Aloha and Welcome to THE ISLANDS of the 1930s!
All 1930s surfers knew what you were referring to when you said “The Islands.” Yes, you were talking about the Hawaiian Islands, but what you really meant was the island of O’ahu and more specifically Waikiki Beach, surfing's epicenter.
Two decades after surfing’s resurgence at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the surf scene in the Hawaiian Islands was still pretty much limited to O`ahu – really, only the breaks off Waikiki… and the Beach Boys ruled the beach. Surf clubs engaged in rigorous competition, mostly centered around outrigger canoes. Duke Kahanamoku remained the surfing world’s most respected surfer and was still actively riding. Tom Blake was on the scene, off and on (but mostly on) and writing about his life there. Significantly for the future, surfboard design made its next great step forward (after Blake’s Hollowboard) with the development of the Hot Curl. Toward the end of the decade, more and more O’ahu breaks opened up.
Contents
Waikīkī Beach Boys
Romanticizing Hawaii
Tom Blake
The Hot Curl
Waikīkī Beach Boys
Surfing’s original “beach boys” were mostly Native Hawaiian and hapa (mixed ancestry) surfers, paddlers, swimmers, and fishermen with ocean knowledge and experience. Informal professionals, they worked off tips and arrangements with hotels.
They taught visitors how to surf, gave outrigger canoe rides, performed surf demonstrations and served as cultural ambassadors – often the first Hawaiians tourists ever met.
The surfboards they rode were heavy, solid redwood or koa boards, about 10–16 feet long, and weighing between 80–120 pounds. They were shared communally; not everyone owned one.
See the next chapter, “Waikīkī Beach Boys” for more.
Romanticizing Hawaiʻi
The 1930s marked the romanticization of Hawaiʻi, through tourism and media.
Travel to The Islands was slow, compared with today. It was by steamship from the U.S. Mainland, but Hawaii as a subject was all over the media of the time: Hollywood films, travel writing, postcards,and the radio show “Hawaiʻi Calls” (launched 1935).
Surfing became part of the exotic paradise image, but most tourists were observers, not surfers. Even so, many Mainland visitors learned the basics of surfing from the Beach Boys and brought that knowledge and sometimes stoke back home with them.
Tom Blake
Not really part of Hawaii’s romanticization, the era’s second most influential surfer (next to Duke Kahanamoku) Tom Blake nevertheless wrote about The Islands in glowing terms.
His was a love affair with the Hawaiian Islands: its people, its culture, and its environment. He found he could “live simple and quietly here. I can live well, without the social life. I can dress as I please, for comfort; usually it’s a pair of canvas sneakers, light trousers and a sleeveless polo shirt with swimming trunks all day. I like the Islands because I can keep one hundred percent suntan here the year around, rest and sleep for hours in the wonderful sunshine each day... In my yard [I] grow bananas, avocados, mangoes, papayas and luxurious ferns and flowers including a stately Royal palm, which is majesty in itself in the moonlight.
“I like it because of the natural beauty of everything here,” Tom continued, “the very blue sky, very white clouds, very green mountains, clothed in foliage to their ridges... The coco palms waving in the clean trade winds, the colors of the water on the coral reef, greet my eyes each day as I near the beach and when the giant waves of the Kalehuawehe surf are breaking white, far from shore, it means royal sport is waiting and I actually break into a run to get to the Outrigger Club, don trunks and get out my favorite surfboard of teak wood. I like the opportunity of studying and seeing the great mixture of races gathered here, each one retaining many of their old customs of eating, dress and living. I pick a custom or two from each race to use at my convenience... It’s a great place to be a bachelor.”118
In the process of adapting to a Hawaiian beach style of living, Tom pioneered key elements of the surfer lifestyle that endure to present day. In fact, Tom’s self-created lifestyle was the prototype of the “surfer” we know today. The traveling, diet, dress, and more made up a style he introduced to California, Florida, New York, and visiting Mainland surfers in Hawaii. This style was a combination of how relaxed actors dressed at the beach, what was practical at the beach, and what was financially viable. Photos of Tom in different modes of dress always suggest style. The clothes themselves had to travel well because he was always on the move. Nevertheless, he always kept it simple.119
“Acquaintances on the mainland have asked me why I bury myself in the Hawaiian Islands,” Tom wrote. “The reason is because it fits my nature, it is life’s compensation for such a nature as mine. I can live simple and quietly here, live well, without the social life. I pick a custom or two from each race to use at my convenience. Perhaps it is the Buddhist religion of the Chinese, the poi eating and surfriding of the Hawaiians. The raw peanut eating of the Filipinos or the happiness, enthusiasm and appreciation with which the Japanese meet their daily duties. I like it here because I can live conservatively and find the habit interesting and pleasurable.”124
“Above all,” wrote surf writer Sam George in a tribute to Blake published after his passing, “he was the first Mainlander to develop the attitude – the commitment to a way of life – that all real surfers have adopted since.”125
Tom spent much time in and around the Outrigger Canoe Club. Whether he ever became a member is unknown. Certainly, later on in the 1930s, he worked for the club in his capacity on the club-sponsored Waikiki Beach Patrol.126 First established in 1907, the Outrigger was the center of surf culture at Waikiki for many years afterwards. Tom described the boards that were stored at the Club during his tour of the beach:127 “At the club is to be found a row of some two hundred upright surfboard lockers, filled with boards of all sizes, shades and colors; the average being ten feet long, twenty-three inches wide, three inches thick; quite flat on top and bottom, with edges rounded and weighing up to seventy-five pounds.
