A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

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Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

Energetic bodyboarder from Manhattan Beach, California; nicknamed "Dr. 360" for his devotion to the spinning 360-degree maneuver; unknown outside of the southern Los Angeles beach area until 1998 when, at age 48, he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. 

Wolfson was born in New York (1949), learned to bodysurf as a teenager after he moved with his family to Long Beach, California, and began riding a bodyboard in the late '70s. 

While he didn't in fact invent the bodyboarding 360 (as was later reported), he was nonetheless a competent and devoted wave-rider, capable of staying in the water for five or six hours at a time. 

After his cancer diagnosis, Wolfson, a city park recreation director, withdrew $100,000 in savings and distributed it to friends and family, then gave away his car and other possessions. One evening in November, a despondent Wolfson wrote a brief suicide note, swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, put on his wetsuit, paddled 150 yards offshore, tied himself to a buoy, and blacked out. The next morning he was pulled from the water by a lifeguard and revived. 

Wolfson said he'd made a terrible mistake by trying to take his life, and spent many of the next 15 months telling his story, first to the local papers, then the Los Angeles Times, then on 20/20 and Good Morning America, and finally in his autobiography, Full Circle. 

In February 2000, when Wolfson died after his car unaccountably ran into a tree, Time magazine eulogized him as a "legendary surfer," the New York Times called him "an aquatic Peter Pan . . . the perennial California surfer," and the Economist, in a full-page obituary, compared him to James Dean and Buddy Holly, and called him a "national celebrity." 

Surfer magazine, respectful of a fallen comrade but amused at the sudden burst of interest by the mainstream media—for someone the editors had never heard of—titled its obit, "Joe, We Hardly Knew Ye."

Wolfson, Joe

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

Features