Surfers as a rule didn’t trust the media. Hollywood movies, Sports Illustrated articles, Beach Boys singles—these were created by non-surfers, and they almost never got it right. What surfers really craved was in-house news and entertainment. Surf movies were a blast. Surf magazines were even better—or at least more versatile. They could be taken home, studied, collected, and referenced; they offered advice, opinion, and instruction. All those religious comparisons the sport grew so fond of—t...
Chapter 4:
Ten-Year Boom
- Gidget the All-Powerful /
- The Rebel Next Door /
- Hobie vs Velzy vs the IRS /
- Better Surfing Through Chemistry /
- Summer on the Inside /
- Surf Fashion, Lightly Salted /
- Surfing the Newsstand /
- Process of Elimination /
- Oil City Showdown /
- The Jazz Stylings of Phil Edwards /
- Technicolor Surf Boom /
- Heroes and Villains /
- Blackball Blues /
- Dick Dale, Destroyer of Amps /
- Surfing in Five-Part Harmony /
- Tokyo to Tel Aviv /
- Flight of the Larrikin /
- Bob Evans Means Business /
- Midget Wins It All /
- But Will it Play in New York? /
- Houses of the Holy /
- We Own the Sidewalks /
- Beautiful from any Angle /
- Duke's Big Contest /
- Can You Handle the Penetrator? /
- Girls, Don't Panic! /
- David Nuuhiwa Walks on Water /
- An Invincible Summer /
Beautiful from any Angle
Photographer Ron Stoner did for Southern California surf breaks what artist David Hockney did for Southern California swimming pools, and to the same effect: you didn’t want to just look at their work, you longed to step inside and become part of it.