“They are made of California redwood, white cedar, white sugar pine and a few of balsa wood. Ninety per cent being of redwood because of its lightness, strength and cheapness. Ten dollars will buy the rough plank to make a redwood board. Some of the boards are hollowed out and decked over to lighten them.”128
Surf riding was certainly different in Blake’s day, but there were many things that remain the same today. Aspects of surfing important to Tom included tandem riding, surfing at night and – of course – friendly competition. Tom wrote a description of tandem riding, circa early 1930s Waikiki:
“Take Sunday; good surf running, not big surf, and plenty of action is to be found out in the breakers... The surfers gather around a certain dark patch of water. This is because the coral is higher there and the wave breaks steeper and is easier to catch. In the lull of the surf they have drifted with the tide and wind some ten or fifteen yards from the proper position and when a set of ground swells are sighted a few hundred yards outside general commotion prevails as they all maneuver for what they consider the best position to catch the wave.
“As the swells approach they get steeper and most of the riders paddle for the first one but only seven manage to get it. They stand up on their boards and speed shoreward at an angle. About one hundred feet back is the second wave. Everyone left paddles for this. It proves very steep and easy to catch. Nearly all catch it, including two of the tandem parties.
“Starting at the extreme right to describe the different riders here is what one sees. The first boy is no doubt inexperienced for he was too far over in the break which caused him and his board to ‘pearl dive,’ or go straight down towards the bottom, giving him a severe ducking and some valuable experience. This dive was caused partly because he did not slide or turn his board at an angle soon enough and partly because the wave was too steep and about to break at that point. The second rider just squeezed out of the steep part by a sharp tack to the left. He straightens out a bit to avoid colliding with the third board – a tandem. The boy on this board has a passenger. He stands up first, then assists his partner to her feet.” 129
“The fourth board also contains a tandem party,” Blake continued. “On this one the girl rises first, then the boy stands up with her on his shoulders – very thrilling, indeed, for the girl. The next board has two girls for riders. They ‘jam up,’ after a short fifteen-yard ride, with an inexperienced surfer and all three lose their boards and get ducked, barely missing getting hit by the loose boards. Rather brave these girls to be out there. The rest of the riders have pulled away some twenty yards. They are on the same wave and all manage to hold their boards, as this is one of the first rules of surfing. To lose a board means to swim maybe a hundred yards for it and also a loose board is dangerous to the other surfers. Of the dozen or so on this wave only two on the extreme left ride through the various breaks and do not get caught in the foam. Their ride has been a good one, perhaps two hundred yards long at a speed of about twenty-five miles an hour – eighteen miles an hour for the wave and seven for the slide.
“There is another lull and all gather outside again to repeat the performance. It is good sport and the time flies. The water is so warm one is not conscious of it. The view of the palm trees on shore, the hotels, the mountains and clouds is marvelous and to me it is part of the pleasure of surfing. The hour before sunset is best of all for then the mountains take on all the shades of green imaginable while the clouds near them assume all shades of white and gray. Gayly colored rainbows are often seen in far off valleys.”130
Writing about the prevailing paddle boarders of the day, Blake wrote, “Among the best known at surfboard paddle racing since 1915 are: Edric Cook, Tom Keakona, Fred Steere, Buster Crabbe, the Kahanamokus – Duke, Sam and Sargent – Sam Reid and Jack May. Among the women: Beatrice Newport, Dot Hammond, Marchien Wehselau, Babe Gillespie, Olga Clark and Mildred Slaight. In California, [Preston “Pete”] Peterson, [Wally] Burton, [Chauncy] Granston, [Lorrin “Whitey”] Harrison and [Cap] Watkins have been outstanding in surfboard paddling. When standard size surfboards are used, surfboard paddling races afford keen sport. In Hawaii and California championship titles in various classes are contested each year.”131
Special to Blake was surfing on the full moon. “Moonlight surfing is enjoyed for a few nights each month in the summer time when the big yellow tropical moon is at its fullest,” Blake wrote. “It is truly a rare sport. In the moonlight incoming swells creep up like great shadowy creatures. One cannot realize the silence of the ground swells until waiting for them at night.
