SUNDAY JOINT, 3-25-2018: SPEEDING WITH TERRY FITZGERALD AND MICHAEL PETERSON
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Hey All,
History of Surfing rolled on last week with “Speed Freaks,” a galloping if poorly titled chapter on Michael Peterson and Terry Fitzgerald. Poorly titled because Peterson was a blue-ribbon drug abuser, while Fitz was totally straight edge, so the vague double entendre is cruel in one case and non-applicable in the other. Forgive me, and please direct your attention to this newly revamped MP video, it all its three-and-a-half-minute Deep Purple-dipped glory. Check out Michael’s finger-jab claim at 2:32, which is as subtle as it is effective. Somewhere in the archive I’ve got a clip of Rabbit doing the same claim at Sunset Beach a few years later. Both men do it well. Let it be noted, however, that MP did it first.
Fitz gets his with an excellent Drew Kampion-authored interview in Above the Roar. “Surfing is fun. If we all remembered that, we wouldn’t worry about cutting each other’s throats.”
![Encyclopedia of Surfing](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/1d074d1e90e5c1036ebebb271db733386f0741f3-900x506.jpg?w=1024&fit=clip&auto=format)
![Encyclopedia of Surfing](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f1hjpcr4/production/3a3492b137035faf355703b366014153eef818ff-500x500.jpg?w=1024&fit=clip&auto=format)
You older folks might remember The Forgotten Island of Santosha, which was both a SURFER mag cover story and the film. Here is a short essay I wrote on what Santosha meant in the 1970s, even to those of us who never went there, and how the sport benefited (my opinion) when we put a higher value on secrecy and mystery.
Do you like your power surfing dished up on Lightning Bolt single-fin pintails in heaving northwest peaks at Sunset Beach? Isn’t that pretty much why we’re all here? Jeff Hakman and Barry K are on deck.
Thanks for reading, and see you next Sunday.
Matt
[MP photo by Peter Crawford]