02-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

( Mark Cunningham image courtesy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin )

Aloha and welcome to this chapter of LEGENDARY SURFERS.

MARK CUNNINGHAM is probably the greatest bodysurfer of the modern era. This chapter is dedicated to him and the stoke he has shown all of us over the decades.

Excellent Mark Cunningham video from VBS

MARK CUNNINGHAM ARTICLES

"The Encyclopedia of Surfing," by Matt Warshaw: Mark Cunningham, p. 142.

Mark Cunningham Wins 2007 Pipeline Bodysurfing Championship
By Bernie Baker, Senior Hawaii Correspondent, SURFER Magazine

Finding just one decent day at Pipeline for Quiksilver’s Kaha Nalu Hanana `O Ehukai body surfing contest was a challenge – even guessing the right week was at best a ‘blind shot’. So far, this spring’s been as much a dribble-to-a-fizzle as the past winter months with bumpy swells, on-shore winds (Kona weather in April ?) or just NO swell at all. But Pipe lifeguard/contest director Rick Williams took an educated shot at just one day out of 14 and hit a bulls’ eye.

A week earlier everyone was surfing waist-high beach break a hundred yards away. Then the north Pacific coughed up a freak low near Tokyo, cherry blossoms retreated and we woke up to 8-foot Pipeline with the odd 2nd-reefer capping over. It took less than 2 hours for Rick to call in the 48-man entry list/ judging panel/ a tabulator – oh yeah, and an air horn to start Heat #1.

The two rounds of competition were tallied in the Quikslver “Eddie” format (no one gets knocked out), linked with a mid-day rescue race ‘challenge’ where rescuers had to first sprint the beach, then swim out to the Pipe line-up, grab a ‘victim’ and tow/drag him to shore through the surf and THEN the two still had to race to a finish line, - still coupled together. And twenty minutes later you were back in the water competing in Round #2!

The day was brilliant (the trade winds even hinted at making a return) and now-retired lifeguard Mark Cunningham was on a tear from his first wave on. Listen, you gotta be lucky, pick the right wave and be in the right spot, but for Cunningham it was more a case of gills flopping open, eyes receding in and scales replacing skin. The Transformer just turned 51 and the fish DNA in him isn’t going to dry up anytime soon. He leads the charge of former North Shore lifeguards and with this 2007 win – just one point ahead of active Pipe guard Abe Lerner 2nd, Todd Sells 3rd, Steven Hong 4th and Gavin Kennelly 5th, he’s not swimming away anytime soon. AND If you think the event’s just for the hard-core body whompers, remember harder-core surfers that included Brock Little, Mark Healey and Dave Wassel were already there at dawn, stretching for their heat before the contest had even started. The ocean’s a passion and so is surfing, no matter what it takes to get you to the line-up and with the Kaha Nalu Hanana you have a salute to the lifeguards for all they do, year-in-year-out, keeping everyone as safe as is humanly possible.

This contest is also a chance to get as many surfers as time will allow into the water for a few hours of incredible skill, uncrowded fun and at the end of the day a lot of genuine back-slapping, hand shakes and a whole lot of smiling from a rather intense group that takes their water time just as serious as anyone witha board. – Bernie Baker

The Guardian: A lifeguard looks back on 29 years of surf, sand and saving lives"
By Tim Ryan, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 5/1/2005

To many beach lovers, Mark Cunningham is living the life. This year alone he's been featured in singer/surfer Jack Johnson's surf film "A Broke Down Melody"; won the Mexico International Bodysurfing Competition at Puerto Escondido, known as "The Mexican Pipeline"; is co-writing a screenplay about bodysurfers; and is in talks with Quiksilver about various opportunities connected with the surf-wear company.

Most of his opportunities have come about while employed as a Honolulu City & County lifeguard and world-class body surfer who guarded the beach at Ehukai Beach Park for nearly two decades.

But Cunningham retired from 29 years of lifeguard duty on April 1.

"I have a whole other life ahead of me," says Cunningham, a fit 49-year-old at 6-foot-4 and 175 pounds.

It's a little before noon and Cunningham is hanging out at Johnson's house near Ehukai when he spots another buddy, singer Jackson Browne, in the adjoining cottage.

"Hey J.B., we surfing today or not?" Cunningham barks.

"Are there any waves?" the sleepy singer says, looking out at a flat North Shore.

"Couple feet at Lani's; enough to get the kinks out," Cunningham replies.

Browne first learned about Cunningham from Bruce Jenkins book "North Shore Chronicles."

"I had some friends who knew Mark and they introduced me," he said. "He's one of the most honest, real people I've ever met.

"We're very good friends in and out of the water. Mark reintroduced me to Oahu, the real Oahu, because I had been going straight to Kauai. I feel fortunate to know him."

Told later what Browne said, Cunningham blushes, and in an "aw shucks" manner whispers, "That's really nice of him."

Cunningham estimates he's saved "hundreds of people" while "losing about six" during his career, with 18 years spent at Ehukai, home to the Banzai Pipeline, one of the most dangerous surf spots in the world.

"There are a lot of lifeguards who have made a lot of rescues," he says. "Doesn't make any difference how many you save, you never forget the ones you don't."

"I was part of the community there. I saw kids grow up, learn to surf, check out the surf, graduate from high school, get married and divorced. A lifeguard gets to be a sort of gatekeeper, guardian, an overseer. It was the perfect fit for me."

IT WAS A cool November morning several years ago when Cunningham and water photographer extraordinaire Don King stopped to check out Pipeline surf.

The gentle southern breeze blew offshore, exaggerating the sounds of crashing surf. The two watermen's instincts told them that Pipeline was living up to its fearsome reputation.

The pair saw a dozen swell lines of double-overhead waves stacked to the horizon before exploding in shallow water on the coral reef. Then they saw a surfer take a horrendous wipeout.

"I remember moaning, 'Oh God!'" Cunningham says.

Seconds passed before the surfer's board rocketed to the surface through 10 feet of swirling whitewater and "tombstoned." That happens when the surfer's body remains pinned underwater, but his board pops through the surface standing straight up like a grave marker.

"Two more waves passed over and he still didn't come up," Cunningham said. "Don and I stripped to our trunks and bolted for the water."

Cunningham was the first to reach the man but had to use the leash to pull the unconscious surfer to the surface. The first thing he felt was "a limp foot."

"Don and I wrestled the rest of the body to the surface, put him on the board where I tried to do mouth to mouth," Cunningham said. "But there was this awful gurgling sound and my breath was blowing out the side of his neck."

The surfer's throat had been sliced by one of the board's fins. He died on the beach.

Mark Cunnigham's lifeguard partner at Ehukai was Rick Williams. Williams says, "You can count on Mark; he always cared for this beach and any person on it."

SITTING IN THE cluttered living room of his rented beach house a 10-minute drive from Pipeline, Cunningham wears baggy surf shorts and a black T-shirt with the silhouette of a bodysurfer, arms extended like wings, sliding left under a curl in the Metawai Islands. It's a shot of Cunningham for Johnson's and Chris Malloy's surf video "A Broke Down Melody."

"God, I'm so embarrassed wearing a T-shirt with me on it," Cunningham says, quickly removing it.

He grew up in Niu Valley and, like the other neighborhood kids, first learned to board surf. In his early teens he went through "a crazy growth spurt" and became "incredibly gangly, tall, lanky and uncoordinated."

"My board surfing was a comedy routine," he said. "I was swimming more than riding."

But Cunningham also didn't like being "on display."

"On a surfboard it's always like 'Hey look at me,' because you're standing up and I was so tall everyone always could see me," he said.

A lifeguard friend suggested Cunningham get a pair of fins and go to nearby Sandy Beach. After his first session, Cunningham was hooked.

"You're just so close to the wave and usually hidden by it, enveloped in a very personal, one-on-one experience," he says. "There's a sense of being a part of the ocean as opposed to being on top of it. I love touching the curl. It's like a fire hose spraying water against your chest ..."

Cunningham rarely does tricks when he bodysurfs, preferring "to make myself as much a part of the wave as possible, become synchronized."

He also took an early cue from Pipeline surfing master Gerry Lopez to ride waves as far as possible.

"I love long rides," he said. "I get a wave at Pipe and ride up on shore if I can.

"You watch board surfers and they kick out early with their chest in the air. Waves are precious resources and that wave will never be there again, so ride it for all it's worth. Waves are a terrible thing to waste."

IN THE RECENT second annual Puerto Escondido contest against some 30 competitors, Cunningham says "no waves were under four feet." In truth, the waves were so large that on finals day no one but Cunningham entered the water.

"I spanked some of those younger competitors," Cunningham says in a rare display of zeal. "But the surf was awesome. I got the longest rides of my life and I all I needed was Speedos and a pair of fins."

Cunningham is reluctant to talk about his contest dominance but records show that for some 15 years, he never lost when the North Shore was pumping. He was Hawaii's body surfing champion several times, and from 1976 -- the year he became a Hawaii lifeguard -- through the early '90s, he dominated Oahu's best bodysurfing spots: Point Panic, Makapuu, Sandy Beach and Pipeline.

"I really am a one-trick pony," Cunningham says. "I don't have a lot of other skills."

It's not unusual to find Cunningham in the Pipeline lineup competing with dozens of board surfers. While surfers may stay in one takeoff spot, Cunningham is perpetual motion, swimming on his back or breast stroking to a new spot, or even diving underwater to see how the reef is affecting the swell because "position is everything."

"The key element is the takeoff," he says. "Too soon and you may go straight to the bottom and get crushed; too late and you'll get pitched over the falls."

Mark Cunningham still spends lots of time at the ocean, mostly bodysurfing.

BODYSURFING WENT hand in hand with lifeguarding for Cunningham, who began his career in Santa Barbara while attending UCSB, before returning to Hawaii to work as a lifeguard. After brief stints at Sandy Beach and at Waimea Bay, Cunningham was assigned to Ehukai Beach Park.

"You mean they'll pay me to go to the beach?" Cunningham jokes. "I get to be outdoors and play in the ocean? Oh, I think I'll take that job."

But he worried about becoming a career lifeguard. A Punahou graduate, Cunningham had grown up believing he was supposed to become "a banker, attorney or politician wearing an inside-out aloha shirt down on Bishop Street." He obtained a real estate license but lasted less than a month working in an office.

