From the shallow shores of Scarborough, Western Australia. Shot within a
2 hour period and edited over night by the talented Dana Poklepovich.
Song from the gifted hands of the one and only B.B. King
Zac Arena Foster riding a Gato heroi surfboard.
Enjoy. Lucille.
Lucille. from Stilus Surboards on Vimeo.
SUPPORT THE REAL COOL SURF RETRO KULTURE & CLASSIC ROCK AND ROLL... JUST FOR FUN!!! by a Fuckin' Greasy Logger
domingo, 31 de mayo de 2015
sábado, 30 de mayo de 2015
viernes, 29 de mayo de 2015
jueves, 28 de mayo de 2015
miércoles, 27 de mayo de 2015
martes, 26 de mayo de 2015
Surf Dad: Questions for Joel Tudor
Joel Tudor leads his two-year-old son Tosh down a hill in the backyard of his Del Mar home. Photo: Sam Hodgson
We asked Tudor about his travels, his accomplishments, his fame and where he hates surfing in San Diego.
You’ve been spending a lot of time out of town — New York, Middle America, all over. What’s the deal?
I’m at a point in my life where I’ve just traveled everywhere. I did all these exotic locations at such a young age and I just thought I wanted to see a little bit of America, I wanted to see the vast majority of our country, so that I can have an idea of where I live. All I knew was California, and I thought “I want to get out and see the Americas.” So I did.
Where exactly did you go?
I just drove cross country. I didn’t do a whole lot of stopping. I hate to say this and sound like a snobby Californian, but there ain’t shit to see between here and New York.
And did you live in New York, for a while?
Off and on. I’ve been visiting there for 12 years. I’d go there for a month, or a couple of weeks.
What’s the attraction? What’s a surfer doing in New York?
You know, it’s odd. For a lot of people, they take their vacations to exotic places, to get away, where there’s not a lot of people. But, in New York, for me, that’s where I get away because there’s so much happening. Nobody could care about me or my problems or anything. There’s not enough time to give a shit, so in a way it’s kind of an escape.
You’re surrounded by tons of people, but nobody cares. It’s great.
You’re obviously very well known in San Diego, and in California in general, but how well-recognized would you be, for example, if we went 50 miles east?
Fifty miles east? I doubt I’d be recognized. But it depends. Now, through ju-jitsu, I’ve become friends with so many people through the competing that I have friends all throughout the United States, so I’ve got that thing going.
You recently became a dad. How are you going to approach balancing your son’s desire to do what he wants to do as he grows older and the pressure that might be put on him to become a surfer and to follow in your footsteps?
He’s going to be whatever he wants to be. I’ll probably be the kind of dad who hides all of his accomplishments.
But they’ll be pretty hard to hide …
Yeah, they’ll be hard to hide, but I don’t ever want him living in any kind of a shadow. He’s his own person.
When do you decide when you are going to wear a leash?
There’s really only a handful of places that call for that.
If the waves get really big, and, say, I’m surfing La Jolla Cove, then I’ll wear a leash. If there’s a big swell and it’s high tide at WindanSea, then I’ll wear a leash — that’s a no-brainer. If it’s a sandy beach, I’m not putting a cord on — that’s pointless.
But anywhere that your board’s going to get destroyed … I went through the macho thing at an early age, and I’m not sacrificing any more boards for macho points. I’ll put a leash on now if it calls for it.
What do you think are the five worst places to surf in San Diego?
Coronado — for consistency of waves; Ocean Beach Pier; the Carlsbad area; Imperial Beach — because of the water quality and Cherry Hill in Solana Beach.
These are the last few spots that you can really go to and guarantee that you’re not going to see anyone surfing.
To what extent, do you think, do you have to learn the basics — the muscle memory for example — from a very young age in order to really excel in surfing?
It just depends on the person and how talented they are. Some people just have natural capabilities, some people have none. Some people have been surfing for 30 years and still can’t surf, and they never really learned it.
That just goes to show you that it’s got nothing to do with your level, it’s how much fun you’re having. If you’re not good at it and you’re still doing it after 30 years … you know what I mean? The people I’m referring to — it’s like, they’re still out there every day. So it really doesn’t matter if you never become the best or whatever, everybody reaps the same benefits.
What happens when you’re no longer making money from surfing, what’s next?
Well, I opened a store in Japan 10 years ago. It’s been there for a decade, I’ve got a wetsuit company over there, I’ve got the surfboards. (Tudor runs a surfboard company.)
And I’ve been pretty smart with what little money I have made. I put a lot of it in real estate. It’s all a matter of investing wisely. Some people have tons of money and they don’t have anything.
What’s the heaviest situation you’ve ever been in while surfing?
When I was 16, I went to Indonesia on a boat trip, which was really extravagant to do that at that time. We were surfing outside of Bali and we just got in this really crazy accident and a bunch of people died.
We were on the boat and we hit another boat in the middle of the night. We were on a 60-foot boat and we hit an 11-foot boat. We cut their boat to pieces and a whole lot of people on it too.
But I’ve been in all kinds of situations. Being in Hawaii, I’ve seen people drown. I’ve seen all kinds of stuff.
But that just goes with the territory. In surfing, some people die when it’s two feet and some people die when it’s 20 feet. Some people drown at Scripps. It’s nothing to do with the big waves it’s just the mistakes you make. It’s just like driving a car — everyone’s seen a fatal car accident. You spend enough time in the water and you’ll see all sorts of things.
Do you think that traveling surfers are good ambassadors for Western culture?
It depends on the person. But I think, yeah, the majority of the time most people who surf are pretty well reserved. Definitely, we should be, and I hope we all are, environmentally conscious. We have to be — we’re surfers. Even though we ride toxic surfboards, we have to care about the ocean to some extent.
Also, I think people, in general, that spend their life around the water, have a quality about them that other people can benefit from. They have the knowledge of their environment and their surroundings — more than someone that’s just landlocked in the middle of nowhere who watches Fox News all day. You have a perspective and an outlook on life that’s just refreshing.
— Interview by WILL CARLESS
This article relates to: Newshttp://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/surf-dad-questions-for-joel-tudor-2/
The Ductumentary - Full Movie
The surf legend Joel Tudor
has appeared in more than 100 surf films, but “The Ductumentary,” a
documentary short presented by Vans that will have its premiere on
Monday, is the first one he’s been involved with making. It’s a portrait
of the Duct Tape Invitational Series, an unorthodox longboarding
contest that Tudor, the two-time longboarding world champ, started in
2010 as an antidote to the Association of Professional Surfing’s
longboard competition circuit. At 25 minutes, the documentary is equal
parts surfer porn and examination of Tudor’s roots and impact on the
sport.
Nolan HallJoel Tudor
The 37-year-old San
Diego native is almost single-handedly responsible for the resurgence of
longboarding. The surf historian Matt Warshaw has described him as “the
Raphael of the longboard renaissance.” In the late ’80s, when all of
Tudor’s friends were trying to ride the ultrathin tri-fin boards that
were all the rage then, he began exclusively riding longboards, which
had fallen out of fashion, perceived by most as clunky, primitive
relics. “That whole mentality of ‘longboarding’s not cool’ is something
I’ve been hearing my whole life,” he said. “It made me want to do it
more. I was never one that wanted to conform.” It wasn’t just his taste
in boards that was different. He was also fascinated with moves that
were popular in the ’50s and ’60s: drop-knee turns and five-second nose
rides. “It’s not just how much you can do on a wave, or how crazy you
can get,” he has said. “It’s also, How much cleaner can you make it? How
much more beauty and style can you put into it?”
