The History of Surfing

by Warshaw, Matt

  When his first suit was completed, Bradner drove to Lake Tahoe, in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains, crunched his way over some nearshore ice, and immersed himself in the water. It wasn’t pleasant. Still, he was chilly, not hypothermic. He stayed in for a few minutes and didn’t get any colder.

  A classified report on the wetsuit’s design, construction, and performance was duly sent off to the Pentagon, but the military decided to stay with the dry suit. After the report was declassified, Bradner founded Edco, a short-lived wetsuit manufacturing company, but amazingly he chose not to patent his design. (“I didn’t think there was a good market for them,” the eighty-nine-year-old Bradner said with a shrug in 2005, remarkably sanguine given that the industry built on his invention was by that time worth over a half-billion dollars in annual revenue.)

  Meanwhile, scuba equipment had recently hit the market, and a few Southern California surfers, rigged out with all the necessary gear, were now harvesting their local reefs for abalone, lobster, and black sea bass. Bev Morgan of Manhattan Beach, one of the surfer-divers, was visiting San Diego’s Scripps Institution in 1952 when a librarian handed him a copy of Hugh Bradner’s just-declassified report on wetsuits. Morgan was astounded. Everything was in there: patterns, assembly instructions, even material suppliers. Just weeks later, he and boardmaker Hap Jacobs decided to open a surfing and diving shop in Redondo Beach—named Dive ’n’ Surf, appropriately enough—with Morgan himself, using heavy-duty nylon thread and sheets of black quarter-inch-thick neoprene, cutting and stitching together the wetsuit prototypes, including a farmer john model and the front-zip jacket.

  MICKEY MUNOZ IN A SHORT JOHN WETSUIT.

  REDONDO BEACH SURFER WEARING A BEAVERTAIL JACKET.

  There were problems. Unlined neoprene had a slightly gummy texture, and it didn’t slide well over skin; before pulling on a wetsuit, the user had to first coat himself in talcum powder. Rashes and chafing, especially under the arms, were a given. The suits weren’t flimsy, but they weren’t durable either, particularly the jackets, which only came on or off with a lot of tugging and pulling. Split seams were common, as were jagged tears in the paneling. Ultimately, these were minor drawbacks compared to what was gained. Cold water wasn’t defeated completely by the wetsuit—but no longer did it have the upper hand.

  Response to the wetsuit was mixed. Divers took to the new product immediately. Surfers balked. The guy who paddled out in a wetsuit, as Morgan later recalled, “was put down endlessly as being a pussy,” and such was the tyranny of surf fashion that for the next eight years just about everybody in the sport continued to ride bare-chested and shivering.

  * * *

  Outside of Hawaii, cold water had always been surfing’s biggest problem. In Sydney, the ocean temperature is 62 degrees or below for three months out of the year. Los Angeles water is that cold for six month a year. Each person’s particular cold tolerance aside, the low 60s is where most trunks-only surfers get really uncomfortable after an hour or so, especially with a sea breeze or cloud cover. Anything below 56 degrees—the warmest it gets in Santa Cruz—is cold enough to end a session after just one full-body immersion.

  Earlier generations of surfers, to their credit, battled the cold with less concern for appearances than surfers of the fifties. Some wore rubber swimming caps pulled low and tight over the ears to protect against the short but intense “ice cream headache” that came with a head-dunking. Warmer yet was a long underwear top, or a woolen jersey, or a tight-fitting thrift store cashmere sweater, all of which worked fine until the surfer wiped out, or tunneled through a wave while paddling, at which point the ocean-soaked material draped and sagged like a molting pelt. The experienced cold-water surfer also learned to paddle defensively, sitting up with his feet on the deck. It was slow-going compared to prone- or knee-paddling, almost dainty, and it only worked in the calm perimeter zone around the lineup. But apart from the surfer’s hands, everything was high and dry.

  The main front of the surfer’s cold war, however, was fought on land, as everyone retreated to shore, usually sooner rather than later, and did whatever was necessary to ready themselves for the next charge into the waves. A fire was lit and tended, anything combustible was tossed on—driftwood, crates and pallets, magazines and newspapers, old car tires—and those fresh from the surf crowded the flames and ignored the smell of singing body hair. Secondary means were deployed: a heavy jacket, running in place, lots of cigarettes, coffee from a thermos, sandwiches—the calorie burn was phenomenal, and hunger was as much a constant for the winter surfer as the cold—and maybe a long pull from a gallon jug of red wine.