“From the shore surfriders in the moonlight look strange and unreal when riding in on a breaker. One is never sure what it is until a rider lets out a yell. At night it is easy to yell because a person’s nerves are on edge in spite of the fun and beauty of the scene.”132
Blake wrote of the crude state of affairs competition was still in. “Surfriding contests after the ancient rules have never been held in modern times in Hawaii. The sport has been confined to paddling races. On one occasion, about 1918, a riding contest was held, the winner being judged on form, etc. Everybody disagreed and that let them to believe surfriding contests were impracticable. One more riding contest was held [before 1935] but the surf failed to run on that day and it turned out to be a paddling race. These two contests have discouraged riding races. Now, however, I have met with success in talking up a revival of the sport under old rules, which would make a good contest and worthy champion.” 133
“The summer of 1935 will mark the revival of the once popular surfriding contest under the ancient rules,” Blake continued, “to decide the champion of the Hawaiian Islands. Duke Kahanamoku has put up a cup, a genuine Hawaiian koa calabash,134 as a perpetual trophy, emblematic of the surfriding championship of the Islands to be contested for each year in first break surf at Waikiki beach.
“The main object is to hold the race when first break, or big surf is running.
“A simple point system of scoring will be used to decide the championship. It will favor and give the many who still have the solid redwood board an equal chance, by eliminating the paddling elements of the race. The rules will be as follows:
“Contestants gather outside of buoy at first break. As a good set of waves appear starter fires a gun and the race begins. Surfriders then must ride (at least half way standing) to a second buoy inside canoe surf or about where the waves end. The first contestant in to the buoy will be credited with 10 points, the second with 9 points, the third with 8 points and so on until the tenth one in gets 1 point. Contestants then leisurely paddle out to the starting buoy and the same performance is repeated until five rides over the course have been made. The contestant who has the highest number of points wins...”135
“Besides the Duke Kahanamoku perpetual trophy,” Blake went on, “gold, silver and bronze medals will be awarded. There also will be a junior race, a women’s race, a tandem race and novice race over a shorter or inside course.
“Intense rivalry between the Queen’s surfers, Hui Nalu club and Outrigger Canoe club will burn anew, as it has with competitions in the past. The Hui Nalu boys will be favorites in the senior events, however, as their club has among its members most of the oldest and cleverest riders on the beach. The field of entrants will be chosen from among the best riders of each club to avoid the course being over-run with the less experienced surfers. To win, the man will have to have a bit of luck, as there are so many riders who are top.
“As big surf is good only two or four days at a stretch, a 24-hour notice will be given as to the date of the races. The time will be announced by radio, newspaper and the ever efficient word of mouth. News reels and still cameramen will be on hand to shoot the thrilling rides that always accompany big surf, so that the rest of the world may see the ‘sport of kings’ by picture.
“Since 1918 riding contests have been held in Southern California, but often without proper selection of rules and judges. This condition encouraged the foundation of the new Kalahuewehe Surfboard Club, an honor society.”136
Tom Blake took modest pride in his associations. Of course, he was proud of his membership in both the Hui Nalu and Outrigger Canoe Club, but he wrote of a particular fondness of his being a charter member of the Kalahuewehe [sic] Surfboard Club. “To be eligible one must have ridden first break surf in the mainland U.S.A. The charter reads: ‘An honor society whose object is to encourage the art of surfboard, with due respect to its originators, the ancient Hawaiians.’
“The charter members are: Duke P. Kahanamoku, George Freeth, Haig Priest, Tom Blake, Preston Peterson, Chauncy Granstrom, Wally Burton, Bob Sides, Whitie Harrison, Tarzan Smith, Jerry Vultee, Arthur Vultee, Lee Jarvis, Rusty Williams, Grant Leonhuts, Bothwell, Willie Gregsby, Bill Herwig, Sam Reid, Keller Watson, Mullahey, Braithwate, John Smith, Sunny Ruppman.
“These boys are the pioneer surfriders in the United States, all having ridden Balboa, California, surf,” with the exception of three. Mullahey rode on Long Island, New York; J. Smith and Braithwate rode off Virginia; and in addition to riding Balboa, Duke Kahanamoku rode at Atlantic City and Ocean City, New Jersey, and in Nassau County, Long Island, New York, between 1912-18.137
“Among the new crop of boys from California, the best surfriders are: [Whitey] Harrison, [Gene] Tarzan Smith, [Bob] Sides, [Chauncy] Granstrom and [Wally] Burton.”138
The Hotcurl
In the mid-1930s – somewhat outside Tom Blake’s orbit – a newer breed of surfers were growing up in the Honolulu area who tried Tom Blake’s hollow boards, but considered the hollows too “squirrelly” and non-manouverable. These Honolulu area surfers would go on to change the course of surfing -- particularly big wave surfing -- forever. Their stories are covered in the chapter The Legends of the Hot Curl and individual chapters on the preeminent Hot Curl surfers: John Kelly, Fran Heath, Wally Froiseth, Russ Takaki, Woody Brown and George Downing.
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