Chapter: 4
Ten-Year Boom
- Gidget the All-Powerful
- The Rebel Next Door
- Hobie vs Velzy vs the IRS
- Better Surfing Through Chemistry
- Summer on the Inside
- Surf Fashion, Lightly Salted
- Surfing the Newsstand
- Process of Elimination
- Oil City Showdown
- The Jazz Stylings of Phil Edwards
- Technicolor Surf Boom
- Heroes and Villains
- Blackball Blues
- Dick Dale, Destroyer of Amps
- Surfing in Five-Part Harmony
- Tokyo to Tel Aviv
- Flight of the Larrikin
- Bob Evans Means Business
- Midget Wins It All
- But Will it Play in New York?
- Houses of the Holy
- We Own the Sidewalks
- Beautiful from any Angle
- Duke's Big Contest
- Can You Handle the Penetrator?
- Girls, Don't Panic!
- David Nuuhiwa Walks on Water
- An Invincible Summer
Gidget the All-Powerful
![Kathy Kohner, around 1957](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/11aba7d8831590467e66998b1c8450c081e23fbc-1040x585.jpg?w=640&h=360&q=65&auto=format)
Kathy Kohner, around 1957
![Kathy Kohner](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/2673b7ff0a0473b0bc68def383cd4fe56eeb9ce6-1040x585.jpg?w=640&h=360&q=65&auto=format)
Kathy Kohner
![Kathy Kohner and Miki Dora](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/2ed8f5e364018fba282854af9569a97156333edd-1040x585.jpg?w=640&h=360&q=65&auto=format)
Kathy Kohner and Miki Dora
![Kathy Kohner](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/fe8705530c11ab2e38edfd64e40059e13e36ea0c-1040x585.jpg?w=640&h=360&q=65&auto=format)
Kathy Kohner
![Kathy Kohner, Malibu](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/2c06b9f2b3e3d47838c69ad091b2e5d7a3a29f68-1040x585.jpg?w=640&h=360&q=65&auto=format)
Kathy Kohner, Malibu
And so it was that a gushing Malibu-obsessed tomboy escorted surfing to its permanent seat at the banquet table of American pop culture.
Tubesteak Tracy was the first to notice 15-year-old Kathy Kohner as she passed by on the beach at Malibu during the summer of 1956. After a bit of obligatory heckling, Tracy shouted out, “See you around, Gidget!” Kohner was five-feet tall and weighed 95 pounds; as the better part of the Western world would soon learn, “Gidget” was a mashup of “girl” and “midget.” Kohner learned to surf by trading...
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