  Surfing had taken root in the San Francisco Bay Area during the prewar years, especially in Santa Cruz, and riding at Steamer Lane or Pedro Point during winter, when water temperatures occasionally dropped to the upper 40s, nearly required a genetic mutation. Longtime bodysurfer Jack O’Neill suffered along with all the other Bay Area wave-riders, but he thought cold water was a problem that could be alleviated, if not solved outright. A liberal arts student and lifeguard, O’Neill served in the Navy Air Corps after college, then spent five years bouncing from one short-lived job to the next, including longshoreman, fisherman, parking meter salesmen, and bike messenger. Putting his pilot’s license to use, on sunny weekend afternoons O’Neill would fire up a biplane and pull car dealership banners back and forth over outdoor public events.

  In 1952, O’Neill opened a tiny boardmaking operation called Surf Shop, on the beachfront about a mile south of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. By then, he’d already sewn a vest made from spongy unicellular foam rubber, and tried bodysurfing in a two-piece navy surplus dry suit. Neither were successful. The vest was little better than a T-shirt; the dry suit was great for floating or even gentle swimming, but it failed completely during a wipeout, as water poured in through the waist cuff.

  O’Neill got his hands on some neoprene rubber at about the same time as Bev Morgan in Redondo Beach, and he immediately began to make a line of wetsuit vests. But even in the always-chilly Bay Area, most surfers viewed the wetsuit as an affront to their skin-baring panache. In 1959, O’Neill opened a second Surf Shop outlet in Santa Cruz. He’d added a front-zip jacket and long john to his neoprene vests, and was now making appearances at the local boat expo, where his favorite promo stunt was to fill a tank with water and have his three wetsuit-clad preadolescent children play on a huge block of ice. Still, the market was almost all divers, not surfers.

  “MY FRIEND AND I DROVE PAST RINCON ONE WINTER AFTERNOON IN 1962, AND THERE WERE ABOUT 150 GUYS IN THE WATER. MAYBE TWO HAD WETSUITS ON. THE REST WERE ALL SHIVERING NAKED ANIMALS ENDURING THE COLD. ‘TOUGH GUYS,’ MY BUDDY SAID. ‘TOUGH?’ I SAID. ‘THEY’RE STUPID.’”

  —Bev Morgan

  It was Bev Morgan who finally convinced surfers to come in from the cold. Morgan had sold Dive ’n’ Surf to Bill and Bob Meistrell, twin brothers from Manhattan Beach who, like Morgan, were big into diving and surfing. After sailing the South Pacific for two years, Morgan returned to Los Angeles and in 1962 decided to get back into the wetsuit business—except this time he would aim his product directly at surfers. Morgan contacted Southern California’s leading boardmakers and offered each of them the same deal. He’d give them ten free short john wetsuits, all accented on the breast with the surfboard company’s logo. In return, each boardmaker had to pass the suits on to their best team riders and insist they be used. Amazingly, everybody followed orders—renowned Santa Monica surfer Mickey Munoz even chipped in with the immortal surf-world plug, “It’s better to be warm than cold.” The rank and file took notice, and by early spring Morgan had orders for twenty-five hundred new suits.

  Morgan enjoyed creating the product and doing the promo work, but hated manufacturing. Once again, he sold everything to the Meistrell brothers, who used Morgan’s short john prototype to launch a surfers-only wetsuit line they eventually spun off to become Body Glove. O’Neill’s wetsuit line also shot through the roof a
s Santa Cruz wave-riders followed the trend. Soon, Body Glove and O’Neill were the established industry leaders, with another dozen companies entering the market to sell wetsuits to surfers.

  The competition spurred more research and development. A thin nylon lining was added to the neoprene, which strengthened the rubber itself as well as the seam joints, and eliminated the talc-filled drama of getting into the suit. Better-made suits had flexible rubber tape glued to the seams to prevent leaking. Colors were introduced: in 1961, custom-fitted “surfing suits” from La Jolla Divers Supply came in aqua, yellow, or red, as well as standard tuxedo black. The short john was the most popular wetsuit, followed by the front-zip jacket—better known as a “beavertail.” At some early stage in the wetsuit’s development, a designer added an hourglass-shaped length of material to the jacket’s back hem, which was pulled like a codpiece between the legs and double-snapped to the front hem. Divers took advantage of this completely sensible warming feature. Fashion-conscious surfers did not. But instead of cutting off the extra neoprene, it was left to dangle, and during a fast ride it whipped and fluttered around the surfer’s ass like a rubber tail.