"I was terrible and never sold an ounce of anything," Cunningham says. "I knew what I was supposed to be doing."

That decision contributed to several personal problems. He realized that he probably couldn't afford to buy a home here and he and his wife, whom he's been separated from for about a year, never had children.

"I'm not regretful about what I've done, but about some of the things I haven't done," he says. "The separation has been very difficult for me. I didn't see it coming, though I'm sure there were signs I ignored."

Did he spend too much time thinking about saving others and playing in the ocean?

"Probably; I let a lot of things out there get in the way of what's in here," he says touching his heart. "You know, I think I would have been a good dad."

For a moment, Cunningham's hawk-like eyes get misty, then he changes the subject.

"My passion for the ocean went hand in hand with my job," he said. "I'm lucky. Like Buffett says -- it's not bad to love your work."

CUNNINGHAM SPENT some of his time living within walking distance of his Ehukai lifeguard tower.

"I was part of the community there," he says. "I saw kids grow up, learn to surf, check out the surf, graduate from high school, get married and divorced.

"A lifeguard gets to be a sort of gatekeeper, guardian, an overseer. It was the perfect fit for me."

"Mark, day in and day out was a total professional," said Rick Williams, Cunningham's longtime lifeguard partner at Ehukai.

Like his fellow lifeguards, Cunningham knew how to spot potential rescue victims.

"Very pale, out of shape, and wearing their fins across the sand," Cunningham says. Williams says Cunningham was "one of the best" at talking people out of going into dangerous ocean conditions.

"He would just chat and point out all the dangers out and make them think they decided to stay on shore," Williams said.

Cunningham calls it reverse psychology.

"I may say I don't know how good a swimmer you are but the conditions look really dangerous for me and I live and work here, and I really don't want to get hurt going after you," he said. "Or I'll ask them if they've noticed that no one, even surfers, is in the water today. Why do you think that is?"

But when people still go in -- like some U.S. soldiers at Waimea Bay a few years ago -- and Cunningham had to make it through a pounding 6-foot shorebreak to rescue them, he's not above delivering a stern lecture.

"Why didn't you listen to me!" he told one soldier. "Now we're both going to get pounded getting in."

He's also heard his share of excuses from rescuees: cramps, not seeing warning signs, or not hearing lifeguards bellow warnings over bullhorns.

"Visitors who don't live by an ocean seem to have tunnel vision," Cunningham said. "It's a nice sunny day, it's warm, and they look at the shoreline and the water looks blue and inviting.

"They don't bother to look way offshore where waves are huge and no one is out."

EVEN CUNNINGHAM has had his share of close calls. He vividly recalls one day in 1986 when he got caught in the "Death Trench," a shallow sandbar area north of Pipeline.

"I just wanted a short swim," said Cunningham, who brought his rescue tube with him. "I hopped into the rip to see if I could make it past the shorebreak and I couldn't."

Currents and whitewater from Pipeline and Pupukea beach areas converged on him in a brown, frothy swirling soup. While floundering over the sandbar, a "huge" set of waves approached.

"I couldn't swim in or out so all I could do was take a deep breath and dive as deep as I could and get rolled," he said.

A trio of triple overhead waves swept over him, each one pinning him to the sandbar.

"I knew I had to get air so I had to climb the line of the rescue tube to the surface," Cunningham said. "When I popped through, another wave nailed me."

That was followed by more waves each one holding him underwater, until he washed ashore.

"I thought I was going to die; I'd never been so scared," he said. "You need those experiences to humble you. It makes you take a step back and fully realize you're not in control out here."

During a recent visit to Ehukai, Williams and other lifeguards greeted Cunningham like a member of the team.

"He's the best," Williams says. "You can count on Mark; he always cared for this beach and any person on it."

"Ninety-five percent of success is showing up," Cunningham says. "I went to work; I did my job."

Cunningham is standing on the empty beach in front of his house, staring at waves breaking over a shallow reef. Cunningham sees bodysurfing potential where others would see lots of nasty coral cuts.

"The beauty of the North Shore is overwhelming to me, so real, so honest," he says. "I feel whole, in tune here. I think that's OK."

Legendary Hawaiian Waterman Discusses HIs Career on the North Shore - Interview by Chris Mauro, SURFER Magazine, November 2005.

In April of 2005, Mark Cunningham, 55, celebrated the end of his stellar 30-year Hawaiian lifeguard career, most of which was spent on the North Shore of Oahu with a very special breed of waterman. His list of former work colleagues is a veritable “who’s who” of Hawaiian surfing lore: Buffalo Keaulana, Eddie Aikau, Darrick Doerner, Rell Sunn and Tiger Espere. And while Cunningham himself has achieved legendary status, he’s done so in quite a different way. Aside from being the man who spent most of his days on the tower at Ehukai Beach Park, a.k.a. Pipeline, he’s earned a solid reputation as the world’s preeminent bodysurfer. His first North Shore Bodysurfing Championship came while he was in high school in 1974. His last one came in 2000, at the age of 44. In between he nabbed roughly 14 other titles, but even more impressive, thousands of friends and acquaintances from all over the world. In fact, he’s become adoptive father to many North Shore surfers, including our Guest Editors Jack Johnson and Chris Malloy, who strongly suggested it was a good time to catch up with Mr. Cunningham. We couldn’t agree more. — Chris Mauro

CM: So is it true you actually surf really well?

Ah, that’s a stretch. But I really do enjoy surfing. I have what my friend Jackson Browne calls a “gentleman’s thruster.” But you’ll rarely see me on the North Shore because I just don’t want to make an ass of myself. I don’t want to blow my cover. I’ll go to less crowded spots when I go and do what I call my “standup comic routine.”

CM: Where did the conscious decision to be primarily a bodysurfer originate?

Well, I started surfing a reef off Niu Valley where I grew up, but it was pre-leash. So to be a surfer back then you had to be a strong swimmer and you sort of had to know how to bodysurf so that you could ride waves in after your board. And sort of an older neighborhood guy, wonderful guy, Herbie Kaninson, he was a Niu Valley local out there, and he was lifeguarding at Sandy Beach, and he saw me swimming and bodysurfing after waves. And he goes, “Hey, you’re doing that more than you’re standing on the board. Why don’t you try out these fins and come to the beach with me?” So I did and I just took a real liking to it. I was pretty tall and gangly and uncoordinated as an adolescent so I was falling off my boards, and this was shortboard revolution era—when designs were just really crude, and there was a lot of crap out there that just did not work. So maybe that’s my excuse for not being such a good surfer. But my long, skinny, gangly body fit in at Sandy Beach and Makapuu real easy. I just really enjoyed it.

CM: When would you say your relationship with Pipeline really began?

When I first started going out there, I was actually on break from school at UC Santa Barbara, where I was playing water polo and on the swim team. I was in the best shape of my life. There I was, 20 years old and just fit as a fiddle, and stoked out of my mind. I could not swim enough. Mind you, this was before Boogie boards were invented. So imagine the Pipeline lineup without any sponges out there. And then with the advent of the leash and Boogie boards, and just the skill level of today’s surfers is just mind-boggling how good those guys are out there. I mean, back in the day, early on, it was just like, “Wow! You can surf Pipeline?” And now everyone and his brother is out there. Back 30 years ago, there was still lots of room for improvement of what could be done.

CM: I think what’s so impressive about your work out there is that you’ve shattered the average career arc of a Pipeline surfer.

Well yeah, that’s because they’re taking off at the peak and just getting the crap beat out of ’em [laughs]. I’m waiting on the shoulder picking and choosing. I mean, when I was younger and stronger and more flexible and would heal faster, you know, I took a handful of crazy drops. But bodysurfing is just such a different animal than surfing.

CM: But these days, and for a while now really, you play a patriarchal role over there on the North Shore. How did that evolve?

I feel real fortunate. There’s an old saying by, I think by Woody Allen, that 90% of success is simply showing up. And that’s all I did. I didn’t set out to be a Pipeline guy, it just was the natural thing. It felt good. And I was just so fortunate because I knew how cool it was, and how beautiful it was, that I said, “I gotta live here.” And so for many years I had little beach houses on either side of Ehukai Beach Park because I just wanted to see it morning, noon and night. I made it a point to live there. And I guess that’s something that played a huge part.

CM: Do you still see people dedicating themselves to it like that?

A few. Today, in regards to really dedicating yourself and saying, “This is what I want,” one classic example of that is Tamayo Perry. Local boy living there and he’s just really said, “This is my course and I’m gonna be one of the guys at Pipeline.” He’s really, you know, dedicated himself to living there and being on it and checking on it morning, noon and night. Another guy who’s dedication I’ll never forget is Joey Buran. For years leading up to 1984 when he won the Masters, he was truly devoted to the place.

CM: Was there ever a time when you were over it?

Yeah, towards the end of my beach career in the Pipeline guard tower I was getting a little jaded. I was definitely getting a little cynical, a little over it. But as soon as I took my new job at the headquarters in Honolulu I was more of a dawn patrol weekend warrior and I just got fully stoked on it because, once again, it became more of a treat, you know, it wasn’t a job anymore.

CM: That rekindled your fire.

It really did and now that I’ve moved back out there I’m just stoked as can be.

CM: Aside from the waves, what is it about the North Shore that makes it so alluring?

You know, so many people are like-minded out there, that’s part of the community. They may not be ripping surfers, but you know there’s a good chance maybe they’re a shaper, or a glasser, or they’re just stoked on the beauty of the North Shore. Whether it’s spring, summer, or fall. What’s funny is when I used to work, I’d sit at the tower for eight and-a-half hours and there’d be water patrol and beach patrols interspersed there. And my wife Linny and I had a house a couple hundred yards away, next door to the Johnsons’ house there, and I’d go home and drop off, change out of my clothes, and sit out on the deck in the backyard and go, “F— -, look how cool this is!” Just being back, away from my office by 200 yards, gave me a whole new perspective on the thing and I’d just be enamored, hypnotized by how gorgeous and dynamic it is there.

CM: What’s it like to have your backyard invaded by outsiders year after year?

