THE EARLY YEARS OF GREAT SURFCHICKS

By Corky Carroll

Surfing these days is wide open for anybody of any size, shape, age or form.  The equipment is light and easy to deal with so people from small children to old fat dudes like me can handle it.  But back in the early days of what is called “modern surfing” this was not always the case.  

They call the “modern” surf area from the time of the advent of the lightweight balsawood board, when people started to be able to maneuver a little bit, to the present.  That would have been early- mid 1950’s forward.  But the fact is that the wood boards and even the early foam boards where not all that light or easy to get around.  You didn’t see many girl surfers in those days.  The ones that did were real pioneers.   

The first one that I can think of that really made a name for herself would have been Marge Calhoun.  Marge was a beautiful longhaired blonde babe from Laguna Beach.  She went to Hawaii and rode some sizeable waves at Makaha Beach and surfed in the International Surfing Championships over there.  She also had two daughters that were both top surfers in their day.  Candy was the most famous and won many championships.  Candy was also a world-class body surfer.  

Then came Linda Benson.  Linda totally dominated women’s surfing for years, starting with winning the Makaha International in 1959 at the tender young age of 15.  Linda, along with Mickey Munoz wearing a blonde wig, did the surfing for Sandra Dee in the original “Gidget” movie.  She went on to win every surfing title there was and became a true living legend in surfing.  I just surfed with her at the spot in front of my house and was amazed that she looks and surfs almost exactly the same today as she did then.  The girl has stood the test of time better than about anybody I have ever seen.  She is still a great surfer on any level.

Then came Joyce Hoffman.  Joyce is the daughter of the infamous Walter Hoffman, early big wave rider and known as the “Godfather” of the surfing industry.  Joyce, known to her family and friends as “Boo,” took over from Linda Benson in the mid 1960’s as the top female surfer in the world.  She was unstoppable as a competitor and, along with Linda Benson, was one of the first females to invoke the “I hate it when a girls surfs better than me” phrase from many a male waterman.  

Margo Godfrey came on the scene in the later 1960’s.  Margo was in a league of her own from the very beginning.  At 13 we all knew that she was extraordinarily.  Margo had a beautiful style that was not only feminine but also totally functional and contemporary.  She surfed hard and stylish, like the best men surfers, but with the grace of a girl.  She was the best in the world for longer than I can remember.  Possibly the greatest woman ever when all is said and done.   It’s impossible to compare then to now and all that, but Margo was amazing.   She later married Steve Oberg and for a lot of her career was know as Margo Oberg.  They moved to the island of Kauai where she opened a surfing school on the south shore, near the town of Poipu.   On any given day you can still see little Margo tucking herself into some monster barrel at any of the best surf spots on the island.  Guys paddling out will be muttering, “Holy Cow, did you see that?  It was a CHICK!!!!”   

Along the way there were also a supporting cast of some really talented girl surfers too.  Joey Hamasaki was one of them.  Joey had a great style and was one of the best of the girl noseriders during the great noseriding era of the mid 1960’s.  She was kinda like a female David Nuuhiwa when it came to that part of surfing.  Joey was from Hawaii but lived in Dana Point.  

There were also Nancy Nelson, Margo Scotton, Linda Merrill, Betty “Banzi Betty” Carhart,  Judy Dibble and others. 

These were the early girl pioneers.  They would lay the groundwork for the great surfchicks to come after them such as Rell Sunn, Jerricho Poplar, Lisa Anderson and all the rest.  Thanks to them we now can enjoy sharing the surf with so many beautiful surf babes today.  

THE GUY WITH DA EYE

By Corky Carroll

The most beautiful and well-done surfing magazine of all time, without question, is called the SURFERS JOURNAL.  I am not sure that “magazine” is really the right name for it really.  It is more like a soft cover “coffee table book.”  The dude behind this publication is one Steve Pezman.  This guy has one of the very few true pure “surfing” hearts in the world.  His vision was to put out a better book.  Not just better, but a real quality deal that is not in competition with anything else.  It’s on its own level.  To call SURFERS JOURNAL merely “state of the art” would not be giving it enough credit.  It is “art.”  

Steve Pezman has been a part of the Orange County surfing culture for a half a century.  He began surfing in 1957.  He went to Wilson High School in Long Beach and became a regular at Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and at the “water tower” in Surfside.  Surfside was my home and I got to know him when I was a very young little surf dude.  I am not sure how much Steve liked me in those years.  He has always been a pretty low-key kinda dude, even back then.  In my younger years I was about as “high key” as they came.  But he used to load Mark Martinson and myself into the trunk of his car and give us rides down to “trestles” to surf if we came up with the gas money.  I always looked at him as a stylish surfer with a good sense of humor and liked him.  