  Time and again in the years to come, O’Neill proved himself a masterful surf-world innovator and marketer. He stamped the company logo on a bright yellow hot-air balloon, and at big surfing competition’s he’d glide majestically onto a nearby beach. He famously ran a full-page color ad showing a bare-breasted model demurely pulling on an O’Neill short john, and disarmed most critics by pairing the shot with surfing’s first and last perfect slogan: “It’s Always Summer on the Inside.” In 1970, O’Neill introduced the one-piece fullsuit, which covered everything but the surfer’s feet, hands, and head, which was a huge improvement over the old long john/beavertail “layered” outfit. Corporate advantage was found even when O’Neill lost an eye in a surfing accident, as his bearded and eye-patched Long John Silver face was rendered into a company logo.

  Neoprene not only brought comfort to the surfing masses, it warmed up the market as well. Manufacturers and retailers loved the wetsuit: it was easier to make, warehouse, and ship than the surfboard, and the unit markup was a lot higher. The vest and short john were both fairly durable, but other designs would tear or corrode after a year’s hard use and had to be replaced—an easy buying decision for any cold-water surfer. Once scorned, now essential, rubber became the surfer’s new best friend. In the midsixties, wetsuits passed boards to become the surf world’s top-selling commodity.

  LOS ANGELES AREA SURFERS WEARING “NAVY CUTOFFS,” EARLY 1950s.

  Surf Fashion Fundamentals: Trunks and T-Shirts

  Surfers, as a rule, didn’t wear much, but what they did put on had to be distinctive. Further, clothes didn’t need the help of military research or patented chemical products from Dupont and Dow. Early surf fashion was developed on or near the beach, using plain old-fashioned wool or cotton. Before World War II, Palos Verdes Surf Club founder John “Doc” Ball showed his buddies how to hand-sew a thick diaper-like bathing suit that didn’t bind, or blow apart during a heavy wipeout, the way department store trunks often did. A tiny boutique shop named Lyn’s of Waikiki came out with a belted, high-waisted, rugged cotton-blend trunk with vertical stripping on the hip, and sold a few dozen pair to the Outrigger Canoe Club—Duke Kahanamoku wore his throughout the Depression.

  Ball and Kahanamoku, though, expected nothing more from their suits than function and durability. Surfwear—to use a word that wouldn’t actually be invented for another three or four decades—had to do more. It had to announce the fact that the wearer not only rode waves but represented a whole new species of beachgoer. By this definition, surfwear was invented on some lazy Southern California afternoon four or five years after D-Day, when members of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club—including the omnipresent Dale Velzy, lifeguard Barney Briggs, and paddleboard champion Bob Hogan—handed around a pair of scissors so that each surfer could trim the length of the sailor pants they’d recently taken to wearing. Eighteen inches was removed, give or take, and the material now ended just below the knees; sailor whites were the preferred color, but some club members went for blue. Either way, the pants cost just two-bits a pair at the local army-navy store—which was fortunate, as the thin cotton material wasn’t all that durable, and it was unstated club policy to steal and hide a fellow club member’s shorts once they were hung out to dry. Having several pairs in reserve was a good idea.

  Utility was still important. The Manhattan Beach surfers all had wide Simmons-style boards, with a layer of paraffin wax on the deck for traction, and the constant back-and-forth straddle-to-prone motion put a nasty chafe on the inner thighs. Dropping the inseam by a foot, to below the knee, took care of the problem.

  But style counted just as much, or more. Velzy and his friends had always steered clear of the typical men’s bathing suits worn by nonsurfers (fitted, stretchy, high-riding, and often belted or buckled; see Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity), and they were content to wear some version of the plain cotton lifeguard trunk. “Cutoff whites” were something completely different. They had to be worn low on the hips, and the unhemmed leg openings were allowed to fray and unravel. The drawstring atop the button fly was cinched and tied before hitting the water to prevent the trunks from slipping off during wipeouts, but often purposely left undone while on the beach to swing freely about the crotch. This was surf culture in its purest form—cheap and simple, homemade, and a bit raunchy.

