Marc Rubel's Big Wednesday review ran in Surfing magazine's February 1980 issue, which was itself a review of the 1970s. This version has been slightly edited. * * * For the 1970s, the dream went something like this: A major Hollywood motion picture about surfing would take the country by storm, putting the nation's youth back on the Gidget track of surf fever. Soon no self-respecting kid, no ma...
Janet Maslin's review for Big Wednesday ran in the July 28, 1978, issue of the New York Times. * * * It wasn't very long ago that John Milius's expensive, ambitious "Big Wednesday" was one of the more widely touted movies on the horizon, so what's it doing sneaking into Flagship theaters for only a weeklong run? The honorable thing, that's what. "Big Wednesday" isn't even a tiny fraction of what...
"Is Surfing Hip?" by Sam George, ran in the June 1998 issue of Surfer. This version has been slightly edited. * * * In a world of MTV Sports, X Games and Mountain Dew commercials, with Spandexed sky divers hopping out of planes with video cameras on their heads, with brain-dead bungee-jumpers falling off bridges for fun, with gang-baggy, shambling skaters scraping up against greasy parking lot p...
Derek Hynd's profile on Tony Moniz ran in the March 1991 issue of SURFER Magazine. This version has been slightly edited. * * * Near a decade back, Tony Moniz hooked into a twelve-footer at the Pipeline Masters—the type of wave that misses Second Reef and viciously stacks and stacks again in apex shifts. He slid down the face at the last instant with a deliberate layback takeoff, then switched t...
Drew Kampion's profile on Santa Barbara's futuristic wave-ski rider Merv Larson ran in the May 1970 issue of SURFER. This version has been slightly edited. * * * You can see for yourself when Rincon is breaking good, or Secos or Huntington when they’re on. He works out through the lineup on his butt, sitting on a foam cushion, buckled into his seat belt, working a double-ended paddle, with his f...
This article ran in the July 31, 1888, issue of the Pittsburgh Press. The unnamed woman is almost certainly a wealthy Hawaii-raised teenager named Emma Spreckels, daughter of sugar baron Claus Spreckels and great-aunt to famed 1970s surfing antihero Adolph "Bunker" Spreckels. In August, the cover drawing on the National Police Gazette—a risque and hugely popular national tabloid specializing in cr...
Phil Jarratt's profile on newly-crowned world champion Damien Hardman ran in the September 1988 issue of SURFER Magazine. * * * Never having met Damien Hardman—the man who would soon become world champion—I asked around about him. “He’s kinda like Simon Anderson in his approach to life,” said one person. “It’s that Narrabeen thing, I suppose. But I wouldn’t put Damien in Simon’s class. He hasn’t...
Devon Gordon's feature on the original female Malibu surfers ran in the August 19, 2002, issue of Newsweek. * * * There were a few guys in the water at Malibu that Vicki Flaxman just wouldn’t mess with, even if they did cut her off in the lineup or snake her on a wave. Like Buzzy Trent, who played football—he was just too big. If he wanted the next wave, well, he could have it. But Vicki was near...
Shane Beschen is the only pro surfer to score three 10s in the same heat, and he did it on three consecutive waves. A lot of WCT surfers—most, in fact—don't have three 10-point rides in their entire career. Beschen's triple-10 happened in Round Three of the 1996 Billabong Pro, the second event of the season, in good-not-great short-period surf at Kirra. Two weeks earlier, Kelly Slater had won the ...
The following is an excerpt from Sean Doherty's 2021 book, "Golden Daze: Australia Surfing, Then to Now." This version has been slightly edited * * * Col Smith had just been asked in a 1977 Tracks interview if his surfing revolved around pulling off ‘gravity-defying stunts’. Col wasn’t sure if the interviewer was taking the piss. ‘Well, let me put it this way . . . .’ After a weighty pause, Col ...