CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/29/2014

California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties

"Grass shacks were erected at Onfre’ and Windansea. Ukes and slack key strumming wafted in the breeze. These few weirdos had thrown off their parents’ depression-era security paranoia and had become beach bums; even the employed acted like they weren’t. Night jobs allowed free days to chase waves. They waited tables, tended bar, hustled. The point was to stay free to ride. The ride was the magic thing; being moved by a wave of cycling molecules that resulted from wind caused by the sun’s heat waves warming our atmosphere. It was a cosmic attachment that, though it went unspoken, was shared by those who had felt it firsthand. It was a secret thrill. The world was lame. We were not. They’d white-knuckle grasped onto a truth that was different than the one we’d discovered. Both theirs and ours were merely theoretical constructs about how to live life; that much we did know." Excerpt of text by Surfer's Journal founder Steve Pezman and Dick Metz's photograph of Hobie's (the first structure built to house surfboard manufacture and retail) on the Pacific Coast Highway, circa 1954, are reproduced from California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties by T. Adler Books.