"Immersion in Desolation," by photographer Bruce Walker, ran in January 1970 issue of Surfing magazine; it is likely the first article ever published on wave-riding on the Outer Banks. This version has been shortened and edited. * * * North Carolina's Outer Banks have been the scene of quite a bit of United States history. Sir Walter Raleigh’s famous "Lost Colony” was settled in the northern are...
Mark Martinson’s one-day travelogue ran in the May 1969 issue of SURFER. This version has been slightly edited and shortened. * * * Four-thirty Saturday morning. Brrring! Wham! Uhhh . . . oh yeah, surfing contest. The Big Ben alarm clock does the job. Better get a little stimuli going. Some hot tea should do it. Let’s see. Contest at Oceanside. Hmmm. Not too far. Eighty miles. Probably could ma...
At the end of 1967, the United States Surfing Association split into four separate entities, one for the West Coast (Western Surfing Association, or WSA), the East Coast (ESA), the Gulf Coast (GSA), and Hawaii (HSA). Contests for each association were further split into four divisions, starting with A for entry-level competitors, then AA for those who had won at the A level, then AAA. At the top w...
This article ran in Honolulu Star-Bulletin on July 11, 1921, under the headline "Racial Exhibit to be Sent to Eugenics Meet: Life-Size Statue of David Kahanamoku to be Displayed in New York." The event was the Second International Eugenics Congress, held at the American Museum of Natural History. The eugenics movement began in the 1880s and was based on the idea that humans should be bred for qua...
Reformed (more or less) North Carolina moonshiner Junior Johnson is the perfect launching-pad figure for the thing he represents, which is stock-car racing. Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Clara Bow, Chuck Berry—all of them, same thing, very hand-in-glove to their respective fields. But no activity of any kind has an origin-story legend so immaculately tailored to its source as Duke Kahanamoku is to surfin...
This article by Mike Jay ran in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on April 21, 1923. The subhead reads: "Dad Center Should Know, and He Says Sam Is Better Than His Brother Duke Kahanamoku." This version has been slightly edited. * * * The question of the greatest surf rider in Hawaii will always be a debatable one. Oh, very! So a quiet survey was undertaken and the matter was brought up casually here a...
"The Nation of Ken," by Bruce Jenkins, a 22,000-word XXL profile on big-wave surfer Ken Bradshaw, ran in the Spring 2001 issue of Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited from the original. * * * A lesser man would be dead drunk by now. A weaker man would be railing against a system that rarely calls his name. Ken Bradshaw could be a lot of things at 48: melancholy, delusional, sp...
"The Bay," by Allston James, ran in the September 1990 issue of SURFER Magazine. This version has been slightly edited and reformatted. * * * DEEP ROOTS Waimea Bay has always been a place that defined limits, both oceanic and human. Name a surfer anywhere who hasn’t wondered if he would ever have the desire and skill to ride Waimea. It’s a potentially disturbing question that resides in every su...
Tom Wolfe wrote his surfing-themed "Pump House Gang" essay in 1966. The same title was used for Wolfe's 1968 book, made up of 15 stories that had been published over the previous two years, either in the London Weekend Telegraph or the Sunday magazine section of the New York World Journal Tribune. An excerpt from Wolfe's Introduction to the Pump House Gang is presented here. * * * I wrote all bu...
The San Diego Evening Tribune ran this article on June 21, 1965. Later that year, writer Tom Wolfe arrived in La Jolla to research his "Pump House Gang" essay (read here), based in part on local surfers associated with the Mac Meda Destruction Company, described by Wolfe as an "underground society." It wasn't underground so much as it was amorphous—Mac Meda organization didn't extend much beyond m...