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academia and surfing

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advertising and surfing

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Lithe regularfooter from Pacifica, California; one of the first homegrown San Francisco Bay Area rider to make an impression on the international surf scene. "Nobody [in the Bay Area] surfed composure and style like Dickie did," surf writer Mark Gray noted in 2001, "especially in waves of consequence."

Keating was born (1942) in San Francisco, and moved with his family to Pacifica's Pedro Point at age seven. He rode his first wave at age two, when his uncle, also named Dick, took him into the surf at Pedro Point. "Uncle Dick," as he was known to area surfers, had learned to surf while visiting Hawaii in 1936 for an Olympic swim team tryout; upon his return to San Francisco he became the Bay Area's first surfer, and in 1944 founded the Pedro Mountain Surf Club, housed in a ramshackle beachfront surfing clubhouse at the base of Pedro Point: "The only place we know," photographer John "Doc" Ball wrote in his 1946 

 book, "where you can practically step from your surfboard right smack into big patches of wild strawberries."

The younger Keating developed rapidly as a surfer, and in 1964, at age 21, entered the Northern California Surfing Championships in Santa Cruz. This surf was double-overhead and excellent, and Keating, according to one surf magazine writer, turned in a "flawless performance" and cruised to an easy win. Three years later he was selected to compete in the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, the the sport's most prestigious event. In his prelim heat, held in 12-foot Sunset Beach surf, Keating lost to Mike Doyle ('68 Duke winner) and Jeff Hakman ('65 Duke winner), tied for third with Eddie Aikau, and beat Corky Carroll and Mickey Dora. It was Keating's first time at Sunset.

Long associated with Jack O'Neill, Keating briefly had his own "DK" signature model with O'Neill Surfboards. Short surfboards brought out the experimentalist in Keating, and in the 1969 surf film 

, he does 360s on a finless board, try another board with handlebars, and also rides a conventional mini-gun in some excellent Mexican point surf. "Keating," John Severson wrote in a SURFER Magazine review of 

, "is the surfer you'll go away remembering."

Over the years, Keating worked as a board-shaper, a fisherman, a carpenter, and an electrician.

Keating, Dick

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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