Surf is where you find it
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The best books on Surfing
We often start by defining our subject. So, before we talk about the books about surfing you’ve chosen to recommend, perhaps you’d start by telling us what surfing means to you.
Surfing is something I’ve done since I was 10 years old. And for the past 64 years, it has been the life for me… nurturing me, teaching me, sustaining me, enlivening me, and showing me the way to live a life in harmony with nature. It’s so much more than simply riding waves.
Congratulations on the third edition of your book Surf Is Where You Find It. When you were writing these essays for various surfing magazines, did you imagine it would one day be a book?
I’ve always enjoyed a good story. In the process of telling some of my own, I have been encouraged by family and friends to share them. The best way to do that is to write them down. In the beginning, it was mostly for surf magazines and publications like The Surfer’s Journal. When I started working at Patagonia, I shared many of those stories with Yvon Chouinard and it was at his suggestion that we decided to co
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Stab Recommends: The 7 Best Surfing Biographies
I love it when some muck-raking clickbait site drags up some controversial quote from an autobiography written years prior and tries to pass it off as a scoop.
It’s a nice, modern reward for the author’s attempt at honesty, with a small asterisk at the bottom that says, “Quote originally appeared in ‘Insert Cringe Biography Name Here.'” The thought of doing a round-up of surfing biopics came from all the sports journalism during lock down. People always try to appear smart when being interviewed on zoom, so they sit in front of books, either in a study, or a genuine library if they’re of some stature. I’ve heard lots of cheeky interviewers ask sportspeople what books are behind them, the answers being the ghost written biographies of their friends and peers, which they inevitably haven’t read. I thought it could be a laugh to compile a list of laughably ghost-written surf memoirs, but on second look re-discovered that there’s actually some pretty good ones. Come browse the shelves.
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How I came to be the surfer, competitor, and the person I am today.
The ocean has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
When I was roughly 6 years old, my father pulled me off his back and taught me how to surf. My two older brothers were already surfing, and well, I of course wanted to try everything they did.
While I loved taking waves in the warm summer water, it wasn't until I was 11 that I truly fell in love with surfing. My father gave me my first longboard as a Christmas gift, and we started surfing Doheny State Beach more frequently. That is when I met a group of fellow groms that would become my community.
We were called the, “Jetty Rats.” Sunrise to sunset, every summer day, weekend, or holiday, you could find us gathering on the Doheny jetty; skating, wrestling, jumping off the rocks, and of course, surfing. In fact, the only phone number I gave out at the end of the school year, was the nearby pay phone.
Nearly everybody in the jetty crew belonged to the Doheny Longboard Surfing Association (DLSA). Thus, it was only fitting t
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