He conceived the Duct
Tape Invitational to recapture that ethos and hang onto it. “Some kind
of rebirth was needed to keep the vibe alive, otherwise it was going to
die off like it did before,” Tudor said. Things have certainly changed,
however, since the days when Tudor was the only kid on the beach with a
longboard, footage of which, shot by his mom, appears in “The
Ductumentary.” “I went to Australia in 1992 before longboarding came
back,” Tudor remembered, “and drove all over the country and surfed
alone at these incredible spots because the shortboarders didn’t want to
deal with it. I go back now and it’s packed.”
“The Ductumentary” will have its premiere on Oct. 7 at offthewall.tv.
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/now-screening-the-king-of-modern-longboarding-looks-back/?_r=1
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/now-screening-the-king-of-modern-longboarding-looks-back/?_r=1
sábado, 23 de mayo de 2015
miércoles, 20 de mayo de 2015
lunes, 18 de mayo de 2015
'Intimasea' is a short film by Nathan Oldfield
'Intimasea' is a short film by Nathan Oldfield,
commissioned by the elegant, classical swimwear label Seea. The film
celebrates the style, grace and beauty that is particular to women’s
surfing.
‘Intimasea’ features Seea ambassadors Leah Dawson, Lola Mignot, Hallie Rohr, Karina Rozunko, Mele Saili and Makala Smith. To find out more about Seea, please visit theseea.com
Production & Editing: Nathan Oldfield nathanoldfieldnathanoldfield.com
Narration: Leah Dawson
First Unit Land & Water Camera: Nathan Oldfield
Second Unit Camera: Macauley Rae macauleyrae.tumblr.com
Music: 'Christmas Lights' by The Motifs and 'I Need All The Friends I Can Get' by Camera Obscura
Intimasea from Nathan Oldfield on Vimeo.
Hot Curl Nation
Hobie Surf :: Hot Curl Nation
Martin Shapes Hot Curls
My dad introduced the hot curl surfboard to me. I remember being so proud every time I walked into the original Hobie store in Dana Point as a young boy. I’d look up at the vintage surfboard collection lined up around the walls. One of the boards in the most prominent spot was my dads. This particular board was one of the first boards he made. The board was a varnished (no fiberglass and resin) 10 foot Balsa and Redwood finless hot curl. The last board he made is a replica of these first hot curls. It is on display for all to see and appreciate at the current Hobie store in Dana Point.
Hot Curl Nation from Sun Dolphin Surfboards on Vimeo.
When my dad started surfing there were no surf shops in San Diego. Very few surfboards existed. Most of the boards being ridden were called ‘planks”. The outline was very straight and they had little if anything for a fin. They were anywhere from 80 to 100 pounds. Very difficult to simply carry to the water let alone ride a wave with. Pretty much the only other boards around were “prone style” hollow wooden paddleboards. Neither of these designs were acceptable boards to my dad when it came to his idea of what you might best surf on. He set out to make his own conception of a surfboard. He told me he’d seen a picture of what they called a Hawaiian board at the time. The look of the Hawaiian board made sense to him. This is what he based his first board on. Made out of lightweight Balsawood his first one finished out at around 20 pounds, had a pulled in tail, belly in the bottom contour, tucking into a vee bottomed tail section. No fin was attached, although he told me they did experiment with some small keel type fins on some of the hot curls he made. In the end the design remained finless.
His favorite place to surf was down the street from his parent’s house on Point Loma. A spot the other surfers called “Terry’s Slide”. The wave works best at low tide and had quite a bit of kelp in the lineup. As surfing became more popular board designs evolved. Fins were becoming a common fixture on surfboards. Terry’s Slide was generally discarded as a potential surf spot due to kelp interfering with your fin while surfing and hungry rocks ate lost surfboards on the inside. Leashes were not used at this time. The finless hot curl slid right over the kelp and due to its reduced weight was easier to hang onto in the event you fell. My dad and his brother (liked to ride a hot curl as well) had this great wave to themselves. This break is called “Osprey” today.
My dad introduced the hot curl surfboard to me. I remember being so proud every time I walked into the original Hobie store in Dana Point as a young boy. I’d look up at the vintage surfboard collection lined up around the walls. One of the boards in the most prominent spot was my dads. This particular board was one of the first boards he made. The board was a varnished (no fiberglass and resin) 10 foot Balsa and Redwood finless hot curl. The last board he made is a replica of these first hot curls. It is on display for all to see and appreciate at the current Hobie store in Dana Point.
Hot Curl Nation from Sun Dolphin Surfboards on Vimeo.
When my dad started surfing there were no surf shops in San Diego. Very few surfboards existed. Most of the boards being ridden were called ‘planks”. The outline was very straight and they had little if anything for a fin. They were anywhere from 80 to 100 pounds. Very difficult to simply carry to the water let alone ride a wave with. Pretty much the only other boards around were “prone style” hollow wooden paddleboards. Neither of these designs were acceptable boards to my dad when it came to his idea of what you might best surf on. He set out to make his own conception of a surfboard. He told me he’d seen a picture of what they called a Hawaiian board at the time. The look of the Hawaiian board made sense to him. This is what he based his first board on. Made out of lightweight Balsawood his first one finished out at around 20 pounds, had a pulled in tail, belly in the bottom contour, tucking into a vee bottomed tail section. No fin was attached, although he told me they did experiment with some small keel type fins on some of the hot curls he made. In the end the design remained finless.
His favorite place to surf was down the street from his parent’s house on Point Loma. A spot the other surfers called “Terry’s Slide”. The wave works best at low tide and had quite a bit of kelp in the lineup. As surfing became more popular board designs evolved. Fins were becoming a common fixture on surfboards. Terry’s Slide was generally discarded as a potential surf spot due to kelp interfering with your fin while surfing and hungry rocks ate lost surfboards on the inside. Leashes were not used at this time. The finless hot curl slid right over the kelp and due to its reduced weight was easier to hang onto in the event you fell. My dad and his brother (liked to ride a hot curl as well) had this great wave to themselves. This break is called “Osprey” today.
I spent quite a bit of time in and around my dad’s shaping room
starting at a young age. My first real job was as the clean up kid at
the old Hobie factory in Capistrano Beach. I graduated from pushing a
broom around to cutting out and foiling fins. Foiling fins was to me
like simply shaping a surfboard on a small scale. I had to make more
than one at a time and they needed to be accurately duplicated. I didn’t
get paid hourly but by the piece. I was anxious to reduce time spent at
work. Priority was pursuing “more important things” like diving,
surfing, fishing and such. I sought input from my dad as to how I might
develop a method of accurately and quickly duplicating fins. He was
great at creating systems for making any task easier, quicker, and most
importantly produce a consistent high quality result. Needless to say I
got better and quicker at fin foiling.
In the late 80′s I began shaping full time at Just add Water Surfboards in Laguna Canyon. Soon after I started I was presented with an opportunity to shape several hundred identical boards for display in JC Penny’s. I was to be paid half of what I’d make for shaping any other board at the time but I chose to accept the offer. I ended up rather annoyed as the quantity of boards requested doubled shortly after I agreed to the initial order. There were no computer shaping programs or CNC shaping machines at this point. The boards were to be hand shaped. I remember my dad telling me this was a great chance to hone my production skills. I look back today and think to myself what a privilege to have had that opportunity. Systems and methods developed back then are second nature muscle memory today.
Not to many people make a living at simply shaping surfboards. It is not an overly lucrative trade and generally does not come with standard employee benefits like health insurance, sick pay, etc.. My mom needed a medical procedure at one point. My dad didn’t have the cash to pay for it so he took a quick inventory of items he might sell to pay for the operation. The hot curl in Hobies came to mind. A quick call to good friend and surfboard collector Flippy Hoffman and it was a done deal. Operation paid for and Flippy had my dad’s unique hot curl added to his collection. Years passed and I’d occasionally think of that board. About 15 years ago I began asking my dad about that hot curl. Why no fin? How many did he make? Did other guys ride them? What kind of waves did they ride? What kind of maneuvers were they able to perform? Did he ever make one out of foam? Many good stories were told.
