Chapter: 5
Barefoot Revolution
- Revolution is not a Dinner Party
- The Tao of George
- Getting Slippery with Bob McTavish
- Bismarck with a Tan
- Plastic Machine
- Enlightenment at Honolua Bay
- Panic on the Showroom Floor
- Style Takes a Dive
- Everybody Must Get Stoned
- Surfer Goes Electrical Bananas
- No Contest
- There Will be Slaps
- Kook Straps, Cadillacs, and Sex Wax
- Blame it on the Boogie
- Country Soul
- Higher and Brighter with Alby Falzon
- Fresh Blood on the Newsstand
- Long Road to Bells Beach
- Speed Freaks
- Gods of Thunder
- The Impossible Wave
- Into the Vortex
- Gerry Lopez, Pipeline Firewalker
- The Rubberman Cometh
Style Takes a Dive

Photo: Art Brewer

Bill Hamilton, 1968

Australia, 1967

Trestles, 1969. Photo: Ron Stoner

Durban, 1968. Photo: Alby Falzon
Style-wise, all bets were off. Even the best surfers in the world had were navigating the new terrain with a lot of torso-twisting, leg-pumping, and arm-waving.
The shortboard revolution rewrote surfing's performance handbook. The drop-knee cutback, an elegant weight-leveraging move where the surfer bent and lowered his rear leg like a proposing suitor—gone. Parallel-stance trim, gone. Noseriding continued for a year or so, just out of habit, but the shortboard’s thin front end didn’t offer much of a platform, and any noseriding was followed by a quick re...
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