Steve would work in surfboard production as a shaper and eventual co owner of a private label surfboard factory in the late 1960s.  He started in the surf publication business at first as a freelance writer.  This led to gigs as Associate Editor at International Surfing Magazine and then to Surfer Magazine in 1970.  In 1971 Steve would take over as Publisher of Surfer when founder John Severson sold the magazine and retired to the island of Maui.  Many thought, including “Pez” himself, that he had been given a sinking ship to go down with.  

There is one thing about Steve Pezman that sets him apart from the pack.  He has a keen eye for quality.  He sees surf photos in a way that most of us do not understand.  I learned this about him when I went to work under him in 1976 at Surfer.  I started as an ad salesman and would soon take over the advertising department as Ad Director.  This was job I held for ten years and loved every minute of it.  When I first went to work there I wasn’t sure how Pez and I would co-exist.  This goes back to the low key-high key thing.  I had mellowed a little bit by then though, and I was good at the job, so at first I felt that even though he was apprehensive about me that he was at least tolerating my presence on the staff.  Over the years of working for him I learned to love the guy and respect him in so many ways.  He had a “feel” for what was good and not good.  Pez is also an artist.  He paints.  He is very good too, but he would cringe to hear you say that because he does not believe that he is not up to his own high standard.  I learned to see surf photos very differently from listening to him.  Pez was more about turning out a good product, one that he was proud of, than the business side of it.  I was sort of the one who worked with that end of it, at least as far as advertising went.  He never wanted the magazine to be overrun with “ugly” ads.  He even would have me turn away business if they had a habit of unprofessional looking layouts.  And he never wanted the content to be tainted by the wishes of the advertisers.   There was many an advertiser who would want their guy on the cover or in stories etc.   Pez was really too pure for the pudding when it came down to it. 

Steve met his wonderful wife Debbee while working at Surfer and together they had the vision of a publication without the need for advertising.  They made it happen together and in 1992 started up SURFERS JOURNAL.  

Pez is a like a perfectly peeling wave, oily glassy on a clean fall morning.  He is a guy with a good eye, a great heart and a lot of style to mix in.   One of the understated, yet very bright diamonds in our surfing culture. 

THE PATTERSON BROTHERS

By Corky Carroll

When I wrote the piece about the crew at Doheny State Park in the early 1960’s a couple of weeks ago it brought back memories of a whole slew of other people that were around that area in those days.  There were so many that I could not include them all so I decided to save a few that I could dedicate an entire column too.  The Patterson brothers are at the top of this list.  

Bobby, Ronald and Raymond Patterson came from their native Hawaii to work in the surfboard industry.  Each one was skilled in a different area of surfboard construction and each one was a master of his craft.  And each one was a great surfer.  It was only natural that they would all end up living in Dana Point and working in the Hobie Surfboards program. In those days this was the state of the art surfboard manufacturing facility in the world. 

Bobby was a glasser.  I can remember walking into the factory and seeing Bobby leaning over a board that he was in the middle of fiberglassing with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a bucket of freshly mixed resin in one hand and a squeegee in the other.  I asked somebody, I think it was Mickey Munoz, what happened if the ashes from the cigarette fell into the board.   His answer was that they became part of the glass job and the eventual owner would be getting a “really smokin’ board.”   I could go along with that but it always amazed me that this practice didn’t result in the whole place burning to the ground.

As a surfer Bobby was amazing.  They called him the “Flying Flea” due to his small stature and ability to obtain great speeds on a board.  He won the prestigious Malibu Surfing Invitational one year and was recognized as one of the great surfers on the planet. 

Raymond was a “glosser.”  That’s the guy who applies the finish coat to a board.  In those days he was also the guy who did all of the color work.  Raymond was an artist.  In 1966 when the Batman television series was popular he put together a “Bat-board” for me.  It had a life-sized Batman painted on the bottom and a custom inlayed “Bat-fin.”  It all had to be taped off and was a radical undertaking.  That board is in the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum today, or at least it was the last time I saw it.  I rode it in the finals of the 1966 World Championships in San Diego and then retired it.  

Raymond was also an amazing surfer and one of the great Hawaiian style “slack key” guitar players of all time.  He won a number of surfing events up and down the coast and was a regular at all of the surf spots in southern Orange County. 