Honestly, I just have nothing but admiration for surfers from around the world who save up and make that pilgrimage. I was so fortunate in that, you know, the North Shore being the Mecca that it is, that people from around the world come by and inevitably they stop by the Pipeline tower and go, “Is this Pipeline?” Because there are no signs -— not a damn sign on the entire North Shore to tell you where you are —- so they’d have to come to the lifeguard tower and we’d be talking story. And they come from around the world: Australians, Brazilians, Japanese, East Coast, West Coast, and a lot of them come back year after year. Personally, I just really admire them for saving the money and putting it aside and doing a little splurge there for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. That’s really admirable.

CM: It must have been fun watching kids playing in the shorebreak turn into full-on gladiators.

Oh yeah. I mean, one of my favorite memories is actually of the Johnson family. It was this typical spring day at Pupukea, which was the Johnsons’ backyard before they moved down to Pipeline. Anyway, I’m in the tower, and I look over, and there’s dad, Jeff Johnson, and three sons, all out surfing together. Pete, the middle one, was paddling back out watching his old man grab the first wave of this beautiful little set. Trent, the eldest son, was on the next, and then little menehune Jack was dropping in on the shoulder as the rest of them were paddling back out, hooting and hollering for him to go. I just remember watching them that day, thinking, “Man, how cool is that?” Even mom joined them. That’s when it hits you that this really is a neighborhood, not just an amusement park. These people are connected. This is their backyard.

CM: How will you stay in shape now that you’re officially retiring as a lifeguard?

Just continue playing, you know—paddleboarding, snorkeling, bodysurfing, boardsurfing. I really love paddleboarding, that’s one thing that has really kept me in the game for a lot of years. I just did the race to Molokai with a partner, so I went halfway. But what’s funny is I’m not a real disciplined guy.

CM: Are you sure?

I’m positive, believe me. I need events, whether it’s a rough water swim or a paddleboard race, to sort of train for and keep me motivated. The kids and chicks are starting to beat me more and more, and I don’t want to make a total ass of myself. If I didn’t have competitions to prepare for, I’m afraid what kind of shape I’d let myself get into.

CM: As a Hawaiian lifeguard, do you get the sense that you’re part of a pretty heavy fraternity of legends?

It’s something I’m really proud of. Absolutely. To think that when I first came into the department Butch Van Artsdalen was with us. Tiger Espere, who recently passed away, was a lifeguard at one time. Eddie Aikau of course was a lifeguard with us out at the North Shore. Brian and Buffalo Keaulana were lifeguards; former world surfing champion Jimmy Blears was a Hawaiian lifeguard; tow-in pioneer Darrick Doerner was a lifeguard with us; Rell Sunn was a lifeguard with us. God, I’m just so stoked to be part of that crew. That’s really been the best part of my career.

CM: Do you consider yourself a “waterman?”

Funny you should ask. I’ll tell you this, after being on a boat during that paddle race I know I’m not a seaman, I’m not a sailor. That’s not a real good thing for a macho lifeguard to ’fess up to. But I get seasick just looking at boats. The classic saying about that is, “First you’re afraid you’re gonna die, and then you’re afraid you won’t.” Seasickness, motion sickness, is just the worst ever.

CM: You’re not used to being above the water I guess.

That’s right. I’m rarely high and dry.

CM: By the way, one thing that’s sort of falling under the lifeguards’ jurisdiction is the regulation of tow-in surfers. Crowds and such have gotten pretty out of hand at places like Jaws. How likely is it that local governments will just go, “All right, you guys are done, no more,” especially if something happens?

Oh yeah, it’s probably not if, it’s when. That fatal accident will happen, whether it’s pilot error or someone gets towed into something way too big. And isn’t that just kind of funny, or a shame... it just seems like government regulation so goes against my grain of surfing, that I was brought up to. Wave-riding was to get away from rules and regs. It’s supposed to be fun.

CM: How do you keep it fun?

Just keeping it in perspective really. We are so blessed and so lucky to be surfers. I mean, to have the luxury of even thinking of not having to work or not having to struggle to get food or put a roof over your head. I mean, you look at the world news and most people are so struggling in the world, for us to have the luxury and vanity to go dabble in the ocean is just unbelievable. I can’t describe the sense of gratitude I have at this point in my life for just my health, my fitness, all my friends.

CM: By doing that, is it a little easier to let a wave go by? Y’know, give it away?

It does, yeah. And that’s one thing, I’ve had my share of waves. It’s like the buffet line: I just keep going back for more. So it’s real easy for me to pass on a session or let someone else have a wave, because I always know there’s gonna be more.

CM: With the renaissance period we’re living in right now in terms of design and experimentation, is interest in bodysurfing going up again?

I think so. I can see where people are going, “Well, let’s check out bodysurfing too.” And I just think it’s cool, it’s just another way for people to experience waves and the ocean. And I think it will give them a whole new appreciation for their boardsurfing. They may not take it so much for granted, or it’ll give them another way to get in the water, and sort of find a new lineup, find a different way to ride waves. I think it’s neat that you’re seeing bodysurfing segments in movies like Jack’s and Chris’s.

CM: Needless to say you’d recommend it be a part of every surfer’s repertoire?

Oh yeah, definitely. It breaks up the monotony, it’s another form of wave-riding, it keeps you fit, and who knows, it just could save your ass. But most important, I think, is it just gives you a new appreciation and a new style, you know.

CM: I guess the best part too is you don’t really need that great of a wave.

Sometimes I don’t even need waves. I just need to go swimming in the ocean. And I wish that was something more people would get hip to. You don’t need fins, you don’t even need a board, just strip down to your trunks or wetsuit and dive into a shorebreak or go swim in the ocean, look at it from a different vantage point, as opposed to jockeying to the prime spot in the lineup and putting out the vibe like, “Next one is mine.” The ride itself is only a tiny fraction of it all.

... The actual act of riding a wave is like 5% of our experience. Getting to the beach park or the bluff and checking it out, going down the trail, walking across the beach, you know, sort of posting up, doing your stretches, putting on your sunscreen, paddling out. Without all that we’d be missing something very special. I dig the whole scene at the beach and in the shoreline just diving under waves and talking to friends or looking back at the beach and your lineups and landmarks of the neighborhood back there. It’s just the whole dance.

The 1800s

2010-02-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

Aloha and welcome to this chapter of Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS.

"The 1800s: Surfing's Darkest Days" is the story of when surfing nearly died out in Hawaii and the rest of Polynesia, before it was adopted elsewhere on the planet.

The chapter itself is part of LEGENDARY SURFERS: Volume 1, (c)2005 and still in print:

About Volume 1

Although this chapter was previously only available as part of the print edition, earlier versions of it were available here in the 1990s. This iteration is the best thus far.

In the long history of surfing, the 1800s is the period most misunderstood. Many writers have boiled it down to a simple story of Christian missionaries suppressing native past times. The real story is much more complicated.

Please read and/or download the full story:

THE 1800s: SURFING'S DARKEST DAYS

Additional Resources:

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NC Bodyboarding, 1907

2010-01-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

Joseph 'Skipper' Funderburg, author of Surfing on the Cape Fear Coast, has continued to research the old postcards of North Carolina beach scenes, some of which he has in his book. Last month, a postcard originally dated as printed circa 1908-1909, turns out to have been printed circa 1906-1907. Another copy of the postcard hand-dated 1909 has been found with a hand-date of 1907.

The postcard is a photographic view of a large crowd of people surf bathing on the ocean side of the Sea Shore Hotel. The 1907 postcard clearly shows a surfer on a Hawaiian style body board. This type of board has been called a paipo ever since the 1960s, but is more accurately termed a kioe.

The postcard illustrates the earliest image of a surfer and surfboard on Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. The 1907 postcard reads, “The Sea Shore Hotel, Wrightsville Beach, NC.” The author wrote “How about a swimming lesson?” The postcard is hand dated "3/24/07" ...

According to Steve Massengill, author of A North Carolina Postcard Album, “I am delighted to be able to support Funderburg in his effort to add to, and alter the history of surfing in the United States.” Steve Massengill continues, “Regarding the 1907 postcard, it was not uncommon for postcard manufacturers to use the same negative when printing new postcards.” “One will see the same scene on various postcards with different dates and used on different style cards – undivided back and divided back, etc.”

“The companies would use different coloring and sometimes add small details and crop out others... The transcription of the message on the front of the postcard was published in 1907, but the photograph could date a year or more earlier... Funderburg’s research and statements upholds the accuracy and authenticity of the postcard.” Steve Massengill is an expert on the history of picture postcards, having worked in the field of non-textual materials as a public historian and having published several works in the field.

Prior to the days of automobile access, the location is on the old railroad line at Station Three. The Sea Shore Hotel had a magnificent view out to sea and a gently sloping beach leading to the ocean and the surf.

We do not know exactly when surf bathers began to use Hawaiian kioe templates. Skipper and I have corresponded with each other on this question and, although we cannot prove it, we believe that the introduction of the Hawaiian kioe was due to Alexander Hume Ford, a South Carolina native who played a big part in the revival of surfing at Waikiki during the first decade of the Twentieth Century.

Authentication and Validation

The 1907 postcard came to Skipper's attention when The Dr. Robert M. Fales Photo Collection was recently digitized. The collection is comprised of thousands of 35 MM slides, plus an index catalog that contains slide numbers and brief descriptions. Unfortunately, Dr. Fales did not photograph the backs of the postcards or photocards, but he did capture many images on the photographic side. The State of North Carolina provided the grant to digitize Dr. Fales invaluable photographic collection.

“I really enjoy learning about the history of surfing from Joseph “Skipper” Funderburg and the history of postcards & postcard art from Steve Massengill,” said Kim Cumber, Non-Textual Materials Archivist, North Carolina State Archves, Raleigh, North Carolina. “The Dr. Robert M. Fales Photographic Collection is indeed wonderful, and I love the State of North Carolina grant program that paid for the digitations.”

According to Funderburg, Wrightsville Beach postcards have always been popular among collectors and usually command decent prices. Postcard companies would hire photographers, either local or itinerant, to take pictures of tourist spots. Then the companies would produce multiple printed cards of photos in hopes of cashing in on tourists and vacationers mailing cards back to loved ones. North Carolina postcards were not prevalent until after 1906, and postcards prior to 1912 were printed in Germany. After 1912, postcards were printed in England and the USA, due to the war with Germany.

