SUNDAY JOINT, 2-23-2025: THE PEARL OF PALM BEACH
Hey All,
Two quick comments on last week's Abu Dhabi wavepool Joint. Veteran surf writer Matt Walker—the astronaut's son, our twang-voiced Mark Twain of the Outer Banks—was first to the inbox last Monday and delivered this one-liner: "I find it funny that pools elevated skateboarding and sank surfing." When a mot that bon drops from the sky my impulse is to pocket it, wait a respectful amount of time, and offer it as my own. Not this time. I'll instead just nod my head in full support and this: pool-skating was 100% organic and bottom-up, kids figured it out themselves, turned something useless (an empty pool) into an incredible gravity-bending thrill, and off it went to every other skater in the world, no charge—just find the nearest vacated pool and create your own misdemeanor adventure. That's exactly what we did. Hundreds of thousands of us. Skateboarding, thanks to the pool, was expanded.
Kelly Slater and his Surf Ranch tech and the Abu Dhabi Pro, combined, have done the opposite. Slater's pool is as expensive and elite and top-down as it gets. It takes something that is as rare as it is beautiful (a perfectly-shaped wave) and makes it a commodity, a replica. Surfing, thanks to the pool, is reduced.
Where is our Bill Murray?
Also, apologies, for the second time over the past year, to Swellnet and Steve Shearer, who did a fantastic job last week covering and skewering the Abu Dhabi Pro. This piece in particular.
I don't recall if I learned about Pearl Turton by way of Tanya Binning, or the other way around. We're 60 years past when Tanya and Pearl were the glamour queens of Down Under surfing, and I don't even know if the two women knew each other, but from this distance I can't help but think of them as a pair. Maybe because at a surface level they were so unalike. Binning was the blond goofyfooter, billed as "Australia's top surf bunny" and almost without fail presented as smiling and curvy, and not quite bombshell-sexy but not far off. Turton was the black-haired regularfooter who made headlines after winning Australia's first nationwide surf contest in 1963. Maybe I'm reading more into a handful of vintage '63–'64 Pearl Turton photos than I should, but she looks to me like somebody you'd always want to have in the car or at the party, fun and quick-witted—but also somebody you would not want to get on the wrong side of. She looks, in a word, tough. Pearl smiles a lot, like Tanya. But my strong guess is she could also stare holes into you. Gorgeous by default but scrappy when needed. Pearl could be Chrissie Hynde's favorite daughter by a never-revealed father, except everyone knows the father is Kevin "the Head" Brennan. (Never mind that Pearl was born before Hynde and Brennan both, artistic license is a gift.)
You know Pearl Turton, by bikini if not name. She's the Aussie "kid" in the light-blue two-piece, with board to match, who distracts Mike Hynson and Robert August when the Endless Summer crew hits Bondi Beach. The sequence is dated and a little creepy by today's standards in terms of age—Turton is 16, August is 18, Hynson is 21—and lightly insulting in that Turton is just passingly introduced as "Pearl," no mention of her being the reigning Aussie champ (she surfed better than what you see in the film), and the whole thing is a basically a setup where Hynson gets Pearl in the car to presumably make some time, as we used to say, leaving Robert behind to pound sand.
Here is Turton in a 1963 episode of Bandstand (scroll to 22:22), a schoolgirl sitting uncomfortably on a metal chair while wearing a bikini, interviewed by host Brian Henderson, 32, who is fully clothed and manspreading to a groin-jeopardizing degree. Turton handles herself really well here, all things considered. Nervous but making eye contact, and I'd even say putting a little spin here and there in the way she looks at Henderson. Maybe it's just the mascara but Turton is not without power in this stilted little pas de deux. And credit to Henderson and Bandstand, I suppose, for at least giving her a couple of waves' worth of on-screen surf time.
I have been passing the hat on behalf of EOS every year for a decade now (longer if we count the Kickstarter that got EOS off the ground in 2011), and all told more than 1,000 of you have dropped some money in at one point or another. There have been a few big donations, but everything was of a piece with EOS' status as a niche nonprofit organization. No bolt from the blue. Until last week, that is, when a check arrived from the Maya L. Auchincloss Trust that was as big as it was unexpected. Not big enough for EOS to vacate this single-desk 10' x 12' guestroom-office and set up in a corner business suite overlooking South Lake Union. But big enough to divide up and parcel out into the future so that so EOS and EOS Archive can operate with a small but crucial bit of financial cushion for the next two or three years.
