Tri-fins, car phones, bandeau bikini tops, and high-top sneakers all made Surfing magazine’s “What’s Hot” list for 1986. On the “What’s Not” side: Drugs, localism, and “surfing like Mark Richards.”
Hottest of all was a new phone service called Surfline, located in Huntington Beach. For 55¢ a pop, Southern California could dial up a 90-second recorded message on local wave conditions. The voice was surfy and relaxed, but there was plenty of hard data included as well, including swell size, per...
