Chapter 3:
Malibu Swing
Freezing the Moment with Doc Ball/
A Touch of Glamour/
Bob Simmons, Gnarled Genius/
Darrilyn, Oh Darrilyn/
The Magic Wave/
Velzy's Pig/
Dewey Weber, Hotdog Jesus/
Tubesteak Abides/
A Rebel for All Seasons/
The Valley Cometh/
Hawaii Calls/
Rocket to Makaha/
Buzzy Trent, King of Beasts/
Surfing's Beat Generation/
France and Peru Join In/
A Restart for Australia/
A Farewell to Clubs/
Bud Browne Presents/
Point Surf '58/
The Viking King of Mead Hall/
An Exorcism at Waimea/
The Magic Wave
Why did Southern California give birth to a national surfing craze? One simple, attractive, ahistorical, quasi-magical explanation is that modern surfing conjured itself into existence from the perfect air that hung over the perfect beach next to the perfect waves at Malibu. Surfing actually made Malibu, but never mind. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, it often seemed to be the other way around.
Malibu wasn’t so much a surfing location as it was a small, intimate, well-designed surfing...
No surf break, then or now, has ever presented itself as well as Malibu. Each wave rolled forth as if it had traveled halfway across the Pacific for the express purpose of gliding into this quarter-mile bit of shoreline.