Antique or penny postcards, evoke memories of the past and provide an interesting glimpse into social, cultural and material history of the time. Historians use real photo postcards and their postmarks, to document local historical events. Vintage waterfront postcards, in particular, are prized by seaside historians. Postcard collecting is surpassed in popularity, only by coin and stamp collecting. The Golden Age of postcards is 1898 – 1913.

Skipper’s research & postcard work is validated and authenticated by North Carolina Division of History & Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina. “Courtesy, New Hanover Public Library, Robert M. Fales Collection.”

For more info on Skipper's research, please go to:

http://legendarysurfers.com/blog/2009/02/wrightsville-nc-1909_13.html

http://legendarysurfers.com/blog/2009/02/wrightsville-nc-1919.html

http://legendarysurfers.com/blog/2009/02/east-coast-surfing-prior-to-duke.html

1920s St. Ouen's Bay

2009-12-29T18:40:00.000-08:00

Some of the intriguing 1920s images from Pete Robinson's Museum of British Surfing:

Jeremy Oxenden wrote about the image above: "Happy New Year, Malcolm. I was very pleased to find Peter Robinson and the UK Surfing Museum from the Bing site links. That is Oxo with the 5.5 prone surfboard. He surfed in Hawaii some time between 1919 - 1923. It must have been great fun back then. The Island Surf Club of Jersey UK was formed in 1923..."

Jeremy added this about the top image: "The Girls in the beach hut are Dot and Ching Martin, left and right, and Pat Oxenden in the middle. The beach hut went up in 1924. The German Army knocked all the beach huts down in 1940. My Grand Parents re-built their hut just after the war (WWII). It was their top priority. We still have the beach hut and still surf from there... Thank you for including Oxo and his surfing Gang."

Waikiki Surf Club Newsletter

2009-12-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

Ian Lind continues documenting the days of the Waikiki Surf Club, thanks to the collection of memorabilia his father John Lind left behind.

The latest is a series of scanned images of the club's newsletter "The Surfer" dated 1954-1956.

For more on the Lind collection of Waikiki Surf Club images, please go to:

Waikiki Surf Club Images by John Lind

Also, In 2002, John Lind was asked for his recollections of the founding of the Molokai to Oahu canoe race on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

These are saved by Ian at: Molokai to Oahu canoe race history

Shorty Bronkhorst (1936-2009)

2009-11-30T13:50:00.000-08:00

Legendary South African surfer Shorty Bronkhorst recently passed on.

( Shorty Bronkhorst, [left] and a friend surfing plywood boards in Durban in the 1950s - photo courtesy of Weekend Post )

[ From: "Death of SA surfing pioneer Shorty Bronkhorst in J-Bay," by Robbie Hift and Clayton Truscott, HERALD, November 30, 2009 ]

THE South African surfing community is shocked and saddened by the death of legendary surfing enthusiast Shorty Bronkhorst, 73, in Jeffreys Bay...

Bronkhorst was a pioneer who first surfed Jeffreys Bay in the early 1960s. He started surfing in the summer of 1949 in Durban and was still doing it more than 50 years later at Super Tubes and Surfers Point...

He started out as a professional lifesaver in Durban where he surfed on 5m boards made out of plywood at South Beach, North Beach and the Bay of Plenty.

When Bronkhorst turned 19 in 1956, he and a friend hitchhiked across Africa via Johannesburg, the former Lourenco Marques and Rhodesia, on to Uganda, Sudan and Egypt, eventually arriving in London.

In 1957 he went to Jersey and began building the first surfboards there and was invited to do surf promotions for a travel company. The big tour buses full of spectators arrived to watch Bronkhorst and his friends from the long breakwater.

They were called “the Hawaiian surfboard riders from South Africa”.

Bronkhorst once said: “We first surfed Jeffreys Bay in the early sixties. It was a bit of a secret spot then. I fell in love with the place as soon as I arrived. We used to ride Supertubes on a primo day with just three guys in the water and 3m waves pealing from Boneyards down to the Point.”

He offered this advice for fellow surfers: “Surfing has always been a noble sport. We should try to keep it that way. Tell the youngsters to be polite in the water. Show some respect towards others and you will be appreciated much more than if you just drop in on everybody else.

“It’s unnecessary to sneak around the waiting surfers and catch a sly wave. Rather just get in line and wait your turn. The guys will think more of you if you do so.”

Eastern Province Surfing president Etienne Venter said he was deeply saddened by the news and had nothing but praise for Bronkhorst...

“He’s one of the biggest legends of South African surfing [said Eastern Province Surfing president Etienne Venter]. He always greeted you and was really friendly. It’s such a terrible loss for us, he was really loved by everyone.”

Democratic Alliance MP Tim Harris... said: “The African Surfer crew sends condolences to the family and friends of Shorty Bronkhorst – one of the original surfing pioneers on the continent. We never knew Shorty, but he and his crew were among the first explorers of surfing in the rest of Africa.

“We are grateful for the path they blazed in promoting surfing in South Africa and on the rest of the continent. May you rest in peace Shorty.”

There [was]... a paddle-out at Surfers Point... November 28, at 10am. Bronkhorst’s ashes [were]... scattered in the sea off the beach where he did most of his surfing.

"50 Greatest Surfers"

2009-11-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

As part of its 50th anniversary, SURFER magazine compiled a list of the "50 Greatest Surfers of All Time."

Surfer polled pro surfers, photographers, filmmakers, journalists, captains of the industry, and legendary surfers themselves to cast votes to determine the list. Please go to:

Surfer Magazine: 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time

There is also a list of who participated in the poll.

Additionally, for each of the 50 surfers listed, there is a link to a brief bio about them. Nice feature.

Personally, I have a lot of problems with this list, but who am I? All of us surfers' lists would be different. For me, I guess it boils down to what one's definition is of the word "greatest" and "best."

Lisa Andersen

2009-10-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

[ Excerpts from: "The Lioness in Winter," by Shawn Price, Orange Coast Magazine, October 2009 ]

... Lisa Lorraine Andersen was born in New York and grew up the free-willed tomboy nicknamed “Trouble” in the non-surf-centered lands of Maryland and Virginia. Finally, at age 13, she learned to ride on borrowed boards off Ormand Beach, Fla., a few blocks from the family home. “I started surfing right after my parents told me I couldn’t do it,” Andersen told a Brazilian TV reporter many years later.

Once she got her first in-control ride, she was hooked. Riding a wave felt instinctively right for her at a time when nothing else in her life was.

She ran away from home at 16, blaming a stormy home life with a violent, alcoholic father who Andersen says smashed her only surfboard in front of her. Her first plane ride was the one-way ticket she bought in 1985 that took her from Florida to L.A. and then to Huntington Beach, off to become “the No. 1 surfer in the world,” her farewell note said. She swears she didn’t even know for sure if the title existed.

After her arrival, Andersen spent a couple of years “couch surfing” among friends and occasionally sleeping on the beach as she worked herself up to the pro tour. She showed glimpses of greatness, but they ebbed and flowed as she bounced around the top 10 of the Association of Surfing Professionals’ Women’s World Tour for six years. Only after having her daughter, Erica, did things finally gel into a 1994 world championship. Motherhood seemed to focus her phenomenal energy.

She followed that first world title with three more. Her style was revolutionary, because she’d surfed around boys as she grew up, guys who actually encouraged her. She idolized world champs Martin Potter, Shaun Tomson, and especially Tom Curren, and developed her style mostly unaware of how girls were supposed to surf. She exhibited both a power and refined, balletlike movement on the face of waves. Shy but steely. Graceful and feminine, yet fiercely competitive. Soon, even the guys were watching her heats.

“It’s this slam-dance idea,” says Chris Mauro, former editor-in-chief of Surfer magazine, describing the style Andersen was quickly defining. “She was this punk-rock chick who could fit in with the boys.”

In 1996, Andersen made news when she became the first woman in 15 years to grace the cover of Surfer — an image of her smashing the lip of a wave with the blunt caption “Lisa Andersen surfs better than you.” It was a knife to the heart of surfing machismo.

Mauro believes Andersen was the right woman at the right time. “In the longboard era [of the ’60s], women like the Calhouns [Marge and daughters Candy and Robin] were respected. When the shortboard revolution took over, the women fell by the wayside because it wasn’t this graceful kind of thing. Lisa was transformative.”

Her presence on the tour was a marketer’s dream. Surfwear company Quiksilver built the Roxy brand mostly around her image and a pair of men’s boardshorts she helped redesign. She lit an explosion of women into surfing, both professional and recreational. Women’s brands and magazines sprang up, with women’s apparel playing a key role in the surf industry boom of the ’90s.

Mauro says the empowerment message was, first, practical. Women could surf and “didn’t have to worry about their bikini riding up their ass anymore. The shorts were cute and they worked. And it coincided with the [1999 World Cup-winning U.S.] women’s soccer team. They fed off each other. [Women] weren’t going to run out and buy a soccer uniform, but they could go out and buy Roxy stuff.”

In Phil Jarratt’s 2006 history of Quiksilver, “The Mountain and the Wave,” Roxy boss Randy Hild gushed: “She’d been with Roxy since ’92, but her star was just starting to shine. She became the face of the whole thing. Lisa just shattered the beach-babe-or-butch stereotype of women’s surfing. … We couldn’t have dreamed of a better brand image. She was — and is — one of a kind.”

While a phenomenon to the outside world, Andersen struggled in relationships. As Mauro says, years on the road make pro surfers “pretty feral.” It’s a restless life set to a clock of ever-fleeting swell. Life lived out of a suitcase. Nights in hotels, on friends’ floors, in boats, planes, and tents. Days are for honing craft and nights for blowing off steam, or simply killing time. It’s a lot like summer camp, right down to the romances, which start intensely and fizzle as fast as they begin.

“It’s really tough to reconcile,” Mauro says. “And she didn’t have a family to depend on.”

She began a relationship with Renato Hickel, the tour’s head judge at the time, but the closeness of their professional lives cramped her style. Once their relationship began, Hickel had to recuse himself from judging her heats. Their marriage sputtered shortly after Erica’s birth. She and Hickel remain friends, even occasional allies when it comes to getting things right on the current women’s tour.

