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/
Process of Elimination
The earliest issues of SURFER included a short “Contests and Clubs” section, but it wasn’t until late 1962 that a surf meet earned feature-length treatment in the magazine, and another four years after that before publisher John Severson put a contest shot on the cover. Then as now, surfers recognized the gulf between the day-to-day experience of riding waves—which was often combative, yes, but also dreamy, quiet, private—and the judging panels, colored flags, numbered jerseys, and ear-splitt...
Surfing competition would soon have rules and protocol, but this didn’t equal formality. The typical 1960s surf contest, with its Scoutmaster-like organizers and its small hive of keen but unpracticed competitors, had the neighborly feel of a soap box derby.