In the late 80′s I began shaping full time at Just add Water Surfboards in Laguna Canyon. Soon after I started I was presented with an opportunity to shape several hundred identical boards for display in JC Penny’s. I was to be paid half of what I’d make for shaping any other board at the time but I chose to accept the offer. I ended up rather annoyed as the quantity of boards requested doubled shortly after I agreed to the initial order. There were no computer shaping programs or CNC shaping machines at this point. The boards were to be hand shaped. I remember my dad telling me this was a great chance to hone my production skills. I look back today and think to myself what a privilege to have had that opportunity. Systems and methods developed back then are second nature muscle memory today.
Not to many people make a living at simply shaping surfboards. It is not an overly lucrative trade and generally does not come with standard employee benefits like health insurance, sick pay, etc.. My mom needed a medical procedure at one point. My dad didn’t have the cash to pay for it so he took a quick inventory of items he might sell to pay for the operation. The hot curl in Hobies came to mind. A quick call to good friend and surfboard collector Flippy Hoffman and it was a done deal. Operation paid for and Flippy had my dad’s unique hot curl added to his collection. Years passed and I’d occasionally think of that board. About 15 years ago I began asking my dad about that hot curl. Why no fin? How many did he make? Did other guys ride them? What kind of waves did they ride? What kind of maneuvers were they able to perform? Did he ever make one out of foam? Many good stories were told.
One day my dad surprised me with a gift. A beautiful 10′
Balsa/Mahogany hot curl replica, like the ones he first made. This board
hangs in my living room. He signed it with an inscription that reads
“PASSING YOUTHFULL MEMORIES OF THE EARLY 50’s TO MY SON IS A JOY TO MY
HEART – LOVE DAD”. I remember really debating whether or not to ride it.
The fact that it is 70 pounds and if lost on a wave will go straight to
the beach due to lack of a fin (possibly decapitating a couple people
on the way) led me to request a “rider” model. We ordered a 12’3″ Clark
Foam blank. Made with classic foam and 3 nice thick Basswood stringers.
We were looking for some weight. The hot curl design my father utilized
needs weight to perform as intended. 30 to 40 pounds was our target
weight. I spent a day with him shaping it. Learning from him how the
wave would “cradle” the curves and contours we put into the board.
Glassed with a double layer of Volan top and bottom the board made its
target weight. It is easier to surf than I imagined. Based on this board
I am currently making hot curls out of both foam and traditional
Balsawood. US Blanks recently did a fabulous job of building a custom
“hot curl” rockered 10’8Y blank in “tow” weight for me. This made for a
beautiful 10 foot 35 pound rider. Their 11’3D blank works quite well
too, again with the custom rocker.
There are a few hurdles (mostly in my mind) I find I need to overcome in riding my hot curl. The tail does not “lift” when catching a wave, giving me the impression I have not caught the wave. The board does initially want to broach a bit until the wave has “caught” it. White water is not your friend. The air in the white water causes cavitation. The wave “lets go” of the board and control is lost. I don’t argue with this fact but find it funny that there is really only about 6 inches of “sweet spot” in which to stand on a 10 foot board. You cannot tail turn a hot curl. Nose riding is not much of an option. If the board has the correct shape and weight the wave interacts with the board in such a natural way. The board seems to just “find” natural trim. The wave “cradles” the board. You are surfing “in” the wave, not on it. The kind of surf I like to ride mine in is a lined up feathering wall. My dad always said the bigger and better the wave the better the hot curl works. I find that they are quite fun in small surf too but it’s best to have long wall to trim on. They feel very nimble in the water for the length and weight. I like to describe the hot curl ride as if you are allowed to play the roll of passenger but you must behave. If you do, you will be rewarded with a unique rich glide into a wonderful corner of the surfing experience.
-Josh Martin
http://www.hobie.com/post/103/Hobie-Surf-Hot-Curl-Nation.aspx
There are a few hurdles (mostly in my mind) I find I need to overcome in riding my hot curl. The tail does not “lift” when catching a wave, giving me the impression I have not caught the wave. The board does initially want to broach a bit until the wave has “caught” it. White water is not your friend. The air in the white water causes cavitation. The wave “lets go” of the board and control is lost. I don’t argue with this fact but find it funny that there is really only about 6 inches of “sweet spot” in which to stand on a 10 foot board. You cannot tail turn a hot curl. Nose riding is not much of an option. If the board has the correct shape and weight the wave interacts with the board in such a natural way. The board seems to just “find” natural trim. The wave “cradles” the board. You are surfing “in” the wave, not on it. The kind of surf I like to ride mine in is a lined up feathering wall. My dad always said the bigger and better the wave the better the hot curl works. I find that they are quite fun in small surf too but it’s best to have long wall to trim on. They feel very nimble in the water for the length and weight. I like to describe the hot curl ride as if you are allowed to play the roll of passenger but you must behave. If you do, you will be rewarded with a unique rich glide into a wonderful corner of the surfing experience.
-Josh Martin
http://www.hobie.com/post/103/Hobie-Surf-Hot-Curl-Nation.aspx
domingo, 17 de mayo de 2015
viernes, 15 de mayo de 2015
B.B. King - The thrill is gone (letra español/ingles)
DIOS SANTO DE MI VIDA!!!! LAS VECES QUE E ESCUCHADO ESTA CANCION!!!! UFFFFFF!!!! REcomendacion de la Casa....... tanto si la escuchas con Cascos, como sin Ellos......... SUBE EL VOLUMEN CASI AL PUNTO MAS DAÑINO!!!!!! Apaga todas las Luces, o cierra los Ojos!!!! sientate en el suelo o reclinate en tu sillon!!!! Respiraaaaaaaaa suavemente y DISFRUTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! DIOS TENGA EN SU GLORIA AL GRAN "BB KING"
miércoles, 13 de mayo de 2015
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martes, 12 de mayo de 2015
lunes, 11 de mayo de 2015
sábado, 9 de mayo de 2015
Kepa & Cyrus Microwaving Peru
This past February Cyrus Sutton and Kepa Acero
score perfectly shaped Chicama on the first South swell of the season.
Cyrus met up with Kepa in the North coast of Peru hoping to get some
late season North swells. Nothing came so they traveled to the Andes to
see Machu Picchu and experience some Incan culture. A week into their
stay an early season South swell prompted a short flight back to catch
one of the world's longest lefts at Chicama. The waves weren't big but
the sandbars were good. Here's a few highlights of their trip.
Filmed by Cliff EndsleySupported by Ree
Thanks to Chicama Surf Resort & LAN Airline
microwave leftovers from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.
Kepa & Cyrus Microwaving Peru from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.
GENE COOPER/THE SHAPERS TREE By Gene Cooper
GENE COOPER/THE SHAPERS TREE
- September 27th, 2012
- By genecooper
Balboa 1964
I was born in 1956 in Glendale, CA
and spent my years growing up between the San Fernando Valley and
Newport Beach. My father was a hard working carpenter/contractor from
the old school and my mom was a housewife with a serious artistic
streak. She made most of the things that we had, along with most of the
clothes worn by the girls, beautiful stuff. It was a creative
environment with constant projects in the works. Now as a surfboard
builder I find that I have one project after another, not totally able
to let go of any part of the process. This approach limits production
and growth as a surfboard company, but then, it’s more fun to report to
an art studio than to a factory.