She’d competed while pregnant and rushed back to competition just weeks after Erica’s birth. Though she continued to win, her body was not ready for the stress of the tour and contests. A degenerative disk condition was beginning to make surfing difficult during her 1994-97 championship run. By late 1998, competing became almost impossible.

Andersen says she intended to retire that year, but like a lot of top athletes, finding the exit was harder than she expected. Life on tour was like a riptide, pulling her back out for one last great ride to shore. Besides, her back problems deprived her of a certain grand finale. She competed sporadically the next few years, before finally retiring in 2003.

A few years earlier, a relationship with the father of her son, Mason, ended. An outsider to the surf world, Mason’s father probably never stood a chance against the lure of what led Andersen away from home in the first place — the competitive life that defined her then.

In 2005, Quiksilver offered her the job of global brand ambassador for Roxy, a role that would make her part coach, part businesswoman, part enforcer of contest guidelines, part confidante to the young women on the tour. It offered her the chance to take a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-did role that many girls competing during Andersen’s career could have used—especially from someone who really had seen it all...

“I was a little overwhelmed,” she says now. “There were just all these different people who could relate to me somehow. They’re still dealing with the same issues. I think a lot of girls are afraid to step outside and do something where they’re going to get judged. I dressed a certain way and a lot of people didn’t like that. I wasn’t really girlie. … They need to be inspired by somebody that did it without worrying about what other people say or think. They need that little nudge.”

Rochelle Ballard, a former World Tour rival and one of Andersen’s closest friends, distills Andersen’s continuing appeal: “Women are empowered by seeing a woman fulfill her own dream and find her own balance. She had something driving her more than her goals. Because of the timing, she was the Wonder Woman of the group. In art and entertainment there is always someone that rises to be an iconic figure.”

And now, perhaps because of all that, Ballard says, “Lisa is the only woman who was taken care of by the industry after her competitive career. Now she has the opportunity to share herself with the next generation so they can say, ‘Look what Lisa did.’ You may peak in your career, but you keep growing. Life is creation. You make your own rules.”

... Andersen concedes that the elder stateswoman role is an adjustment. “There’s a couple of times in the last four years when my brain would go: ‘OK, I could start training in January.’ In your head you try to plan it out and see if it works. Then I think: ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ ”

... Andersen is thrilled to see more strategy in women’s heats now. Thrilled to see more training. More prep. And more respect given to female athletes. “You should see the game faces now,” Andersen says about the contests she visits. “I walk around telling people to lighten up.” She forgets for the moment how intimidating she was before heats, her head shrouded in a beach towel...

Achievements in Surfing

4 consecutive world titles (1994-97)
24 contest victories, including wins at events in Europe, Australia, and Huntington Beach, where she won the U.S. Open twice (1994 and ’97), and the OP Pro (1995)
1987 Association of Surfing Professionals Women’s Rookie of the Year
No. 76 among the “Greatest Sportswomen of the Century,” Sports Illustrated for Women
1992, 1994, 1996-1999 Surfer magazine Readers Poll winner
Named one of the “25 Most Influential Surfers of the Century” by Surfer magazine
Eleven top-10 season finishes, and seven top-five finishes on the Women’s World Tour
1998 Female Athlete of the Year, Condé Nast Sports for Women magazine

Chris Hawk (1951-2009)

2009-10-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

Chris Hawk, shaper and surfer, has passed on.

“Back in the day," recounted Surfer's Hall of Fame Founder Aaron Pai, "he was one of the best surfers in Huntington Beach and he has been a master shaper since the 70’s. We are super stoked to be able to induct Chris Hawk into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame.”

As one of the renowned Hawk brothers that includes Sam and Tom, Chris helped shape the Huntington Beach surf culture in the 1960s and ‘70s. While the brothers often travelled to Hawaii and charged Sunset and Pipeline, Chris chose to make his mark as a master surfboard shaper.

During one of these many Hawaiian trips, Chris met legendary shaper Dick Brewer and was taken under his tutorage alongside Reno Abellira and Davie Abbott. Chris soon became a household name on the mainland and the “go to” guy for many hard-core surfers up and down the California coast for years and years.

Chris Hawk shaping, courtesy of Darryl Dugas

"Surfing Legend Chris Hawk Dies at 58," Los Angeles KCBS newscast with Sharon Tay
(preceeded by 15 second commercial)

Huntington Beach surfer Chris Hawk dies
Hawk, 58, was inducted into the Surfers' Hall of Fame last month.

By Deepa Bharath, Orange County Register, October 24, 2009

Chris Hawk, a legendary local surfer and board shaper who was honored last month with a special induction into the Surfers' Hall of Fame, died Friday in his San Clemente home of oral cancer. He was 58.

A makeshift memorial with surfboards, photographs and flowers stood outside Huntington Surf and Sport at the corner of Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway today as local surfers paid their respects to the man who they say inspired and motivated them with his smooth, graceful and soulful surfing style.

Longtime friend and local surfer Bushman Orozco said Hawk lived with him and shaped boards out of his garage in the early 1990s.

"He had so much experience working with all these master shapers, he knew what he was doing," Orozco said.

Few words can describe Hawk's passion for surfing, he said.

"It's something to be experienced," Orozco said. "He just loved the water, the people, the lifestyle."

Hawk participated in an emotional ceremony outside Huntington Surf and Sport on Sept. 18. These inductions were typically made in July during the U.S. Open of Surfing, but a special exception was given to Hawk because he had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was apparently on the potential list of inductees for a long time.

Hawk, who struggled to deliver an acceptance speech during the ceremony, simply told the gathering, "This is the most honorable moment of my life." And next to his footprints on the cement, he wrote the words: Peace. Love. Surf.

Mark Reeder, who works at Huntington Surf and Sport, said he first met Hawk in 1981.
"In 1972, I decided I was going to be a surfer after watching Chris' brother, Sam, surf," Reeder said. "In 1981, I contacted Chris. He made some boards for me. He was not just a board shaper, he was a craftsman."

Still, Hawk was "humble and a super, super genuine guy," Reeder said.

"He was an true icon, an ultimate surfer everyone wanted to look like," he said. "Chris Hawk will be memorialized forever in the city of Huntington Beach."

Hawk is survived by his wife, Kathy, and his son, Christian, 11.

( Chris Hawk image courtesy of The Shaper's Tree )

Chris Hawk: Feb. 16, 1951 — Oct. 23, 2009: ‘A true inspiration’ - Ex-wife says surfer was humbled by attention from special hall of fame induction.

By Michael Miller, Huntington Beach Independent, October 28, 2009 5:06 PM PDT

... Along with his brothers, Sam and Tom, Chris Hawk won a reputation as a skilled surfer during the 1960s and ’70s. To many, though, he was more famous for shaping boards...

Gary Sahagen, the executive director of the International Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach, said Hawk played an integral role in what he termed “the short board revolution” of the ’70s, in which surfers began trading in their long boards for new ones that were 2 or 3 feet shorter.

“As the short board revolution of surfboards took off, he was riding that front wave, coming up with some of the most innovative designs,” Sahagen said.

Hawk was inducted into the Hall of Fame in a special ceremony that brought hundreds of people to Huntington Surf and Sport at Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway. The Hall of Fame had already inducted its usual quota of four people in July, but made an exception for Hawk, who was suffering from terminal throat cancer.

“He was a true inspiration to all of us, and he’s meant so much to the sport of surfing in Huntington Beach and in California through the way that he surfed the waves and shaped his surfboards,” said Aaron Pai, the owner of Huntington Surf and Sport. “We’ll miss Chris Hawk, but he’ll always be remembered.”

At the ceremony Sept. 18, Hawk spoke briefly to the crowd and etched a message into a concrete slab. The message read simply, “Peace — Love — Surf.”

Afterward, Hawk held up his trophy and said the induction had been a lifelong dream.

“It’s the ultimate for me in my life,” Hawk said. “This is it.”

Monday, the concrete slab in front of Surf and Sport, which also features Hawk’s hand and footprints, was circled with flowers, candles and tributes written on sheets of paper.

One read, “Best shaper in the world,” while another declared, “Chris, you caught the wave to heaven.”

Chris Hawk’s ex-wife, Kathy Hawk Margerum, who divorced him in 1979 but remained close over the years, said Chris Hawk was humbled by the attention he received in the weeks before his death.

“He was a very independent, just a very simple man with a beautiful soul,” she said. “All this attention that’s being bestowed on him, believe me, he didn’t know people thought that much about him. I’m so grateful he got to hear all that and know all that before he went.”

Bob Ballou, a surfer and longtime friend of Hawk, has scheduled a paddle-out in his memory at 11 a.m. Sunday on the north side of the Huntington Beach Pier.

The paddle-out is open to everyone.

Hawk will be remembered as a surfer and shaper, Ballou said, but also as a compassionate friend who often served as a “big brother” to aspiring surfers.

“I think he tried to take everybody at face value and accept them at face value,” he said. “He was just a warm guy. He was my friend. I loved him.”

Pat Lien, the manager of Chuck Dent Surfboards in Huntington Beach, said Hawk had a reputation as a master craftsman.

“In the ’80s, he was the guy the locals wanted their boards made by,” he said. “You were kind of somebody if you had his board in the water.”

Hawk is survived by his son, brothers and sister.

Nick Gabaldon (1927-1951)

2009-10-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

Aloha and welcome to the LEGENDARY SURFERS chapter dedicated to Nick Gabaldon!

Because a number of articles and resources are spread throughout the LEGENDARY SURFERS collection, I thought it best to include the links to them in one spot (here). Of course, you can always use the Google search bar in the sidebar of the site to search on all postings pertaining to a subject and get a full up-to-date listing.

Resources:

Dora Pier Surfing 1974

2009-10-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Miki Dora footage, 1974:

To read more about Dora, please go to:

Legendary Surfer: Miki Dora

... and...

