We would drive down the beach to a secluded area, put speakers out, play Santana and smoke weed and laugh. When you got in your car you were on the wilderness trail and you could go to Santa Barbara or Mexico. Once we got our driving licenses it opened things. You’d drape your towel off your board to walk to the beach and you didn’t have anything else. All I remember is maybe having an apple, banana, or PB&J. It was you, your board, your buddies, and a brown bag. Some went to Spain to study flamenco guitar. On land they were heroes too because of what they wore and how they walked. In those days, the top stylish guy held his hands in a certain way, like bullfighter type poses. You could look at surfers and tell where they had been: a necklace from Bali or something from France. We’d go to Baja and get those embroidered Mexican wedding shirts on the way home. Our fashion thing was more found and original depending on the personality of the surfer. If you give a surfer a box of clothes, that’s what he’s going to wear. Early on you had to get them in your car and go with them. A lot of them you had to track them down. You always knew they were going to do something good. As a photographer, what attracted me to certain surfers is a certain body style where they really threw their weight into their bottom turn on the surfboard and go straight up the face of the wave then do a snap off the top.
“I photographed surfing for 50 years and was exposed to so many good surfers, from Gerry Lopez at Pipeline to Kelly Slater. By 1971, it had a circulation of 60,000 and for every one magazine, the hand around rate was six times. It started getting newsstand sales, which was a really big deal. I was shy and thrust into Surfer, which was the centre of the surfing universe. I started coming to the office in 1968, 69. In San Diego, we were off the radar because the centre was Dana Point – John Severson started Surfer magazine there in 1962. Coastal enclaves a few miles apart will have a distinct group of guys. We were apolitical but we had that back to Mother Nature, health foods, we’re all one psychedelic mindset of the late 1960s and 70s. We weren’t bad boys – we were wilderness athletes. “We had our own little wilderness world in La Jolla, North County San Diego, and Mexico where we had our own names for everything.
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