Zuma, 6′6 Hull, 1976
I started surfing in 1966. A year
later when the short board era hit I started cutting down longboards and
re-glassing them. My Greg Noll film productions board was the first
victim and my neighbors beautiful Con followed. Between my friends and I
we probably ruined 6 or 7 good longboards but we were riding boards
that were the proper size so we were happy. Spending a lot of time in
Newport, I got into kneeboarding for a few years though 1970. When I
returned to surfing it was on a $25 1968 Hanson V bottom, other cheap
transitional’s, and old logs, then Greg Liddle’s.
In high school I met and started
surfing with Rick Pharaoh who got me on the right track with the
surfboard construction. Rick was a grade behind me and shortly after we
met he taught himself to shape and glass at a pretty high level. The
second board he built was as good as any I’d ever seen and these boards
were done in about 3 days, he was 16 years old and very talented, this
was in 1973. He became a pretty prolific backyarder almost overnight.
I became a shop rat in his garage, maybe sanding and polishing a
little, picking it up as I went along. He made boards for me(I owned
Pharaoh #2) and all of our friends. I sometimes had a hand in building
them. After the first few they were mainly hulls, inspired by Greg
Liddle, and mine were usually stringerless, I felt that flex improved
the performance.
With Pharaoh Hulls 1977
In 1975 Rick had a job at working for
Lloyd Gist at California Foam Surfboards in Reseda. When he quit to go
build boats for Frank Butler at Catalina yachts I was his repacement.
He spent a day training me as sander/polisher and general pick up guy
at the shop, then I grew into most of the jobs around the place. Rick
returned now and then to guest as a shaper or laminator. There were all
kinds of guys coming though there doing piecework daily but the one
that stands out is Bob Petty, a burley and seasoned production guy who
would always show up with really big power tools. Rockwell 653 planer,
6000rpm Milwaukee Sander, etc. Bob was from the South Bay surfboard
industry mecca of the 60’s. He would hit the ground running but took
time to share some tricks, it was an real eye opener to see Bob work.
Fire Station 66, So. Central Los Angeles, 1980
I joined the LAFD in January 1978 and
retired in August of 2009. Between ‘78 and ‘90 there was a lot of
surfing going on but not much surfboard building. By 1990 I was mostly
riding old 60’s logs, kept buying them, riding them, trading them,
riding them. Soon it became apparent that I had a Bing problem.
Alf Laws posing with my Bings. 90’s
Longboarding had gone totally
progressive by 1990 but there were a small number of surfers who still
liked riding the old ones, These old Bings and the like were so…regal,
built to last, and high quality. They had a feel that you couldn’t get
from the new longboards that were the standard at the time.
on a 9′9″ Bing DNL, Ventura 1990
COOPERFISH
Hollywood Beach garage 1992
So I got the tools out, bought the
materials, made stands and racks, and went after it after a 12 year
hiatus. Sent my wife on vacation and did the first batch of 13 in my
garage start to finish. Gathered components from 60’s Bings, Cons,
Webers, Ricks, mixed and matched. Started the Cooperfish label at that
time to strictly concentrate on vintage style traditional equipment. It
all came right back real easy. The batch was pre-sold to the surfing
firemen I worked with for $400 each.
Garage Batch 1992
Here’s the list of the Cooperfish workspaces:
Garage – 1992,
Malibu Storage Container – 1993-1995,
Home shaping room/Clyde Beatty glass shop – 1996 – 2001,
Cooperfish Factory, Ventura – 2001 – Present
“The Device” 2000’s
By 2001 I had a bunch of board models
available. The demand for the traditional longboards had risen through
the ’90s and we were off to the races in a new factory. I brought
laminator in Sammy Cammack, sander/polisher Jeff Pupo, and pinstriper
Chris Fallon. Still keeping the volume low and paying attention to the
details with this small tight crew. Other craftsmen that have worked
in the factory are- Steve Huerta, Stan Fuji, Vince Felix, Kenny Edwards,
Zeph Carrigg, and Brian Michler.
PROJECTS
photo: Divine
In 2005 Scott Hulet asked me if I
would like to build and donate an “art” board to this Surfrider
Foundation Auction benefit at Milk Studios in NYC. I shut down the shop
for a week to build this 12′ “slob job” gun. It ended up fetching
$9000 (!) for Surfrider thanks to a few very generous bidders. This got
me charged up on projects and benefits.
2010 Cooperfish Calendar
In 2009 I joined forces with
photographer Michael Moore and launched a calendar project that featured
20 boards that we built throughout the year. We had a launch party at
Hurley that raised money for The Veterans Adaptive Surf Camp through a
raffle. Then we then auctioned off the remaining 12 boards throughout
the year via Ebay with 20% of the proceeds going to The Surfing Heritage
Foundation. Each board started at $1 with no reserve which kept things
interesting. These boards ended up being my swan song to abstract color
because changes were already in the works.
16′ C2 Gun Project
In 2010 I was commissioned to build a
16′ elephant gun out of a huge slab of foam blank that the customer
provided. Jim Phillips did the stringers as he did with many of the
boards in the calendar project. I shut myself in the shop, this time
for several weeks, and went at it. The owner now has it on display at
the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente.
Assorted boards 2010-11
FULL CIRCLE
“Tow” Weight Flexpig 2011
I was sitting in my van at Blackie’s
one morning watching the colorful boards go by and it hit me that I was
totally over the 60’s style abstracts. I felt the same about all the
board models that I’d been making for 10 to 15 years, Nosedevil, Hornet,
Device, Malibu Foil, etc. I’d been doing “greatest hits” on custom
orders for a while and just decided I was done with all that. The
demand remained but my passion was gone. Those models with the
abstracts were available in the “Cooperdesigns” label and were being
made by Eric Walden (shaping) and Brian Michler (glassing) in their
“12th Floor Foam and Glass” factory. Customers had a way to buy these
models and colors that they’d grown accustomed to and I was free develop
a new line of boards and experiment. I also wanted to keep a
minimalist theme which I always went for in my personal boards.
Flexibles- All the Cooperfish
longboards now are made of “tow” weight foam and glassed with double 6oz
flat weave volan with isophthalic resin, directionlly sanded
gloss. The core is heavy with a light shell and the boards have a very
tense flex. Also the consistent density seems to give the boards a
unique balance. Another plus is that they are very dent resistant. For a
weight reference: a 9′5 pig is about 27lbs and a 9′5 Foil is about
24lbs. I originally started this construction with pigs only but now
I’ve done Foils, Noseriders, and V Bottoms with very good results.
Speedhulls- the other half of my new
direction are hulls based on the C2 guns. A concave running out the
back to give it some drive. Classic foam glassed with double 6oz flat
weave volan, isophthalic resin, and directionlly sanded gloss.
Speedhull, Ventura 2010
On a 6′8″ “Pharaoh”, Zuma 1973viernes, 8 de mayo de 2015
jueves, 7 de mayo de 2015
miércoles, 6 de mayo de 2015
martes, 5 de mayo de 2015
lunes, 4 de mayo de 2015
GIDGET By The Bluegrass special
COPIADO DE:
(left) Kathy Kohner, the real Gidget, in her element at Malibu, circa mid-‘50s (Photo: Ernst Lenart) and (right) Kathy Kohner Zuckerman in 2010 at Point Danger, Australia (Photo: LeftPeak Productins)
TheBluegrassSpecial.com Interview
The One True Gidget
As a teenager girl in the mid-1950s, Kathy Kohner wanted to be different. So she climbed on a surfboard in Malibu, and surfing has never been the same
‘I’ve learned to surf! Bye! Ciao for now! I’m a woman!
By David McGee
Not for nothing did filmmaker Brian Gillogly choose the title Accidental Icon for his documentary about the life of Kathy Kohner Zuckerman. After all it was not in Mr. and Mrs. Kohner’s plan that their daughter Kathy would, by her mid-teens, be the focal point of a cultural phenonmenon, the inspiration first for a best selling novel (written by her father) and several sequels, and an inspirational pioneer at something she did to be different and, more important, to get more face time with a boy who had stolen her heart.