Duke Boyd Talks Story on KPBS

2009-10-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

[ From: Hang Ten Founder Talks Surfing In 1960s, Evolution Of Industry | KPBS.org, by Maureen Cavanaugh and Hank Crook, September 30, 2009 - includes downloadable audio recording of the interview ]

( Duke Boyd image courtesy of Transworld Surf )

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH (Host): I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. You're listening to These Days on KPBS. Surfers tend to think of themselves and their sport as separated from the mainstream. There's always been a mystique about the men and women who catch the waves. But there was a time when surfing was not just separated from the mainstream, it was virtually unknown outside of a few beachside communities. It was in this atmosphere that my guest, Duke Boyd, developed his love of surfing and his life's work. Duke Boyd is co-founder of Hang Ten surf wear, the first surf wear clothing line. The story of how Boyd helped create the modern surfing image is fascinating, but it's only one of a variety of ways that surfing has captured and defined his life. Duke will be in Oceanside this weekend at the California Surf Museum. He’s been named as this year's honoree at the surf museum's annual "Legends Day." And it’s my pleasure to welcome Duke Boyd to These Days. Good morning, Duke.

DUKE BOYD (Co-founder, Hang Ten Clothing Line): Good morning.

CAVANAUGH: And Jim Kempton is here. He’s president of the California Surf Museum. Jim, thanks for coming in.

JIM KEMPTON (President, California Surf Museum): Yeah, you’re welcome. Nice to be here.

CAVANAUGH: And we invite our listeners to join the conversation. If you’ve got questions about the golden age of surfing in California in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, you can ask an official surfing legend. Give us a call, 1-888-895-5727, that’s 1-888-895-KPBS. Duke, let me ask you, when did you start surfing?

BOYD: Originally, probably not fair but the first time was 1946 when I moved to Hawaii and I started surfing at Waikiki. Actually I wasn’t surfing, I was just sort of like accidentally riding waves that I was lucky enough to catch a – find a board and paddle in on. But I really started surfing in 1957.

CAVANAUGH: When you came here?

BOYD: California.

CAVANAUGH: Yeah, right.

BOYD: Yeah, while I was in California.

CAVANAUGH: Now, what was it that really hooked you about surfing?

BOYD: I think the same thing that hooks everybody about surfing. It becomes something that becomes very personal, and that’s probably the mystique behind the whole thing. Everyone says if you’re a surfer, then you know what the feeling is, well, that’s exactly what it is. You have to basically go surfing. If you know the feeling, if you like it, you’re a surfer. If you don’t like it, you don’t.

CAVANAUGH: Now, when you were kind of catching those waves on any kind of board you could find in Hawaii, and when you first came here to California, what were people wearing when they were going surfing?

BOYD: Well, pretty much the surfers themselves, just the surfers themselves, were wearing trunks that were in the fashion world of a Filipino man named M. Nee, who made surf trunks on the west shore for the movie stars like, well, like all the movie stars who came to town and hung out with Duke Kahanamoku. That really was the style, high in the front, low in the back, a little bit longer leg, that type of a thing. That sort of evolved over the years to different – to a style different than that but it was far different than the Jantzen what we call bun huggers type of thing, which were not – which were good in Australia but – and a very good surf trunk, but not necessarily very fashionable.

CAVANAUGH: Now tell us where the idea – Now what I understand it is, you brought some sketches to a woman who was – worked as a seamstress and had a little clothing line herself. What did those sketches look like and what was she intrigued with when you brought them in?

BOYD: Well, they were pencil drawings and they were really made for the purpose of me making some money while I was going to college. And I showed them to her and it was really a jacket picture, a surfing jacket. But underneath the jacket were the trunks and she knew that she could make the trunks so she asked me to make the samples up, which I did with my – with a lady named Grace West, who was out of Seal Beach. I made them up, brought them back to her, she priced them out, $3.75 each, and I went out and sold them and that’s how it started.

CAVANAUGH: And who came up with the name Hang Ten? How did that happen?

BOYD: Well, it was a – it was a collaborated deal. We were discussing what to do and she said to me, she said what would be the equivalent of a hole in one to surfing? And hang ten, at that time, was the answer. I mean, perching on the end of a nose was a very, very important thing to do in surfing in that day.

CAVANAUGH: And the woman that we’re talking about, the co-founder of Hang Ten, was Doris Moore.

BOYD: Doris Moore, right. She was a very experienced lady out of New York who basically was a shopper. She would go from Macy’s to Gimbles and all that, to get prices on clothing. And so she knew what she was doing and she was doing – when I met her, she was doing dickeys, which were little collars that were in the era of Mamie Eisenhower’s. When that ended and the Kennedys came in, she was sort of like out of business and that’s when I walked in the door.

CAVANAUGH: And so we’re talking about the early ‘60s here.

BOYD: Yes.

CAVANAUGH: And you would take the trunks and the original sort of Hang Ten outfits and you’d sell them – try to sell them in surf shops up and down the coast, right?

BOYD: Well, I tried to sell them.

CAVANAUGH: Yeah.

BOYD: That was – The surf shops were sort of like the nut to crack because they really didn’t have any sense of that type of thing. They only made surfboards and they didn’t even have wax at the time. They fixed dings. They would – You’d buy your wax paraffin from the grocery store. So it was really no one in the surfing business had any idea how to merchandise anything else besides the surfboards.

CAVANAUGH: And did Hang Ten really start to take off when you started to advertise in, what was it, Surf – Surfer magazine?

BOYD: Yes, that – Yeah, John Severson, who started Surfer magazine, had been out – I think it was a quarterly for a couple of months, three or four months. And we quite, well, how do you say? We just moved into it, not whereas most of the surfers at that time, surf shops at that time, didn’t really have the money to advertise. And Doris basically took the plunge and said, okay, I’m going to buy the ad, took a contract for a year, and once that happened, we became known in the surfing world and the trunks that we made were good. I mean, it was – they were acceptable so our success ran right after that.

CAVANAUGH: I’m speaking with Duke Boyd. He’s co-founder of Hang Ten surf wear, and he’s the – this year’s honoree at the Surf Museum in Oceanside’s annual “Legend’s Day.” We’re taking your phone calls at 1-888-895-5727. If you have memories of wearing Hang Ten surf clothes, give us a call. And I want to bring in Jim Kempton now. He’s president of the California Surf Museum. And you have some really sort of original Hang Ten clothing on right now. Tell us about it.

KEMPTON: I’m wearing a jacket that was originally modeled by Phil Edwards, one of the great surfers of that era. And at that time, getting a piece of Hang Ten clothing was hard. It was hard to find it and it was expensive by my parents’ standards. But if you were a surfer, you absolutely had to have it. And the only size they had in the jacket that I’m wearing right now was a large. I was about 110 pounds dripping wet, and I had to fold the arms up and zip it up in order to even make it look like it fit me but I grew into it and I’ve kept it for I don’t know how many years that is but at least 45 or so. And it’s still in great shape. It still looks good.

CAVANAUGH: Yeah, it looks like a standard kind of a Hang Ten windbreaker. Describe it a little bit to us, the colors and what it looks like.

KEMPTON: Yeah, it’s a light blue jacket with two white stripes that…

CAVANAUGH: Umm-hmm.

KEMPTON: …go across it, very classic ‘60s Hang Ten style. It really is the style that Duke kind of brought into the surfing world and it became the standard wear.

CAVANAUGH: Now why did the Surf Museum choose Duke Boyd as the – your Legends honoree this year?

BOYD: I’d like to know the answer to that.

KEMPTON: Well, aside from the fact that Duke’s a friend of mine and that I wanted to roast him really badly, a lot of people, you know, in today’s world don’t know some of the really significant figures back in that day. They know some of the most famous surfers but they don’t know the story behind, you know, how the surf industry, which is now a multi-billion dollar industry, really got started. And Duke is, in many ways, to the surf industry what Duke Kahanamoku was to the surfing culture. He introduced it. He wasn’t necessarily the first person to make surf trunks and certainly not the last, but he was the person who took it around the world and made it something that was part of the culture.

CAVANAUGH: And it really sort of defined an image for the surfer that perhaps they didn’t have earlier in the ‘60s, that whole look, that whole image of the longer trunks, the, you know, and as you say, Duke, you found really some resistance with the early shops even thinking about buying anything like clothing. Isn’t that right?

BOYD: Oh, yeah, definitely. Not because they wouldn’t have wanted to do it if they had know but they were just sort of like we’re not merchants. That wasn’t what they did. And that happened for quite a while. It took quite a while to happen. I remember that when I first tried to sell a famous surf shop called Dewey Weber, and I had – and he and I ended up becoming very good friends, but during the course of that time he was a very tough customer. He wouldn’t buy me. So eventually he said, he says, okay, I’ll tell you what, I’ll buy a dozen. And I said, okay. And he says, but here’s the deal, I want them all white and I want them in size 30 so in case they don’t sell, I can wear them.

CAVANAUGH: Did you do it?

BOYD: Oh, of course, yeah. And it ended up being, you know, once you landed in the surf shop, you basically were grounded after that and you were acceptable – accepted in the – and that’s really basically what it is. It’s a very close knit culture and you just can’t be a shoulder hopper and come into the surfing world and start selling things. You have to – there’s a whole series of steps that you have to go through to be accepted.

CAVANAUGH: Well, you had a very clever marketing strategy. I don’t even know if you thought of it that way but since, you know, you weren’t selling too much to the surf shops, you would just sort of give away some clothes.

BOYD: Oh, well, that was called – Yes. That was called basically a test pilot program. I’d take different styles of trunks that we would make that were samples, not the real ones, and I would give them to different surfers, usually in Huntington Beach, places like that. And then I would sew my logo on a patch on the outside of it and it ended up being something sort of like a sought after pair of trunks to have. Yeah, that worked.

CAVANAUGH: Yeah, that worked pretty good. I’m speaking with Duke Boyd, co-founder of Hang Ten surf wear and this year’s honoree at the California Surf Museum “Legends Day,” and the president of the California Surf Museum, Jim Kempton, is here as well. We’re taking your calls at 1-888-895-5727, and Paul is calling us from Solana Beach. Good morning, Paul. Welcome to These Days.

PAUL (Caller, Solana Beach): Hey, thanks for taking my call. A couple of questions. First, what do you call that – the shirt that men used to wear in the mid-sixties and it had a vee kind of cut underneath, you know, the neck and then it had that – the leather lanyard kind of tying it together? What was that look called, do you know?

