A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Alexandre, João (Dapin)

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Big-wave specialist from Hawaii, almost as well-known for his far-ranging spirituality and eccentricities as he was for his standard-setting performances on the North Shore of Oahu, where for a brief few years in the late 1950s and early '60s he was revered. "Everybody knew Paul Gebauer as the smoothest, most relaxed surfer in big waves," John Peck said.

Paul Gebauer Jr was born (1940) in Cleveland and sent to live in an orphanage while his physician father served in the Pacific Theater during World War II. After the war, Gebauer Sr retrieved his son and, with his new wife, moved the family to Honolulu. Paul began bodysurfing and paipo boarding at Waikiki at age six, and two years later learned to surf on a hollow balsa board. In years to come, as he improved, Gebauer was informally mentored by big-wave pioneer George Downing.

Gebauer attended Punahou School, where he was frequently expelled. "I was in trouble all the time," he later said, adding that he believed his early years in an orphanage had damaged him emotionally and psychologically. He was however a voracious reader who would baffle his high school surfing friends with talk about Ayn Rand and Thomas Malthus, and also taught himself to be a concert-level flamenco guitar player.

Along with fellow Punahou student-surfer Kimo Hollinger, Gebauer began riding bigger waves, first at Makaha and then on the North Shore. Both were comfortable in heavy surf, but Gebauer's ease at places like Sunset Beach and Waimea was beyond anything yet seen at those breaks; where others crouched defensively, Gebauer often stood to full height, hands at his waist, or sometimes thrown casually overhead. He was featured on the cover of SURFER in 1962, and a 1963 photo of him back-arching at Sunset while riding his favorite Pat Curren-shaped gun—a five-year-old board that Gebauer reshaped into a pintail and painted all black with a bright yellow band; playing up his "Black Knight" nickname—was made into a poster. In 

s 1965 Surf Poll, Gebauer was named the #2 Big Wave Rider, ahead of Fred Hemmings, Buzzy Trent, and Ricky Grigg, and behind Greg Noll.

By that time, Gebauer's reputation as a surfing iconoclast had firmed up. In a 1964 

 column titled "What Does the Contest Prove?" he became one of the first, and without question the most strident, top-level surfers to speak out against competition. The sport, he said, "was being exploited for commercial gain by people who have no interest in the sport and who are not surfers."

In a short SURFER magazine profile, Gebauer said that he believed surfing's future was "dismal," and that moving forward he planned to "surf once in a while for fun and exercise," but that he'd "never chase after surf again."

Indeed, Gebauer moved to Maui around this time, in large part because the local lineups in the mid-'60s—Honolua Bay included—were virtually empty.

Drugs, mysticism and spirituality all came into Gebauer's life in a big way after he arrived in Maui, and he spent hours at a time in Haleakala Crater, on acid, looking for—and, according to Gebauer himself, communicating with—alien beings.

Gebauer made local headlines in 2001 after finding $68,000 worth of savings bonds tucked into a library book. Homeless at the time, he returned the money nonetheless. "Gebauer," the 

 reported, "a well-known surfer in the early 1960s, said his decision to return the money was consistent with his simple, quiet lifestyle and enjoyment of nature more than money. 'I never went for the money, and I never went for the fame,' he said."

The paper noted that Gebauer had previously made his living as a black coral diver, a landscaper, and a construction worker.

Gebauer, Paul

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos