By the mid-'80s, a second commercial and pop culture surf boom was on. By almost any quantitative measure, this new boom was bigger than the Gidget-launched craze of the '60s, and it lasted until 1990, when it crashed with a familiar abruptness.
There were plenty of new products for what marketers now referred to as “core” (short for hardcore) surfers: the glue-on rubber nose guard to prevent spearing injuries; an Aussie-developed safety helmet to be worn at menacing shallow-water breaks like...