Maya Auchincloss came from old Rhode Island money and was related by marriage to the Kennedys and the Vidals (as in Gore), so think glamour, clubs, mansions, yachts. That's her and twin brother Cecil, below, with JFK. Maya was outgoing in her own way, but private to an extreme. She died last year at age 65, and I cannot find so much as a short obituary.
Keith Kyle, a lawyer and EOS subscriber and lifetime Rhode Island surfer—he's close pals with Rhode Island surf-skate legend Sid Abbruzzi—headed up the Maya L. Auchincloss trust and engineered the EOS donation. I asked him how it happened.
In the April 2021 issue of Surfer’s Journal, there is a great photo of Freddie and Howard Cushing surfing at the Spouting Rock Beach Association, also known as Bailey's Beach, in Newport. This is an exclusive beach club reserved for the richest, most elite people who inhabit Newport during the summer months. Maya’s father was Yusha Auchincloss, stepbrother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Maya grew up in a world of privilege and wealth. But she was the most unpretentious person you could ever meet. She was bright and witty, and we first got to know each other over our shared love of Golden Retrievers.
Maya and I were the same age, and were in fact born just days apart from each other, in February 1959. We were both Aquarius. That was the end of our “commonality." I grew up in a working-class family of Italian and Irish immigrants who were the servants, gardeners, and employees of wealthy families like Maya’s. I lived off Coggeshall Avenue, which intersected with the famous Ocean Drive, which in turn led to the Spouting Rock Beach Association.
When that issue of Surfer's Journal came out, I showed the photograph to Maya and we began trading stories about the beach. The stories were very different. I told her that when I began surfing at age 12 it was at Bailey’s—that is, at the “commoners end” of the beach. She was always repulsed by that description. I told her that us regular folk (my grandmother and others), particularly those who lived on and along Coggeshall, fought for the right to access a portion of the beach and that I had been given an access key to the gate and fence blocking off the beach to the “poor people.” More repulsion from Maya. Always inquisitive, she asked how was it that age 12 I could carry one of those long and heavy boards all the way to the beach. I told her I didn’t. "I stole your boards," I said with a smile. I explained that the Spouting Rock club had a large locker, packed with longboards, all of which were standing up straight right next to a grassy hill that was at the precise height of the board locker. Me and the neighborhood kids would sneak in, quietly lift the boards straight up and out of their locker spaces, go surfing, then replace them at the end of the day without anyone noticing. Maya thought this was the greatest thing she had ever heard and that we went a little ways toward correcting the injustice of excluding the poor kids from her wealthy beach.
This poor section of beach is still open to the public and known colloquially as “Rejects Beach.”
Anyway, so began my discussions with Maya about surfing. She was genuinely interested in our history and culture, and the importance of its preservation. For many years, I was involved with Sid Abbruzzi’s Surf Fest events. The first one was held on the oceanfront grounds of Doris Duke’s famous estate Rough Point. Maya took a keen interest when we shared stories about how Doris Duke, one of Newport’s most wealthy socialites, surfed with Duke Kahamamoku and his brothers. She marveled that surfing could have that kind of historical context. I talked to her often about my love of the history and culture of a sport that certainly affected my life and I think that was what most interested her. She would rejoice that some of her charity will be used to preserve surfing history.
I marvel at how the irony of this situation has connected all of us. The rich girl connects with the poor kid who became a lawyer, they share surfing stories, and now her wealth can be used to help preserve a part of that history due to my connection to Encyclopedia of Surfing.
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
Matt
[Photo grid, clockwise from top left: picnic party overlooking Bailey's Beach, Newport, Rhode Island, around 1965, photo by Slim Aarons; Pearl Turton, 1963; Rhode Island surfer-skater Sid Abbruzzi; Bill Murray in Caddyshack; Abbruzzi at the 2011 Surf Fest event, held at Doris Duke's Newport mansion; Pearl Turton surfing in 1963. Turton newspaper feature from 1963.Turton, Robert August, and Mike Hynson in Endless Summer. Turton on Bandstand. 1965 surfing photo of Bailey's Beach by Slim Aarons. Vintage Bailey's Beach postcard. 2011 Surf Fest.]