"What Does the Contest Prove?" ran in the December 28, 1964, issue of the Honolulu Advertiser, during the same week at the annual Makaha International Surfing Championships. Roger Pepper, columnist for the Advertiser, wrote a short intro noting that "there are some who feel that it is bad to exploit surfing in the form of contests. Your reporter asked one of Oahu's best surfers, Paul Gebauer, to p...
This year marks the first time in the pro surfing era where the men's and women's world titles will be determined not by a surfer's aggregate point total over an entire season, as has been the case since 1976. Instead, the top five men and top five women surfers, as ranked over the course of a seven-event season that finished last month in Mexcio, will face off in the Rip Curl WSL Finals, a one-da...
Nancy Franklin's review for John From Cincinnati ran in the June 18, 2007, issue of the New Yorker. * * * You know how when you use a big bill to buy a train ticket or stamps from a vending machine and unexpectedly get a handful of Susan B. Anthony dollars as change you think, Oh, come on, this is no good—why didn’t the machine warn me? I’m never going to be able to get rid of these—nobody wants...
A lot of surfers in the 1950s and '60s—American surfers in particular—were infatuated with bullfighting. Bud Hendrick, an Orange County surfer who and woodworker who did production shaping for Hobie Surfboards, was the only one who actually became a matador. This article is a shortened version of "Bud Hendrick's Open Doors," which ran in the August 2016 issue of Surfer's Journal. The main body of ...
This article ran in the August 1983 issue of SURFER. It has been slightly edited and shortened. * * * In the late spring of 1951, one of the strongest south swells in memory struck the chiseled hub of California coastline known as Malibu. From point to pier the waves rattled in, cresting at a solid eight-to-ten feet. A call went out to the Malibu crew—California’s surfing elite—and they soon str...
Surfing's post-World War II infatuation with bullfighting lasted for 20 or 25 years, give or take. It's hard to say exactly how deep it ran, or if the whole thing was half-serious half-ironic (although I think it leaned serious), or if bullfighting was just the lowest-hanging fruit when somebody needed to compare the sport to another sport. Nothing has been written specifically about the surfer-b...
Derek Rielly's interview with Fred Hemmings ran in the February-March 2017 issue of the Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited. * * * The taxi van pulls into the semicircle driveway of the Outrigger Canoe Club at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki. As befits an icon of Hawaiian surfing (established 1908) and of Hawaii Modern architecture (this version of the clubhouse was built in ...
Don Machado spoke to Fred Hemmings on October 5, 1985, for the Outrigger Canoe Club's oral history series. The transcript below has been shortened and edited; a full version can be read here. * * * I was born on January 9, 1945, here in Honolulu at Kapiolani Maternity Hospital. It is my good fortune to have been raised in Honolulu. I have lived my entire life as a resident of the State of Hawaii...
This short take on soon-to-be IPS founder Fred Hemmings was embedded in a longer article titled "Summer in the Islands," which ran in the July 1975 issue of Tracks. This version has been slightly edited. * * * Fred Hemmings was the world champion back in 1968. He still surfs occasionally and runs the Smirnoff Pro-Am each November. He says most of the surfers don’t understand him, but he knows wh...
"Surf Champ Ignored Handicaps," by Bill Cook, ran in the February 2, 1964, edition of the Honolulu Advertiser, not long after Fred Hemmings' win in the Juniors division of the '63 Makaha International. The text below has been slightly edited. * * * Polio, pneumonia, a severe knee injury—none of these things prevented teenager Frederick Mathew Hemmings Jr. from becoming an international surfing c...