CAVANAUGH: We – Do we know, gentlemen?

KEMPTON: You stumped us.

PAUL: Oh, okay, never mind. Yeah, but the other question I had is, is all the surf gear and the surf wear now being made corporately? Or are there any independent manufacturers out there anymore left?

BOYD: Oh, yeah. There – Birdwell Britches still is alive and well, and started way back in the early sixties, also. I think – Is Cayton still…? You’d know better than I would.

KEMPTON: Well, they don’t make – The stuff they make now is made overseas.

BOYD: Oh, okay.

KEMPTON: And they’re…

BOYD: Yeah, there are a few but, you know, obviously it’s a price situation and the – If you want to have your own trunks made, that’s probably the way to go.

CAVANAUGH: Right.

BOYD: Local cotton shops.

CAVANAUGH: You know, since you took the Hang Ten and made it into an industry, actually surf clothing, they estimate now that it’s a $30 billion a year industry. I mean, is that something that you hear and it’s sort of unimaginable to you?

BOYD: Well, they say it’s the surf industry but that’s – that’s a little bit – well, there’s a little bit more to it than that. When surfing first started in the ‘60s, what happened was, is that the stores, for the most part, didn’t – they didn’t sell any of those trunks at all.

CAVANAUGH: Right.

BOYD: And they didn’t have a youth area. They had boys’ and they had men’s but there were no young men’s. So when surfing came about, they established a whole new area of merchandising which were the young men. So when they say surfers, what you’re really saying are young men. Where almost like a teen girl magazine, it’s the counterpart of that. They didn’t have a teen boy magazine until surfing came along. And so what you’re really seeing is surfer boys or young men disguised as surfers who basically pick up that kind of fashion.

CAVANAUGH: I see. Now, Jim, in addition to being the president of the California Surf Museum, you’re also media director for Billabong, so you’re part of this billion dollar, multi-billion dollar surf industry. It’s really sort of amazing how fast and how large it’s grown, isn’t it?

KEMPTON: It’s been an amazing climb and I don’t think anyone could have expected it, but I think that’s part of the intrigue of surfing. It has an image that people identify with and the clothing is really one of the only ways besides actually doing the act of surfing itself that you can identify with the culture of the beach, and the free and easy lifestyle and all the fun that you can have with surfing.

CAVANAUGH: You know, I want to move on and – because I know that Hang Ten is not the only clothing line you were associated with, Duke, but I do want to talk about the Hang Ten logo because that’s so important and I think it made such a big splash and, in fact, even though you don’t own the company anymore, that’s still part of the Hang Ten clothing line. Tell us, first of all, what it is and how you came up with it.

BOYD: Well, it was the end result of a conversation that we had about what we should name the company.

CAVANAUGH: Right.

BOYD: And after we went through the discussion, we came up with the name Hang Ten and agreed upon it. I went home and basically painted up the two feet because it was obvious. It was like, you know, unless I was to draw someone actually hanging ten, which didn’t come to my mind, I just basically said this would be good, I’ll try that. So I put two feet on a yellow background, and it was supposed to be suntan colors, you know, on a sunset. That type of a situation. And the loose draw – writing was basically based upon the kind of writing that you’d found at Malibu where you would do the graffiti on the walls like, you know, ‘Dora can’t surf’ and things like that. And I would – I wrote it in that particular fashion so it didn’t have a store bought type look to it. It had a real rustic look to it, which is basically even the way they’re coming back to it now. Like Quicksilver’s an example of, instead of store bought type, a Quicksilver look is basically a graffiti look.

CAVANAUGH: I’m speaking with Duke Boyd. He is this year’s Surf Museum’s Legend for the California Surf Museum this year. And I’m speaking with the president of the California Surf Museum, Jim Kempton. We’re taking your calls at 1-888-895-5727. And Ron Sizemore is calling from Laguna Beach. Good morning, Ron. Welcome to These Days.

RON SIZEMORE (Caller, Laguna Beach): Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my call. I really appreciate it. And I’d like to say good morning to Jim and good morning to Duke. How are you guys doing?

BOYD: Good morning.

KEMPTON: Doing great. How are you, Mr. Sizemore?

SIZEMORE: Just fine, thank you. Hey, Duke, I don’t know if you remember but back in the early sixties, I was hitchhiking out of Corona del Mar into – out of Laguna Beach into Corona del Mar, and you picked me up in your woody wagon and you’d been going to some of the men’s clothing stores, I believe, in Laguna because, like you said, you hadn’t gotten your trunks into the surf shops at that time. And after I got out of the car, I remember you gave me a pair of trunks to wear to the beach when I went surfing to get exposure, and I’d like to think that I was maybe one of your first team riders.

BOYD: You were the very first one, Ron.

SIZEMORE: Are you kidding?

BOYD: You were – Not only that, anybody who can put their heels over and go through the pier backwards, deserves to be the first one.

SIZEMORE: Ah, I thought there was some before me. Gee.

CAVANAUGH: Thank you so much for the call, Ron. That’s great. You know, just hearing that phone call evokes a whole idea of what the beach community was like in the ‘60s and it was a freer, more open time. Do you – Do people really understand that this is why they call it the golden age of surfing, I wonder, Jim?

KEMPTON: Well, I think anytime you have the pioneering age, everything is being discovered and discovery is such a, you know, such a great, exciting experience to have. And everything was being invented at that time. You know, surfboard design was being invented and surf clothing was being invented, surf culture in general. The whole language that we used to describe the things that were being done that had never been done before, you had to give them a name. And so there’s – the whole culture of surfing developed during that era and still today is, you know, the great hold, I think, on people’s fascination about the sport and the lifestyle.

CAVANAUGH: Let’s take another call. Leah is calling from La Mesa. Good morning, Leah. Welcome to These Days.

LEAH (Caller, La Mesa): Hello. I was just calling because I heard the show and I was – I grew up in the South Bay in Torrance and I just remember, you know, Hang Ten was just so much a part of our lives, you know, the whole surf culture, because it was so close to the beach. And my uncle was a longboard surfer, I think, back in the ‘30s and I just have such fond memories of that and Van Doren tennis shoes and it was just such a – I mean, I never surfed in my life. I went to the beach. But it just – But I hear you, I just ordered a Hang Ten shirt off the internet and – or a sweatshirt and I love it and my – I was showing it to my kids, I’m like, look, I have a Hang Ten sweatshirt, and they looked at me like, yeah, what’s that supposed to mean? You know, so it’s just great to hear the show.

CAVANAUGH: Well, thank you for the call, Leah. That’s very nice. You know, I want everyone to be aware of the fact that Hang Ten was not the only clothing company that you were associated with. Duke, you founded another one called Lightning Bolt in the 1970s. What was the difference between Hang Ten and Lightning Bolt?

BOYD: Probably an era. About ten years had gone by and – but there was a similarity in the sense that Hang Ten was for really a definite part of the middle of the golden era in which everything was being discovered. And Lightning Bolt ended up being a part of the last part of the golden era in which the values of free surfing and non-commercialism and really a small little knit group of surfers being – the story being told. That all changed and started going heavily into professional surfing, which ended up sort of like splitting the story about surfing into surfing – professional surfings (sic) were making the bumper sticker that – what everyone was talking about. And the free surfing basically slipped into the past and wasn’t necessarily as well received or admired.

CAVANAUGH: Now Lightning Bolt, Jim, was – had a lot to do with wetsuits and the term body glove came into fashion, is that correct?

KEMPTON: Well, Body Glove was one of the early wetsuits and Duke actually was working with them at a particular time during that time. But one of the things about Lightning Bolt that was so memorable is, is that like rock ‘n roll, there was a period in the mid-sixties that everything changed and you went from doing be-bop kind of music to doing – I mean, doo-wop kind of music to doing psychedelic electric guitar. And the short board revolution, which happened almost simultaneously with that, was the same thing in surfing. So what had happened was there was a whole new generation of kids in the ‘70s that were riding short boards, almost, again, reinventing the whole act of surfing and, therefore, everything else was needed, including their equipment, the kind of words and descriptions they used, the kind of clothing they wore, the kind of culture they had. And so Lightning Bolt kind of became the Hang Ten of this new era.

CAVANAUGH: That’s really fascinating. And I want to make sure everyone knows, too, clothing design is not the limit of your connection with surfing, Duke. I mean, you’ve been a surf photographer and a filmmaker and an author. You have a new book, “Legends of Surfing” with your surf photographs. Do you – What do you find enjoyable about, I wonder specifically, about taking photographs of surfers?

BOYD: Well, one of the things is – There’s two parts to it. One part is when they’re actually in the water and you try to find the different angles and all the diff – there’s a whole evolution in terms of surf photography, also. The other part is, is sort of like capturing, as you go along through life, the off – you know, the offhand, the casual looks of the surfers because what you’re really seeing at that time, this time, is a whole culture being – that is being grown right in front of your very eyes.

CAVANAUGH: Right.

BOYD: So you can go back and see what they looked like in the – Well, actually, you can go back to the ‘30s and so forth and watch them going all the way for the whole 20th century. That’s what the book is about, is basically it’s a book about who’s who in the 20th century of surfing. Starts with Duke Kahanamoku, goes to Kelly Slater, and everything in between.

CAVANAUGH: Let’s take a call. Clayton is calling from El Cajon. Good morning, Clayton. Welcome to These Days.

CLAYTON (Caller, El Cajon): Good morning. How are you doing?

CAVANAUGH: Great. Thank you.

CLAYTON: My question is actually for Duke. You guys are describing the ‘60s as the golden age of surfing and my mom has also regaled me with tales of how the – how surfing was legendary back when she was growing up in Anaheim and Mission Bay and areas local here in south California. My question is actually do you think that surfing, as a profession or as a sport, has lost some of its glamour throughout the ages?

CAVANAUGH: Okay, thank you, Clayton. Duke, what do you think? Has surfing lost anything?