Meet the real Gidget.
In her early teens, Kathy Kohner wasn’t even living in America. Her father, Frederick Kohner, a novelist and screenwriter, had been hired by a German film company to write a screenplay, and the Kohner family relocated to Berlin while he completed the task at hand. She learned to speak German, she ate food she couldn’t find in her neighborhood in west Los Angeles, she went skiing in Switzerland, she immersed herself in an entirely different culture than what she had grown up with in California. When the Kohners returned to California, Kathy wasn’t content merely to go to Malibu Beach with her parents on weekends, as was the family custom. It was the mid-‘50s, and rock ‘n’ roll was sweeping the nation. She was listening to Elvis, “Rock Around the Clock,” and the country blues duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. On those glorious, sun-filled, carefree Saturday family trips to the beach, young Kathy began noticing a couple of other things that piqued her interest: (1) good looking boys who were, invariably (2) riding the waves. Everybody had gone surfing, and she would too. After buying her first longboard for $35 from Mike Doyle, who would become one of the legendary surfers of Malibu’s golden era, Kathy Kohner did what no other girl her age was doing out there in the Pacific Ocean: paddle out and ride the waves. All those incubating male legends--Miki Dora, Mickey Munoz, Lance Carson (the model for the character of the surfer Lance in Apocalypse Now), Nat Young, Bruce Weber, among other notables--didn’t show her the ropes, but they did pull some harmless pranks on her, and they did come up with the nickname--they all had nicknames, so why not her?--by which the world would come to know her, a portmanteau of “girl midget”--Kathy, you see, was a diminutive lass--that translated to “Gidget.”
Frederick Kohner
One evening as the Kohners were returning to their Brentwood home after another fine day in the surf and sand of Malibu, Kathy told her father that she wanted to write a story about the colorful characters she was hanging out with at the beach (a homeless man living in a shack on the beach and taken in as something of a mascot by the teenagers flocking to the surf every weekend; buff, tanned high school boys with colorful nicknames such as Moondoggie--the apple of Kathy’s eye-- and Tubesteak) and the self-contained culture of surfing, with its own lingo and aesthetic. To which Frederick Kohner responded: “You’re not a writer.” He suggested instead that his daughter relate her tales to him and he would turn them into a story. So she did--she also kept detailed diaries during her high school years, but she did not show these to dad--and in three weeks he wrote not a story but a novel, published in 1957 and originally titled Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas. The simple tale of a teenage girl (her birth name in the book is Franzi, “from Franziska. It’s a German name. After my grandmother.”--so dad got a bit of his own culture in it too) and her surfing buddies caught on big with the emerging teen culture in the States and went into multiple printings (the title was eventually simplified to Gidget) and from its 1957 publication date into the early ‘70s it sold some three million copies. Kohner, born in Bohemia, had no cultural references of his own to the emerging teen culture, but with the help of his daughter’s tales and his own imagination, he brought scope to the story by having his characters deal with issues of commitment and trust in addition to frolicking on the beach and riding the waves. Even before the novel was published, the real Gidget was making cultural rumblings of enough seismic force that Life magazine profiled her (“Gidget Makes the Grade”) in its October 1956 issue. Dad Kohner sold the movie rights for his novel to Columbia Pictures, and in 1959 the cultural landmark Gidget emerged, with Sandra Dee playing the title character, and James Darren as Moondoggie. By the time the movie bearing her nickname came out, the real Gidget was a student at Oregon State University, and she is on record as telling someone at the time, “It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Now, a classic stream of American cinema did not obtain from the advent of Gidget. But the supremely silly and joyously innocent Beach Party franchise--where, if nothing else, civility ruled in a way it never will in today’s gross-out comedies--is a direct descendant of Gidget and a window into a particular aspect of teen culture that was on its way out even as the movies pulled into drive-ins across America.
Kathy Kohner gets ready for a day at the Malibu beach in 1956 after loading her 8 ½ foot, 22-pound board in the car. (Photo: Frederick Kohner Estate)Frederick Kohner, knowing a franchise when he saw his royalty checks, penned six more Gidget novels in the ‘60s--The Affairs of Gidget, Gidget in Love, Gidget Goes Parisienne, Gidget Goes to Rome, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Gidget Goes To New York.(In 1995, author Fred Reiss, apparently having had all of Gidget he could stand, published Gidget Must Die: A Killer Surf Novel, in which the story’s protagonist, a surfing legend, returns to Malibu to take his revenge against everyone in the Gidget movie, blaming them all for trashing his favorite surf spot.) Two more movies--Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961, with Deborah Walley as Gidget) and Gidget Goes To Rome (1963, Cindy Carol as Gidget)--like the original directed by Paul Wendkos--were released. In 1965 a TV version of Gidget starring Sally Field came and went after only one season. Other Gidgets popped up as TV movies over the years: Gidget Grows Up, in 1969, starred Karen Valentine and was based on Kohner’s Gidget Goes To New York novel; Gidget Gets Married came along in 1972 (Gidget marries Moondoggie in this installment), starring yet another new Gidget, Monie Ellis; Gidget’s Summer Reunion, in 1985, with Caryn Richman as Gidget; and yet another TV series, syndicated from 1986 to 1988, The New Gidget, with Caryn Richman becoming the answer to a trivia question by being the only actress to portray Gidget twice on film.
Sally Field as the TV Gidget
What was the real Gidget doing all these years? Going to college; getting bounced from the Peace Corps (about which more later); marrying Marvin Zuckerman, the man she is still hitched to today; raising kids (two sons--David, a freelance magazine writer and independent film producer; and Phil, a sociology professor at Pitzer College; the Zuckermans have three grandchildren); enjoying life. In the meantime, women all over the world flooded onto beaches not as eye candy but as surfers, and some were not only equal to but better than their male counterparts. Many in the first important generation of female surfers pointed to Kathy Kohner as having inspired them to mount a longboard for the first time, including Australian Layne Beachley, who retired from competitive surfing in 2009 a seven-time world champion. In 2001 a new edition of Gidget was published with a forward by the author’s daughter; she also wrote the forward to a heralded 2008 overview, Pop Surf Culture: Music, Design, Film and Fashion from the Bohemian Surf Boom. She is an in-demand speaker. She is the official Ambassador of Aloha at a restaurant called Duke’s Malibu; every Tuesday evening and at Sunday brunch, the real Gidget is on the scene to meet and greet customers. Now 70, she no longer surfs, but she did get back on a longboard as a 60-year-old and by all accounts acquitted herself well. Surfers the world over, male and female, acknowledge how her teenage chutzpah sent a message that surfing’s days as a bastion of masculinity were over--or more properly, that surfing history was evolving and women were about to reclaim their rightful place in its lore. Not least of all, her exploits are now properly acknowledged in the aforementioned Brian Gillogly documentary, Accidental Icon, which had its North American premier at the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival and its Australian premier at the 2010 Noosa Festival of Surfing, the biggest surf event in the world. (See Mr. Gillogly’s account of the premier, “Gidget In Oz,” in this issue.) Among those attesting to Kathy Kohner Zuckerman’s influence: Sally Field, Cliff Robertson, Layne Beachley, women’s longboard champion Summer Romero, former U.S. champion Jericho Poppler Bartow, Malibu champion Carla Rowland, and surfing legends Mickey Munoz, Lance Carson and Mike Doyle. A DVD release is imminent.
In “Reframing the Image of Women Surfers” published online at www.coastnews.com, author Nina Wu notes:
…recorded images of Polynesian women surfers have been captured in etchings by famed author Mark Twain as early as 1819. Many Hawaiian chants also tell the stories of female surfers, illustrating that women on the islands were surfing right alongside men from the very moment surfing was born in Hawaii.
