The late-'50s surf shop was an exercise in minimalism: a wood countertop and a few boards in a bare-walled “showroom” attached to a fumy garage-sized workspace stocked with a drum of resin, a roll of fiberglass, some cardboard mixing buckets, and two or three sets of boardmaking racks. This was all reconfigured during the boom. By the mid-'60s, surf shops were mostly clean (if never fully sanitized), decorated, and fully provisioned. The “gone surfing” sign that used to hang from a locked fro...
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 /
Houses of the Holy
The surf shop was a clubhouse and salon as well as a factory-retail outlet. A hot local surfer or two could usually be found on premises, either making boards or working the counter; gremmies dutifully shuffled in after school or on weekends as much to be in the presence of greatness as to check out the new merchandise.