BOYD: Well, I kind of – I feel that way personally that it has. I don’t think on a – on the grand scale that that’s true because I think more people get to play in it, more people get to be a part of it, it’s grown to the fact where every – where it has a – it’s a big tent and everyone’s in it. But the core of surfing is still individual, where you get up in the morning and you go out and it’s not like you’re going down to meet your friends and you kind of get on a merry-go-round and dance around. You’re basically going out personally to go surfing, and that’s never lost. And that’s one of the nice things about it. Surfing itself is split into two parts. If you can make your living, like Corky Carroll says, by surfing, he says, well, what’s wrong with that? Well, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that.

CAVANAUGH: Yeah.

BOYD: But in essence, he’s also a very, very hardcore surfer who doesn’t need to compete to basically have a good time and enjoy himself.

CAVANAUGH: Yeah, you know, this California Surf Museum’s Annual “Legends Day” is – it only goes to one person a year, and I’m wondering how does that make you feel to be honored in that way, Duke?

BOYD: When you get honored by your contemporaries, your friends, it’s a lot different than any other kind of honor that you might get. So I hold this very dear because if your dear friends say you’re okay, you know, then in essence there may be something to it.

CAVANAUGH: That’s wonderful. And the “Legends of Surfing” book, besides that, what is your next big project?

BOYD: Well, my next big project? After I finish the – I’m working with a friend of mine named Eric Jordan, who is putting out a documentary called “For the Love of Surfing,” and it’s pretty much the same thing. It deals with an era of the ‘60s generally, a little bit of the ’50s and the ‘60s. And it documents what these people had to say during the 20th century in that one little golden era niche that you were talking about, and that’s what I’m basically working with – on him now, so I guess you can say that’s a project.

CAVANAUGH: I think so. Jim, can you tell us a little bit about the “Legends Day” event? We only have about 30 to 45 seconds but if you could tell us a little bit of what this event is going to be like?

KEMPTON: It is honoring one of the legends of surfing. Each year we choose one. We invite all of the other Legends of Surfing to attend, and the general public is also invited. We have hula dancers and ukulele players and a luau and it’s really part of a surf culture experience. And during that time, we honor whoever we’ve chosen. This year, it’s Duke Boyd. He’s with a very, very esteemed crew that will be there and who’ve been honored before.

CAVANAUGH: I want to thank you so much for coming in. Jim Kempton, president of the California Surf Museum. Thank you.

KEMPTON: Yeah, and you.

CAVANAUGH: And Duke Boyd, it was a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for coming in.

BOYD: Thank you for having us.

CAVANAUGH: Now, I wanted to let everyone know the California Surf Museum's Annual "Legends Day" event will take place this Sunday from one to four at the Oceanside Library. And if you need more information, you can always check out the These Days page on KPBS.org. And we also encourage you to post your comments at KPBS.org/TheseDays. Stay with us for the second hour of These Days, coming up in just a few minutes here on KPBS.

W.J. Lucas Ford, Sr.

2009-09-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Skipper Funderburg has unearthed another early Twentieth Century photographic gem. It is of William Johnstone Lucas Ford, Senior (Alexander Hume Ford's nephew), riding Canoes in 1923.

Click on image for full size.

William Johnstone Lucas Ford, Senior, resided on the Big Island, Hawai'i. He is listed in Alexander Hume Ford's 1945 published obituary.

Skipper wrote the following about the image:

"My hunt on the old history trail of Alexander Hume Ford carry's on to a further point. With happiness, I share this 1923 surfing image of Alexander Hume Ford's nephew, William Johnstone Lucas Ford, Senior. Grande Lucas was residing on the Big Island of Hawaii at the time of Alexander Hume Fords death in 1945. I am well aware the number of surfing photographs from this era are very limited, so I am delighted to present this rare historical treasure to the surfing world. Above and beyond my discovery, I hope a revived public awareness of Alexander Hume Ford will help lead to further discoveries about this important surfing family."

My best, Joseph "Skipper" Funderburg

Skipper added:

Attached is the back of the photocard. It reads:

"This is a picture of your son W.L. Ford, riding the surfboard at Waikiki Beach."

"P.S. It cost four dollars to have it made."

"4/14/23 Waikiki Honolulu T.H."

The T.H. is an abbreviation for Territory of Hawaii.

Allen "Dempsey" Holder

2009-09-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

Tom Keck recently sent me this classic image of Dempsey Holder. Dempsey was the first person known to surf the Tijuana Sloughs (1937) and lead the charge on that "first" of the California big wave spots in the 1940s and 1950s.

(Click on image for full view)

Click here to read more about The Riders of the Tijuana Sloughs

Waikiki Surf Club

2009-09-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

Ian Lind continues to post photographs from his father's photographic collection. It is a great collection of historic images. Please go to John Lind's Waikiki Surf Club Collection

[ The following is from the LEGENDARY SURFERS Chapter "Post World War II," a section on The Waikiki Surf Club, 1947 ]

No two ways about it, World War II had interrupted the lives of most everyone in the "civilized" world and, in the case of surfing, put a lot of things on hold. Following the war, however, there was resurgent interest in and some changes in how surfing was organized in its traditional early 20th Century capitol, Waikiki.

By the end of 1946, the two main original Waikiki surf clubs had changed considerably. The native Hui Nalu had limited its activities mostly to outrigger canoe racing. The haole-influenced Outrigger Canoe Club had become more of an exclusive prestige-type establishment, "with a wide range of social and athletic interests." So, in 1947, the Waikiki Surf Club was formed for the same reasons that the other two had originally been put together. "Its purpose," wrote surfing historian Ben Finney, "was to promote surfing as well as other Hawaiian water sports. It provided board lockers and clothes changing facilities near the beach, for anyone who could pay the small initiation fee and monthly dues."

It was obvious that the Waikiki Surf Club filled a void, when, under the leadership of John Lind, it enrolled 600 members in three months -- some of whom were California surfers that were just starting to come over to the Islands. "We had [island local] members like George Downing, Wally Froiseth, Russ Takaki," recalled relocated California surfer Walter Hoffman. "The Outrigger was down the beach, at $200 per month -- a rich guy's club, very exclusive, you had to be voted in. Our club was for the regular guys who surfed, so it was a great place to meet everybody -- where all the transplant Californians hung out."

"The club was downstairs in the basement of this house... and consisted of some lockers, showers and a place to leave your board." A local guy named Taka was club attendant around the time Walt Hoffman and Ted Crane first came over in 1948.

The Waikiki Surf Club was followed by other newer clubs and the ongoing health of the older ones, but much of the post-war growth of surfing at Waikiki was, undoubtedly, due to the existence of the Waikiki Surf Club. The club did more than just provide a place for surfers to hang and keep their gear close to the beach. The club also initiated and sponsored several surfing and watermen events that stimulated public interest and fostered competition. Among these were: the Diamond Head Surfboard Championships, the Molokai-Oahu Outrigger Canoe Race, the Makapu Bodysurfing Championships, and what was to become famous as not only the first big wave surfing contest, but the first truly international surf contest: the International Surfing Championships at Makaha.

Searching for Michael Peterson

2009-09-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

"Michael Peterson ruled the surf scene throughout the early to mid-1970s with his savage, groundbreaking surfing. An undiagnosed schizophrenic, Michael couldn’t handle the fame his surfing powers attracted, and he retreated into a world of hard drugs, fast cars and shadows. He eventually hit rock bottom after a car chase, which took 35 police cars to stop him. It’s an intoxicating and addictive tale for anyone who has ever felt like a fish out of water..."

Searching for Michael Peterson: Indie Film About Legendary Surfer | Ventvox

Searching for Michael Peterson Trailer from jolyon hoff on Vimeo.

“The story of Michael Peterson makes Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas look like Alice In Wonderland.” Describes Peterson biographer, Sean Doherty.

Director, Jolyon Hoff recalls when he first heard about the surfing enigma,

“As a teenager, my friends and I would drive our cars up the Australian coast to places like Seal Rocks or Angourie or Lennox Head and Byron Bay. The trips were all about growing up – there were girls, drunken nights, experiments with drugs, warm water and beautiful waves. We were after the surf but it was often the other unexpected things that happened along the way that became the highlight of the trip – stories to be endlessly recounted on our next trip.”

Hoff continues, “It was on these trips that I first heard, from the older surfers we met, the stories of Michael Peterson, this mysterious character and incredible surfer. We’d sit around the campfire and they would speak with reverence while we listened in awe. It was like a surfing ghost story in many ways.”

“Years later, I decided to throw the boards on the roof and the cameras in the boot and head out to the point breaks, beaches and carparks to capture all these wild, weird and mysterious stories.”

For five glorious years “MP” led Australia’s charge into the shortboard era and won virtually every event he contested, including three Bells Beach Pros back to back. His brilliant surfing provided the centerpiece for Albert Falzon’s "Morning of the Earth" film in 1972, and MP never looked back. His final tour victory, at the inaugural Stubbies Pro at Burleigh Heads in 1977, is regarded as the high point of the early professional era. Increased erratic behavior and paranoia led to an infamous car chase with police, which landed him in jail. He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1982.

Thirty years on, MP is still vitally interested in the sport and culture of surfing and is a fixture at most Queensland events, enjoying the action with his mother, Joan. He is rightly regarded as an iconic figure in Australian surfing, and Jolyon Hoff’s film, while it pulls no punches, is an intensely moving tribute to the man.

Surfer Magazine ranks Michael as the #16 all-time greatest surfer in the world. Click here to view the article: http://surfermag.com/features/onlineexclusive/number_16_michael_peterson/

SEARCHING FOR MICHAEL PETERSON features original footage of Peterson’s life as well as interviews with his friends and surfing rivals. The 55 minute documentary has already achieved success and stellar reviews...

Adding a special touch to the U.S. tour is Australian singer/songwriter Beau Young (2 x world champion surfer) in concert. Beau retired from professional surfing in 2003 to focus on a fulltime career in music. He has gone on to record 2 albums and performed at many of Australia’s most respected music festivals and toured through Japan and Europe. Beau has an obvious affinity with the film and story of Michael Peterson, being the son of one of the world’s most recognized and famous surfers (and Peterson’s predecessor), Nat Young. This will be Beau’s first official U.S. tour.

Preisendorfer on Tails

2009-09-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

Rusty Preisendorfer's article "THE HISTORY AND FUNCTIONALITY OF TAILS," at Surfline.com, breaks down the lower third of surfboards from squashes to swallows. Lots of illustrations and comments.