Ronald was a sander.  This is known as the worst job in the surfboard building business.  Sanding fiberglass is really not a whole lot of fun and it was hard to find sanders in those days, let alone good ones.  Ronald was the best and he loved it.  He would go in that little sanding room for hours and hours without the extreme protection that most used to keep away the dreaded “glass itch.”  It didn’t seem to bother him a bit. 

Ronald was also kind of the “crazy one.”  There used to be a photo of him skiing at Alta, Utah pasted on one of the walls in the surfboard factory.  He was about twenty feet in the air, going extremely fast and upside down.  He was also an expert at Karate.  I remember one day I was over at his house for a barbeque in his back yard and I kinda casually asked him if he would show me some Karate moves.  He smiled really big and kicked me in the chest, sending me flying across the yard and into a hedge.  “Whadda think of that?” he laughed.   It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind but it definitely made an impression on me.  Literally.

These guys were really classic dudes and a huge part of the surfing culture of that time.  Each one is a legend in his own right and deserves to be remembered as such.  Unfortunately they have all passed away now.  If ever there is a “surfboard builders hall of fame” these three brothers should be among the first to be inducted.   

SPECIAL SURFERS HALL OF FAME INDUCTION

By Corky Carroll

Arron Pai, owner of Huntington Surf ‘n Sport and the originator of the SURFERS HALL OF FAME has just announced the special induction of long time Huntington Beach surfing legend Chris Hawk.  The ceremony is on Friday, September 18^th at 10 A.M. at the Hall of Fame Plaza in front of his store.  This is on the corner of Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, right across the street from the famed Huntington Beach Pier.

Chris Hawk is a member of the famed Hawk surfing family that included brothers Sam and Tom.  Sam was famous for incredible gutsy performances on the North Shore of Hawaii during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  Tom was one of the best locals surfing at the pier for many years.  Chris made a name for himself not only as a great surfer but also as one of the leading surfboard shapers and designers both here on the coast of California as well as in the Hawaiian Islands. 

For upwards of four decades Chris has shaped innovative surfboards here in Orange County, both in Huntington Beach and San Clemente.  Recently he has been in an intense battle with cancer of the throat.  Most likely a result of breathing in surfboard foam dust all these years. 

The Surfers’ Hall of Fame is styled after the renowned Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.  Chris Hawk will join superstars and legends from several eras including Laird Hamilton, Lisa Andersen, Tom Curren, Corky Carroll (my favorite), Peter Townend, Bob McKnight, Robert August, Bob Hurley, Sean Collins, Rob Machado, Mark Richards, Shaun Tomson, Andy Irons Kelly Slater, Layne Beachly and many more who are already immortalized in cement through handprints, footprints and signatures.

 All inductees of the Surfers’ Hall of Fame have contributed greatly to advance the sport of surfing whether through their talent, innovation, and/or contribution to our culture.  (In my case it was just incredibly good looks.)

“We are super stoked to be able to honor and induct Chris Hawk into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame!  He was one of the best surfers out at the Huntington Pier back in the day.  We used to watch him for hours from out in the lineup or from the pier…taking notes on how to advance our surfing from the way he rode the South and North Side!  He was the best!”  said Aaron Pai.

“On Saturday, September 19^th, 3 % of our sales at the Huntington Surf & Sport on Main Street and PCH will be donated to Chris Hawk to help him fight his cancer.”

With all of the attention focused on health care in the United States these days this is one of those cases that really makes me wanna shout out that we need to do something to change the way it is here.  Cancer is a rich persons illness.  If you don’t have the best insurance policy you can’t afford to get it.  Even if you do it is more expensive than most people can deal with.  I am not a politician nor do I have any great solutions for these kinds of things.  But the people in power who ARE in charge of this stuff need to fix it sooner than later.  It costs too much to get sick. 

There are a few very innovative places that are springing up that you can walk into without an appointment and won’t cost you an arm and a leg.  I go to Memorial Prompt Care in Huntington Beach.  One day I went in and saw my doctor, G. Nathan Newman, in the morning and then ran him over in the surf later that day when he was paddling out on his boogie board.  Living in the O.C. is great.

But not so great if you come down with throat cancer.  And even worse if you don’t have good insurance.  Chris Hawk is like me, a lifelong surfer who never put health insurance as a top priority on the budget.  Who can afford it if it’s not part of your job package?  Not me, that’s for sure.  Not Chris either.  He can use all the help he can get right now.  

If you can, please come out to the induction and support one of our own Orange County heroes.  You can also donate to help him by making a deposit at any Wells Fargo Bank to the

Christian Hawk Trust Fund

Checking #8862742031  Routing #121042882.

Every little bit helps.