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/
Girls, Don't Panic!
A smooth-surfing Honolulu tomboy named Joey Hamasaki had her own signature model surfboard, as did Joyce Hoffman—both were marketplace failures. Still, women’s surfing posted a few gains during the boom. San Diego high school sophomore Linda Benson won the Makaha International in 1959, doing spinners and cutbacks like a wind-up toy, and later that year she was featured in Bud Browne's Cat on a Hot Foam Board. In 1964, Orange County surfer Linda Merrill became the first women to make the cover...
Joyce Hoffman was was blond and attractive, with a radiant smile—and the deadliest competitive drive in all of surfing: “My idea of having fun,” she once said, “is being the best at something and winning all the time.”