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
Can You Handle the Penetrator?
John Peck, Haleiwa, 1964
Weber Surfboards team, 1966. Photo: LeRoy Grannis
Ad for Mickey Dora's "Da Cat" model, 1967
Bing Surfboard models, 1966-1968
The “model” craze swept the sport in the mid-'60s, and surfboard shoppers were left scratching their heads over the relative merits of the Hustler, the Master, the Cheater, the Penetrator, the Performer, the Aggressor, and the Rapier—all of which looked identical at 30 paces.
Board design was the quiet part of the post-Gidget surf boom. There were no groundbreaking changes between the late '50s and the mid-'60s, just refinement. Dale Velzy’s wide-backed “pig,” introduced in the mid-'50s and still popular at the turn of the decade, was replaced by a more uniformly-curved silhouette—less hips, more nose. The “roundpin” tail outline was introduced as a hybrid between the ...
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