One of the most famous legends tells the story of a woman named Kelea, whose surfing attracted the attention of an Oahu chief in Maui, whom she eventually marries. Weighing more than 200 pounds, Ka’ahumanu, the favorite wife of King Kamehameha I, was also an expert waverider. Several miles down the coast from Waikiki, a break called Ke-kai-o-Mamala (Sea of Mamala) honors the Oahu chiefess, who was also a famous surfer.
Legends also tell of women surfing the waters in Tahiti, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The first person to try surfing in Australia was in fact a woman. Isabel Letham was the first to ride tandem with Hawaiian legend Duke Kahanamoku.
In California, a long line of women surfers, beginning with Mary Ann Hawkins in the 1920s, leave a legacy in their wake. Other names include Marge Calhoun, Linda Benson and Anne Morrissey. Linda Benson was Pacific Coast women’s champion for three years in a row from 1959 to 1961. She performed the surfing action sequences for Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Margo Godfrey was the first female pro surfer to dominate the waves in the mid-70s. Later female surfing champions include Linda Merrill, Jericho Poppler and Rell Sunn.
Kathy Kohner was not a competitive surfer, she was not the first female surfer, she was not even the first female surfer in California. But she emerged in the mid-‘50s as a young lady undaunted by the sport’s physical challenges or the potential obloquy looming as a byproduct of her attempt to crash the boys’ club. As a symbol she carried herself in a laudable manner and the spirit of her daring has resonated through the decades as other women followed her lead and ultimately and forever changed the complexion of competitive and sport surfing alike. Quietly, unassumingly, Gidget ignited a revolution in surfing’s modern era. As Nina Wu neatly summarizes it:
Although most women agree that surfing still remains a male-dominated industry, clearly the waves now belong to both genders on an equal basis. Attitudes have changed. More men are taking their wives and girlfriends out into the ocean and teaching them to surf. And sometimes women are taking their boyfriends out and teaching them how to surf.
As part of this publication’s annual summer celebration, we caught up with Mrs. Zuckerman while she was vacationing in Vermont at a resort near Lake Champlain. Always accessible to the press, she’s heard every question and every variation on every question about her storied life, but we tried to find some new avenues to explore in her well-documented biography. The Peace Corps tale is a rather priceless example of one of her least-told tales.
***I’ve seen a couple of different accounts about your father’s inspiration for the first Gidget novel, both of course center on your diaries—
The official trailer for Brian Gillogly’s Accidental Surfer, a documentary about the life and legacy of the original Gidget, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman.
I kept a diary and I have those diaries. Whether my father read those diaries, I can’t say. I couldn’t drive when I started hanging out with the surfers. So my folks would drive me to Malibu. I would get out where the surfers were, and my parents would go up further on the beach and visit their friends that lived in the Malibu colony—the Littlejohns, William Littlejohn died not too long ago and he was an animator for Charlie Brown. He did so much of Charlie Brown. I vividly remember driving home on Pacific Coast Highway, turning to my dad, who was driving, and saying, “I’m going to write a story about what’s going on at Malibu.” And my dad said, “You’re not a writer.” “Well, I keep a diary!” “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
And I did. I started telling him, well, there’s this guy who lives in a shack down there, there’s Tubesteak and Harry Stonelake and everybody has nicknames and they call me “Gidget,” for “girl midget.” I was 15, but I was the daughter of a writer. So what I saw at Malibu was pretty off dead-center 50-odd years ago. I didn’t even know the word homeless but obviously the guy living in the shack on the beach all summer was homeless.
I shared a lot with my dad. If he were reading in my diaries he would have done it when I wasn’t at home. So there’s no way of knowing—I don’t believe I ever knowingly opened up my diary pages and read to him, “Today Bill and I went out and we parked, and he put his arm around me and I looked him in the eye…” I don’t think so. Whether he looked at the diary pages while I was gone, we’ll never know. I will read passages of the diary and think, Oh, my God, my dad got it so right. It is a work of fiction so it’s loosely based on my time at Malibu. And I did have this major crush on a fellow named Bill Jensen, who becomes the Moondoggie character in the novel.
How long did you talk to him about the scene down there? How much research did he actually get from you directly?
Well, I told my dad a lot. He listened. I obviously must have shared with him about the size of my anatomy because I do remember putting some Kleenex in my bathing suit top to make myself look a little bit more feminine. I read the diary pages not too long ago to somebody that was interested in seeing them—always and forever there’s someone interested in the diary pages. And the diary pages revealed to this gentleman, who is in the movie business and did something called Sabrina the Witch, that, as he said to me, “This is a love story. Surfing just happened. This is a love story. You were crazy about this guy. So what I’m reading here is that you were just crazy about him.” Well, I was. It just happened that the venue was Malibu, and we were surfing, and the way to get his attention was to keep going out. “Did you see me surf? Did you see me surf?” But definitely I had a huge teenage crush on this fellow, and I met him at Malibu.
Where was your family actually living out there?
We lived in Brentwood, west Los Angeles.
What drew you to the scene at Malibu? And were there any other girls surfing when you entered that world?
I was drawn to the scene by default. My mother would say, “You’re not going to a movie on a Saturday afternoon. You’re coming to the beach with us. We’re going to Malibu. You’re not going shopping. It’s better for you to be outdoors in the fresh air.” Going to Malibu instead of going out with the girls wasn’t a choice, really.
What happened was that in 1954 and 1955, my dad got a job writing a screenplay for a German film company in Berlin. So when I was 13, we traveled and lived in Berlin, Germany, until I was 14-and-a-half. That’s a very critical time for a teenage girl. I came back to west Los Angeles and felt sort of out of place. The teenage girls had formed their little cliques, and I had lived in another country, I had learned another language, which was pretty unique at the time. So I also felt uncomfortable with my peer group; didn’t particularly like my peer group; wanted to be somewhat different—I’m aware of that. I was already different because I had gone to Berlin, I spoke German and lived in Austria and went skiing in Switzerland. I was already different. In the forward to the reissued Gidget novel I write how my parents wanted me to come to Malibu and how my mother used to drive a couple of now-well-known surfers to the beach when I was eight and nine years old. So I was eight when I first saw a surfboard; going to Malibu started when I was three. So we always went to Malibu. When I was a teenager I didn’t want to sit at the beach and tan myself—that was not what I saw there. I saw people surfing. And yes, I was the only high school girl surfing. There was a younger girl who was about 12, a couple of older gals about 18 or 19, a couple of women in their 20s who came down with their husbands and families—families came down. There were a couple of areas at the beach—one area was called “The Pit,” and that was a bit hard core. Mostly guys hung out at “The Pit.” Walking up the beach a little bit, that’s where the shack was and families. I gravitated to that area.
Peter Lawford (center, in cap) at ‘The Pit’ in Malibu, 1953
Were you a self-taught surfer?
Yes, I taught myself. It’s easy. You get on a board, you paddle, you watch, you turn around and you try to paddle in the wave. You fall on the rocks, you get dinged on your knees and you keep doing it. So that your love interest will see you surf. Did you see me!?
Were you a quick study on the board?
I think I learned it pretty fast. I don’t really remember. I think actually the first board that I bought—from Mike Doyle, now a famous surfer, who brought it to my house in March of 1957—I paid thirty-five dollars for it, as I recorded in my diary. But I did learn to surf. I definitely learned to surf.
Now you were around some of the legendary names in California surfing at that time. Did these guys give you any tips? Did they help you at all?
