New Jersey's Ron DiMenna, founder of the wildly successful Ron Jon Surf Shop chain, is a man of mystery. Grubby Clark, no slouch himself in the enigma department, is Kylie Jenner compared to DiMenna. Hell, after he blew up Clark Foam, Grubby went out there and started winning livestock awards! DiMenna? Google-search him and see how many photos come up. Or how few, rather. More on that in a second.

There are two things, and only two things, widely known about Ron DiMenna. First, of course, is the Ron Jon company. There are a dozen or so Ron Jon outlets along the East Coast, but the Cocoa Beach store is the flagship. It is huge: 52,000 square feet. It is made of concrete and glass and neon, and the word "gaudy" merely points you in the right direction in terms of describing it. Imagine the Death Star dressed up as Circus Circus for Halloween, and passing out alongside A1A. Now surround it with a massive floodlit parking lot, add a half-dozen action sports statues (including one of local hero Kelly Slater) and some gigantic tiki-heads, and you've got Ron Jon Surf Shop.

The shop is open 24 hours a day, every day, and to the best of my knowledge has not been closed in over 25 years. Early Christmas morning, while you were knee-deep in gifts and good cheer, a Ron Jon middle manager was leaning on the counter playing Infinity Blade on her iPhone, halfway through a lonely six-hour double-pay shift. Huffington Post reports that Ron Jon is the most popular tourist destination in all of Brevard County, with 1.5 million visitors annually. Surf photographer and San Augustine local Jimmy Wilson, on the other hand, calls Ron Jon "the most bullshit of all bullshit surf shops in the universe, and a cold sore on the dick of surf society." But let us not quibble. Let us note only that Ron Jon is by an order of magnitude the world's biggest surf retailer, and that Ron DiMenna, for over 50 years, has masterfully nurtured and grown the enterprise.

The second thing you might know about DiMenna is that he made headlines in 2010, at age 73, for a DUI arrest. "The arresting officer noticed the 6-feet, 3-inch motorist with 'First Wife' tattooed on his left wrist had difficulty walking when he stepped from his Ford pickup," the 

 reported, noting also that there was an open 20-ounce can of Four Loko propped up on the passenger seat. "Requested to explain the odor of alcoholic beverage coming from his person, Mr. DiMenna stated, 'I've had a couple.'" 

It was DiMenna's third DUI in five years (the mugshot you see online began circulating right away; it's the only recent photo of DiMenna I've been able to find), and the court not surprisingly yanked his license. A New York freelancer named Matt Higgins picked the story up and his "Long Strange Tale of Ron DiMenna" feature, which posted on ESPN the following year, is a gift for anyone who likes a good drugs-and-dynamite yarn, with just a hint of mobster, some hard prison time, and a Governor's pardon thrown in for good measure. Seriously, I can't begin to do justice to the dark humor and weirdness of DiMenna's life story. Read Higgins' article.

I bring all this up because last week, while paging through a 1965 issue of 

 looking for photos for my upcoming "Bikini Girls of the Civil Rights Era" feature in 

, I happened across an article on the New Jersey surf scene and there to my surprise found not one but 

 shots of Long Beach Island surfer and fledgling shop owner Ron DiMenna. Look at him there on the left side of the frame, hand on cocked hip, board upright and nestled into a healthy thatch of chest hair (what they used to call the "New Jersey fullsuit"), and a damn-your-eyes look on his face. And a surf photo too! Years before the meth and the TNT and the gun charges and the Four Loko and the outrageous verbal slings and arrows from people like Jimmy Wilson—here is Ron DiMenna dropping in behind the peak on a clean Surf City beach left. Head down, back knee bent, driving off his inside rail. DiMenna surfs. He is one of us.

PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE: THE RON DIMENNA STORY

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