J Riddle
Los Angeles, 1981 and 1987
From out of nowhere this board comes flying at me, knocking me 15-feet in the air. I turned around, and it was Dora. He’d just done a flying kickout on a ten-year-old kid!
The quotes below are excerpted from “Conversations: J Riddle,” by Sam George, which ran in the June 1987 issue of Surfing; and from “Profile: J Riddle,” by Marc Rubel, which ran in the June 1981 issue of Surfing. Riddle was born in 1950.
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EARLY YEARS
I was eight years old when I first saw somebody surf, and I instantly got the itch. But my mother took me up to Lake Arrowhead that summer. We rented these huge paddleboards, and I used to make like I was surfing. I’d paddle toward shore a...