Malibu hot-doggers ready to ride, 1950
No. No. Help me? Come on! I’d say, “Listen, Jerry, I’m not bothering you.” And he’d say, “Yeah. Gidget, you’re still breathing.” That was the line—“Yeah, Gidget, you’re still breathing.” I was in their face. I wanted to do this. It’s true that I used to bring food, as depicted in the Gidget movie when Sandra Dee brings food to Malibu. I was tenacious; I kept going. After awhile they just accept you. It really wasn’t about a relationship with people on the beach. It was about you and the wave. It was about you out there on the board. The socialization was at the beach. It was more about surfing for the guys. They would ask, “What’s outside?” “Outside” is “do you see the waves coming?” I didn’t have a boyfriend at the beach, so it’s not like I was sitting there, fluff on the beach. I was trying to surf. I kept going out into the water. And when you’re out in the water you’re just worried about yourself, the board and catching a wave.
The guys didn’t give you any grief when you were out in the water, did they?
No, I don’t remember any of that. I don’t think they ever pushed me off a wave. Later on they did things. Once they buried my surfboard in the sand. Or they threw the board over a fence. Disconnected the distributor in my car. Pranks—they were pranksters. I remember saying, “Why would you do that to my car?” I found out years later. I had brought a girlfriend down with me, and they like this girl because she was quite well endowed. So somebody told me, “Gidget, we liked your girlfriend, so we didn’t want you to go home.”
Miki Dora, Mickey Munoz, Lance Carson, Nat Young, obviously you knew Mike Doyle—did you know all these Malibu legends?
Portrait of Lance Carson, Malibu surf hero
Of course! I knew them all. Miki Dora’s not alive, but I see Mickey Munoz a lot, I see Lance Carson all the time, I knew Mike Doyle, Dewey Weber. At the time I first started going there, when I was eight or nine, Peter Lawford was down there, I remember that. John Milius was down there. There was a group of guys down there and some of these have become well known because they hung around a lot and were innovative in designing surfboards and sort of propelling the surf industry. My father, in a way, created the billion-dollar surf industry. He sold three million copies of that Gidget book over a span of years from 1957 to maybe the early ‘70s. Of course, the Gidget movie helped.
It’s interesting how your father captured this scene because he seemed so far removed from it. He was from Bohemia, grew up in not only a different time but in a different culture from what he would have experienced in America, even spoke a different language. But even if he had been born here, he was a different generation; the surfing culture that was starting to develop on the west coast would still have been foreign to him because he was a generation removed from it. But he really got a lot of it right.
Absolutely. He was a writer. The fundamentals of the story were there—the language, the love interest—but he was a writer. The last few years I’ve been re-reading everything he wrote. He actually has a brand-new novel out now that never was published, and my husband acted as the literary agent for my dad, the deceased author. Early Pleasures, by Frederick Kohner, published by Black Herron Press, and it’s my father’s coming of age story about different women he knew in his youth.
(Ed. Note: the production description of Early Pleasures describes the book as “a fictionalization of the author's adolescent sexual adventures in Austria and Paris in the years following World War I, they are for the most part adventures in sexual frustration. The four women he encounters are as different from one another as they could be. One is his brother's governess; another a young countess and the sister of a proto-Nazi; the third a domestic with an emotional disorder; and the fourth a White Russian emigre. Through his relationships with these women, the protagonist experiences not only desire but also the tragedy of life and the humor inherent in life's ironies. "Early Pleasures" is a book to be savored. It takes us into the Europe of almost a century ago while it enhances us with elegance of its prose.” It is available at www.amazon.com.)
In the surfing crowd you ran with, did you socialize with the guys when the day was over or did everyone go their separate ways? Were you not part of their crowd?
I wasn’t part of it, particularly. Maybe the summer of ’58, when I graduated from high school. Or later in ’57. I started surfing in 1956—Life magazine did a story on me in October of 1956 called “Gidget Makes the Grade,” sort of a book review, but it was nice press. I kind of went home at four o’clock—they were older than me, these boys. So maybe 1958, I remember going to party at some guy’s, he had a place where he lived called The Glen. I remember going in the evening and all of a sudden one of the guys said, “We’re gonna drop our drawers.” I was a little uncomfortable with that, so I left—I could drive. I was in a way cautious and in a way not cautious. My parents used to say, “Whatever you can do after midnight you can do before midnight. So be home by midnight.” It was a different era.
You were a student at Oregon State when the movie came out, and I’ve seen an interview with you in which you said when you first saw the movie, you either wrote or said to a friend that you thought it was the silliest thing you had ever seen. Nevertheless, did you recognize yourself and your friends in the screenplay at all?
The opening credits and scenes of Gidget (1959), starring Sandra Dee as Gidget. Based on Frederick Kohner's novel.
Oh, yeah! I was at the filming of the movie, I was with Sandra Dee, I was on set. So I thought, this is like the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, a movie about my life at Malibu. I mean I was in low-tide Corvallis, Oregon, and I was really hot for some football players. It wasn’t about surfboards anymore; it was about real men and being way up there in Oregon. It was good for me to be away; I kind of wanted to be away. You know the movie came out, it was a huge success, it was amazing. I quit surfing when I was 18.
You just walked away from it.
Just walked away from it. In Oregon I discovered other things—poetry readings, English professors, the Hillel Club—my first identification with being Jewish was in Oregon where there weren’t any Jewish girls. It was different. I never had that when I was at Malibu—it was not anything anyone ever mentioned or talked about. So, you know, my world view expanded. Then I came home, I spent two years in Oregon, came down to Cal State Northridge, and then I wanted to go into the Peace Corps. That was the big thing.
So I got into the Peace Corps. It was a big, exciting event for me. Then I got kicked out of the Peace Corps, which was another big, exciting event for me. So my folks said, “Listen, you go back to school and get your teacher’s credential.”
Wait a minute, wait a minute—why did you get kicked out of the Peace Corps?
I liked boys too much. I was boy crazy. I mean, I was a tomboy myself at Malibu, but I was boy crazy. So they said, “We don’t think you’re going to be very good for Zamboanga City.” So they kicked me out. I don’t know how you want to spell the word “peace,” but (laughs) I was a Peace Corps reject.
How long did you last in the Peace Corps?
I did the summer training in San Jose, California. Three months, an immersion class, and at the end of the summer they said, “Sorry. We think you’re enjoying the Peace Corps for the wrong reasons.” I had a friend who was over in the Philippines and I really wanted to see him.
Then, you know, I went back to L.A., married, and I’m still married—I’ve been married for forty-six-and-a-half years. When I got the Gidget book reissued, there were a couple of years prior to that when there was some foggy interest—“Is this a real person?” “Does this girl have photographs?” “Is she alive and well, or is she a myth?” There was this haze, like cloud formations catching light, and the light started coming through. Certain people would call me and want interviews. Then I met with this woman Deanne Stoneman, who’s quite an amazing California writer, and she wanted to write an article about me. In the course of interviewing me, I just blurted out, “We need to get Gidget reissued, because there’s a lot of talk about Gidget but it’s a thing that my dad wrote.” So Deanne had an agent in New York, Cathy Anderson. We sent her a lot of materials and Cathy sent these materials and the original book out, and the editor at the time read all this stuff and went, “Oh, my gosh, this is fantastic. I want to reissue this book.” She wanted to put pictures in the book; it’s a work of fiction, but she put pictures after every chapter. She had me write a forward, Deanne Stoneman wrote an introduction, it’s been reissued in paperback and in 2001 the book came out in June and I was flown back to be on The Today Show. The agent came and said, “You’re going to have a one-print run unless you go out there and do speaking engagements and learn how to surf again. You want to keep your dad’s book alive, we can only do so much PR.” I did a book signing, I flew back and was so excited that I got sick on the airplane, was coughing and hacking. I knew I had something booked at Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, and a lot of people came—it was advertised at the Malibu Surfing Club, where I’m a member. But I was able to do a public speaking engagement, the first time I’d ever done that; now it’s ten years later and I just got back from Hawaii, where I spoke at a fund-raising event for a company that wants to build senior homes in Hawaii. A woman had heard me speak at USC and a year later I’m in Hawaii. There were a hundred and twenty-five people in the audience. She now wants me for two more speaking engagements. So I want to keep my father’s story alive. I’m happy to have learned how to surf again. Am I surfing now? No. Will I go out in the summer and paddle around? Yes, I will. But I go to the surfing events. I’ve ingratiated myself with the surfing community. I go out there and speak about a time that they’re loving to remember. It’s the ‘50s. And now Brian Gillogly has made this documentary.
