This chapter from "Pam Burridge," a 1992 biography by sports historian and academic Marian Stell, takes place in 1984. Although still just 18, Pam had been surfing in professional events for three years and had been touted as a future world champion since middle school. Her world title bid the previous year was abruptly halted when the last two contests were dropped from the schedule due to a lack...
"This is the Country" ran in the November 1976 issue of SURFER. From his Honolulu studio, photographer Steve Wilkings invited Owl Chapman over watch a slideshow of images shot the previous July, at Maalaea; the SURFER article is a transcribed conversation that took place as the slides clicked past. This version has been edited and shortened. * * * CHAPMAN: Maalaea is the most intense tube ride t...
Yuri Farrant's article about "the biggest [summer swell] I had seen in four years" ran in the November 1972 issue of SURFER. After a day spent surfing and shooting maxed-out Ala Moana, Farrant, along with Reno Abellira, Jeff Hakman, and photographer Steve Wilkings, decide to catch an interisland flight the following morning to Maui, in hopes of scoring Maalaea. This article has been slightly edite...
As far as surf breaks go, the spot known as Flood Control, whose outermost takeoff spot is buried just aft of the Queen Mary's massive black Art Deco stern in the Port of Long Beach, had a very short life. Twenty-three years, start to finish, is a good guess. But it is just a guess because everything about Long Beach is a scaled-up convoluted mess, with layer upon manmade layer—oil derricks, milit...
Tim Baker's profile on Shane Herring ran in the May 2005 issue of Australia's Surfing Life magazine. This version has been slightly edited. * * * I first met Shane when he was a barely pubescent 15-year-old at Grajagan, Indonesia. I’d never heard of him, but marveled at this tiny kid who jumped straight off the boat and paddled determinedly into thumping eight-to-10-foot reef-bottom barrels. It ...
Tim Baker's profile on Shane Herring ran in the August 1992 issue of Australia's Surfing Life. This version has been slightly edited. * * * Legendary Dee Why surf photographer Peter Crawford was frantic. "Where's Shane? Twenty of the Dee Why boys are downstairs and they won't let 'em in," he reported. It was 10:00 pm on the Sunday of Shane Herring's historic Coke Classic win and the Dee Why lad ...
The Stomp was an American-launched dance craze that made it to every rock-loving nation in the world during the early 1960s. It was described as "the world's easiest dance"—something you could learn in 30 seconds. Also attractive to stomp-happy teens who filled the dance halls was the sheer noise produced by the dance, as dozens or even hundreds of kids would smash their feet down in unison, right...
Renny Yater's take on the Hollister Ranch and the origins of the Ranch-privileged Santa Barbara Surf Club originally appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of the Surfer's Journal, as part of much longer feature titled "Loner: California's Reclusive Trim Master, Reynolds Yater, Tells His Story." The text below has been slightly edited. * * * Here’s what happened up there. Clinton Hollister [grandson ...
This article ran in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, on November 15, 1998. * * * About a million California surfers don't own land on the private and utterly sublime Hollister Ranch, located on Point Conception, just up from Santa Barbara, Calif. A hundred do. That ratio helps explain why Ranch surfers are so often described in impolite terms—as self-indulgent trust-fund brats, bloodsucking be...
“The Super Short, Uptight, V-Bottom, Tube Carving Plastic Machines and Other Assorted Short Subjects,” by Drew Kampion, ran in the September 1968 issue of SURFER. The version has been slightly edited. * * * If nothing else were to occur in surfing for the remainder of this year, if 1968 were to end tomorrow, then it would still be the most productive year in surfing’s history. This has been the...