Everybody Must Get Stoned

There was a pause in 1968 as the sport seemed to be wondering if it was going to keep up the façade of moving toward a cleaned-up, anti-hodad, mainstream-friendly version of itself. Then the calendar flipped to 1969, and from Hermosa to Haleiwa to Melbourne it was all flashing peace signs, avocado smoothies, and oversized marijuana leaves glassed into the decks of new boards—right where the Hobie and Jacobs labels used to go.

The sport didn't much test the waters of the counterculture. It ran...

Drugs put surfing in the countercultural fast lane. In beach towns everywhere, drugs were cheap, available, and popular. “We’d do anything we could get our hands on," Jock Sutherland said.