In the trailer, Layne Beachley of Australia, a seven-time world surfing champion, talks about how you inspired her to take up the sport. I wonder, when you hear someone of her stature acknowledge what you did as being influential, if you understand how you could have had that kind of impact.
A scene from Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), with Deborah Walley as Gidget
No, and I don’t believe it. (laughs) But I’ll take it—I’ll take the icing on the cake. Layne was called Gidget as a little girl. She’s a fantastic surfer. She came to my 60th birthday part. I just turned 70. So for the last ten years I turned back the clock and I became Gidget again. I got to know everybody, went to the surfing events, went to speak at surf museums, showed up at parties. I have to tell you, I hate driving in L.A. So I’ve decided, You want me, you drive me. I’m not driving to San Diego or anywhere else, because I freak out on the freeways. I met Layne when I was 60, she came to my party, and she and I have been buddies ever since. I saw her in Australia, we did a speaking engagement together. Layne’s younger than me, so she would know the name Gidget, but she wouldn’t know Kathy Kohner. Now she knows Kathy Kohner. But a lot of women say they were inspired by Gidget. A lot of the women think of Sally Field as Gidget. They saw the Sally Field TV show and they loved it. There’s generations, you know. I’m telling people I’m Gidget, and there’s younger generations are going “What?”
In 1966 Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer, was released. There actually were and are a ton of surfing films but they rarely get out of the surfing community, whereas The Endless Summer gathered mainstream attention like no other surfing film before or since. In that movie Mr. Brown showed girls in Malibu as a kind of sideshow to the great male surfers of the time, but when his stars got to Australia he pointed out that a lot of Aussie girls surfed “and some of them are very good.” Did you think his movie was fair to female surfers at the time?
Never thought about it. I just thought it was a frickin’ turn-on movie. We were stoked. It was a cult movie, like Gidget. The Endless Summer, Big Wednesday, maybe Blue Crush, I don’t know. I never even thought about the woman thing. I was a girl. I happened to be doing a guy’s sport. But then maybe I wanted to be a little different because I couldn’t relate to the teen girly things. We were raised to be individuals—my dad was a writer, he didn’t go to a job somewhere, he was home writing, and my mom loved the beach and ballet dancing and tennis. She was very athletic, so that was ingrained. It was a little like Ozzie and Harriet at the time—my mom and dad were home, we went to the beach on weekends, went hiking, went swimming, played tennis. It was pretty conventional, except it wasn’t. They were Europeans, for one, and they were for Adlai Stevenson. Come on!
Did you ever meet Bruce Brown’s stars, Robert August and Mike Hynson?
Yes, I met them later on in life. I’m telling you, in the last ten years I have immersed myself in surf culture and I really tried hard to, you know, bow down, because these guys are great and have done great things for the surf industry. Robert August is one of the nicest people I’ve met. Steve Walden is another gem. Around ten years ago my husband had a rather debilitating affliction, and the therapist said to me, “You have to have your own life. You can’t just be taking care here.” So at that time Steve Walden and a tandem surfer named Bear Waznick, who lives in Hawaii, met me in Malibu and said, “Go! You can do it!” I hadn’t surfed in a long time. So basically I had to lose the fear of paddling out and seeing the wave come at me. This is all in the last ten years, and Gidget is now in its fourteenth printing and now Brian has this really funky, fun documentary out and I wish him well with it, because it might be more fun for me—I might have some more trips somewhere.
You’ve talked about the surf culture that was present when you started going out in the mid-‘50s. Dick Dale did not start his fabled concerts at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa until 1961, the dawn of surf music. At that time that you were starting, was music important to the scene?
Well, if you wanted to listen to “Rock Around the Clock” and “Heartbreak Hotel.” Those were the songs. I had no clue about surf music. I know Jan Berry went all through elementary school with me, junior high and high school. I had no idea that he and Arnie Ginsberg were making music in their garage somewhere. Jan and Arnie, then Jan and Dean. No, there was no such thing as surf music. Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys said to me, “I remember you in high school, Gidget. You know I was a little bit younger than you. We wrote that song about you—‘Surfer Girl.’” I’m like, “Oh yeah, right.” There are a lot of myths and peoples’ memories fade. I’m glad that the memories of me have turned positive. It’s a good thing because I’m glad Gidget lives.
Who were your favorite artists as a young girl?
Elvis Presley. “Rock Around the Clock.” Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.
You mentioned you’ve been married more than forty years, and I saw a reference somewhere that when you married Mr. Zuckerman, he had no idea that you were Gidget. How did you break the news to him and what was his reaction?
Kathy Kohner Zuckerman in Oahu, 2007: 'Maybe I was just a woman in love with a surfboard.'
He had no clue. You know the guy is a New York intellectual. Got his Master’s Degree in English. He didn’t know anything about Gidget. But the sweetest thing, honestly, and it’s just come to me—I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody—he brought me a present on our first date. He brought me a pineapple. Now I work for Duke’s Restaurant—Duke Kahanamoku was the father of surfing—and a pineapple is really “Aloha!” It was really cute!
You know, I didn’t marry a surfer. I loved Bill Jensen, but I married a man who, you know, had the roots that I had, a little bit like my dad, a little bit older, very well read, very smart. Just like my mom and dad. I’m happy that we stayed married, because it’s not so easy out there. Even though he didn’t surf.
You mentioned you just turned 70, but I’ve seen a recent photo of you and you look like a model of fitness. What do you do to stay in shape?
Well, I keep moving. I don’t sit easily. Even up here my husband says, “Will you relax? We’re in Vermont.” Well, no, I gotta go swimming. I’m active. And I think probably the picture was flattering. I keep active. I don’t do any facial work or anything like that. I see all that in L.A. and think it’s ridiculous. I’ve earned every wrinkle from the sunshine. And I also love the fact that I can go speaking to seniors, telling them, “Look, I learned how to go back on a surfboard again. I’m one of you. I’m a senior!”
There have been seven Gidgets on film and on TV. Do you have a favorite?
A Gidget montage from the mid-‘50s. (Photos: Ernst Lenart)
Well, I’d have to say Sandra Dee. Sandra Dee paved the wave—paved the way—I said paved the wave! She was a wonderful little actress and just captured the essence of the character. There’s something lovely about Gidget. It’s like Ernest Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well Lighted Place.” She’s open and she goes in where all these guys are sittin’ around drinking cheap beer, but she’s always sort of a breath of fresh air. She captivated audiences with how sweet and demure she was, and yet, you know, she did learn how to surf. It’s interesting, when you read the last line of the Gidget novel. It’s “Maybe I was a just a woman in love with a surfboard.” The end of the movie, it’s sort of more romantic—she gets pinned to Jeff Griffin or something and they go off together. In the movie it’s the boy and girl get together and live happily ever after. In the book, I’ve learned to surf! Bye! Ciao for now! I’m a woman!
The new edition of Frederick Kohner’s original Gidget novel, with a forward by Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, is available at www.amazon.com
The Complete Gidget Collection of theatrical films is available at www.amazon.com
http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2011/july2011/gidget-kathy-kohner-interview.html
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