A Surfing Life
by William Finnegan
Memoir, Travel | Published: 2015 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.
Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu even while his closest friend was a Hawaiian surfer. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. He and a buddy, their knapsacks crammed with reef charts, bushwhack through Polynesia. They discover, while camping on an uninhabited island in Fiji, one of the world’s greatest waves. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he becomes an improbable anthropologist: unpicking the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissecting the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, navigating the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.
by Kem Nunn
Mystery, Noir | Published: 2005 | Goodreads
People go to Huntington Beach in search of the endless parties, the ultimate highs and the perfect waves. Ike Tucker has come to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her. In that place of gilded surfers and sun-bleached blondes, Ike's search takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers. Ike looks into the shadows and finds parties that drift towards pointless violence, joyless vacations and highs you might never come down from ... and a sea of old hatreds and dreams gone bad. And if he's not careful, his is a journey from which he will never return.
Director: Bruce Brown
Stars: Michael Hynson, Robert August
Documentary, Sport | imdb
The crown jewel to ten years of Bruce Brown surfing documentaries. Brown follows two young surfers around the world in search of the perfect wave, and ends up finding quite a few in addition to some colorful local characters.
by Frederick Kohner
Classics, YA | Published: 2001 (first 1957) | Goodreads
My English comp teacher Mr. Glicksberg says if you want to be a writer you have to, quote, sit on a window sill and get all pensive and stuff and jot down descriptions. Unquote Glicksberg! I don't know what kind of things he writes but I found my inspiration in Malibu with a radio, my best girlfriends, and absolutely zillions of boys for miles. I absolutely had to write everything down because I heard that when you get older you forget things, and I'd be the most miserable woman in the world if I forgot all about Moondoggie and what happened this summer. I absolutely owe the world my story. (And every word is true. I swear.)
This is Franzie, part Holden Caulfield, part Lolita. The guys call her Gidget--short for "girl midget”--and she’s a girl coming of age in the summer of 1957. Based on the experiences of his own daughter, Frederick Kohner's trend-setting novel became an international sensation and turned its irrepressible heroine into an American pop culture icon whose voice still echoes every thrill, every fear, and every hope that every teenager ever had about growing up.
Director: Paul Wendkos
Screenplay: Gabrielle Upton
Based on book by: Frederick Kohner
Stars: Sandra Dee, James Darren, Cliff Robertson
Comedy, Music, Romance, Coming of Age | imdb
A young girl discovers surfing and love (in that order) during one transitive summer.
Director: Paul Wendkos
Screenplay: Ruth Brooks Flippen
Based on characters by: Frederick Kohner
Stars: Deborah Walley, James Darren
Comedy, Music, Romance | imdb
Francine (Gidget) is desperate: her parents want to force her to come with them on vacation to Hawaii - just during the two weeks when her beloved "Moondoggie" is home from College. When he suggests she go for it, she's even more in panic - doesn't he care to be with her? So she sets out for Hawaii in the worst mood. On the plane she meets the sociable Abby, who gives her the advice to forget about Jeff - and regrets it shortly after, when Francine follows the advice and steals her boyfriend Eddie, a famous dancer. But then Jeff discovers he's missing Francine...
* image source: San Diego Surfer by Gray Malin
* part of Summertime time (schedule)