  Custom surf trunks were soon available in Hawaii. An early favorite was the M. Nii shop in Waianae, a tiny bare-bulb storefront shack just south of Makaha. Owner and proprietor Minoru Nii—a one-legged Japanese tailor who’d been doing repair work on trunks for years—introduced the Makaha Drowner in the midfifties, and business was so good that surfers often had to wait a month before their order was filled. The Drowner was made from sturdy cotton twill and had a button-down side pocket for holding a chunk of paraffin wax. At four dollars, they were the priciest trunks around. But there were dozens of fabric choices, in prints and solids, and for visiting surfers heading back to the mainland, a pair of broken-in M. Nii trunks was an unbeatable status item.

  “First you bought the trunks,” one surfer recalled, “then the tatami-mat slaps. Then you hit the Waikiki Salvation Army to pick up a couple of aloha shirts they were practically giving away. That way, when you got off the plane back home and walked down the boardwalk, tanned and dressed in all that new stuff, everybody knew you’d been to Hawaii.”

  In Honolulu, Take of Waikiki made a rugged spinnaker cloth surf trunk and was the only Hawaiian company accepting mail-orders. Meanwhile, Haleiwa’s 1912-founded H. Miura Store and Tailor Shop not only did fine custom work but had the cool-quotient advantage of being located on the North Shore, the newly designated ultimate surf destination.

  By the late 1950s, with-it Southern California surfers were buying their trunks from a handful of Singer-treadling “beach moms.” Mary Doyle of Westchester deposited her young teenage son Mike into the Malibu-style crucible wearing a gorgeous pair of purple-and-black trunks with diamonds down one side, and she was soon taking orders from Mike’s friends. Plaudette Reed, wife of the Newport Beach Lifeguard Chief, insisted on two fittings per customer, and embroidered the surfer’s name across the inside of the wax-pocket flap. By this time, the knee-length cut was out. In California and Hawaii both, surf trunks were now midlength—as board-width had come down, so had the chafing problem. Solid-print trunks often had a narrow contrast-color waistband and matching trim along the hem. Heavy vertical stripes on the hip were also popular.

  In 1960, with little build-up or preamble, surfers began turning out in droves to buy an especially bombproof trunk made by Kanvas by Katin, a tiny Seal Beach boat-cover business owned by Walter Katin, a former Sears and Roebuck salesman who rarely dressed in anything but a powder-blue jumpsuit and a captain’s hat, and his wife, Nancy, an excitable chain-smoking redhead in cat’s-eye glasses who’d been a vaudeville
dancer during the Depression. For a year or two, local surfers had been coming into the Katin store, holding out their ripped-seam department-store trunks—medium-duty shorts by Jantzen, McGregor, or Catalina mostly designed for pool lounging and swimming—and asking if Walter and Nancy could make them something that was tougher and cooler. Neither were particularly interested at first. Then again, they already had the material, and the patterns didn’t look complicated—so why not? Nancy took measurements, Walter did the cutting and sewing, and two weeks later the customer returned for pick-up.

  The Katins were big on durability. All trunks were cut from sixteen-ounce duck canvas, tripled-seamed in the crotch and seat, and zigzag stitched with hundred-pound-test waxed-nylon thread. A brand-new new pair, dropped from a surfer’s waist to the floor, would remain perfectly upright—more like sculpture than clothing.

  Kanvas by Katin was something new on the surf scene. Where M. Nii and a few other island tailors made trunks on the side, and the beach moms did piecework to put a few dollars in the kitchen jam jar, Walter and Nancy went all-in. Their shop was near the epicenter of the booming Orange County surf scene, and word-of-mouth on their product among California surfers was reverential. Within two years they were filling hundreds of custom orders a month and adding to their crew of seamstresses—including a nimble-fingered Japanese-born prodigy named Sato Hughes who could bang out a flawless pair of trunks in twenty minutes flat. Demand was high enough to support Birdwell Beach Britches, a near-replica operation that opened a few miles inland of Katin in 1961 and produced an equally sturdy, colorful line of trunks.