“You really missed it. You should’ve been here yesterday” said the longboarder sitting way outside the lineup waiting for the biggest set at Topaz in Redondo Beach. I paddled over on my longboard to find out what I had missed out on. He went on to say how great the surf was back in the 60’s and how different the beach was back then. I pictured myself hanging 5 my 9’ board on some uncrowded waves at Topaz back in 1960’s. I wanted to find out a little more of what was going on back then so I did some internet searching and found some great pictures taken by LeRoy "Granny" Grannis of my home breaks in the South Bay.
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| Redondo Beach 1964 (LeRoy "Granny" Grannis) |
This picture started to bother me a, like a mosquito bite that keeps reminding you to itch when you look at it. The back drop is very familiar to me, because I have been surfing that area for over twenty years. It’s the people in the picture that get to me. Why are there so many people out there on boards out there? Shouldn’t the beach be nearly empty with only a hand full of guys out there stretched out as far as the eye could see? Guess not. So what ruined it? That’s where I began my quest to find what caused the explosion of surf nuts in Redondo in the 60’s and whether or not it would really be worth it for me to go back in time to surf my home breaks back in the 1960’s.
In 1959 it is estimated there were approximately 5,000 surfers worldwide. In 1963, there were two million surfers, most of them in California. One of the sparks that ignited the surf explosion was a movie about a surfer girl with big dreams. The movie Gidget was released in 1959 and with its popularity it drastically changed the landscape.
I think I can probably deal with the crowd of people sitting on boards that call themselves surfers back in the 1960’s. I know there were some excellent surfers back then, but my guess is that most of them would be surfing Malibu or Hawaii and not Redondo Beach.
So if a lot of the other cool surfers weren’t hanging around the south bay then what was I going to do in my free time? I needed to find out more about what was going on, not in the surf sub-culture but also in the American culture too. As it turns out 70 million children from the post-war baby boom became teenagers and young adults in the sixties. The movement away from the conservative fifties continued and eventually resulted in revolutionary ways of thinking and real change in the cultural fabric of American life. Young people wanted changes that affected education, values, lifestyles, laws, and entertainment. During the sixties, college campuses became centers of debate and scenes of protest more than ever before. Great numbers (statistics) of young adults, baby boomers, reaching military draft age (selective service) and not yet voting age (minimum was voting age was 21 did not become 18 until 1971), caused a struggle which played out on many campuses as the country became more involved in the Vietnam War (timeline). The generation gap became a growing phenomenon. The young seem curiously unappreciative of the society that supports them. "Don't trust anyone over 30," is one of their rallying cries. Another, "Tell it like it is," conveys an abiding mistrust of what they consider adult deviousness. The Civil Rights movement made great changes in society in the 1960's, but it was a bloody road. It seems to me that the sixties were the decade of assassination, war and rioting. Compare the 1960’s to today or even to the last ten years, it seems like it’s not so bad out there now. Sure people still fight about inequalities, but in comparison to the 60’s we are actually pretty close to being as equal as you can get (except for some places in the south).
Some Surf culture (From http://web.me.com/uromastyx.studio/Radsurfing(new)/Surfing_history.html )
Surf culture includes the people, language, fashion and life surrounding the sport of modern surfing.
The culture began early in the 20th century, spread quickly during the 1950s and 1960s, and continues to evolve. Touching fashion, music, literature, films, jargon, and more, its basis is the love of surfing, the hunt for great waves, the desire for the ultimate ride, and life in and around the ocean. Localism or territorialism is often a large part of surf culture in which individuals or groups of surfers designate certain key surfing spots as their own. Surfers, who come from many walks of life, are generally bound by an intense love of the sport.
The fickle nature of weather and the ocean, plus the great desire for the best possible types of waves for surfing, make surfers slaves to rapidly changing conditions. Surfer Magazine, founded in the 1960s when surfing had gained popularity with teenagers, used to say that if they were hard at work and someone yelled "Surf's up!" the office would suddenly be empty. Also, since surfing has a restricted geographical necessity (i.e. the coast), the culture of beach life often influenced surfers and vice versa. Aspects of 1960s surf culture in Southern California, where it was first popularized, include the woodie, bikinis and other beach wear, such as boardshorts or baggies, and surf music. Surfers developed the skateboard to be able to "surf" on land; and the number of boardsports and spin-offs has grown ever since.
So what was going on back then... Take a look...
1950’s
For a time in the early 1950s, southern Los Angeles became the site of significant racial violence, with whites bombing, firing into, and burning crosses on the lawns of homes purchased by black families south of Slauson. In an escalation of behavior that began in the 1920s, white
gangs in nearby cities such as
South Gate and
Huntington Park routinely accosted blacks who traveled through white areas. The black mutual protection clubs that formed in response to these assaults became the basis of the region's fearsome
street gangs.
[3]
1960
Four black college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter, protesting their denial of service. This action caused a national campaign, waged by seventy-thousand students, both white and black, over the next eight months, in sit-ins across the nation for Civil Rights.
· For What It's Worth in 1960
· The cost of a new house $12,700
· The mortgage interest rate 1.8%
· The cost of new car $2,600
· The average income $5,315
A gallon of gas 25 cents
· A gallon of milk 50 cents
· A US Postage stamp 4 cents
· Unemployment Rate 5.5%
1961
· Vietnam War: The war began with the landing of nine hundred military advisors in
Saigon.
· The construction of the Berlin Wall begins by the Soviet bloc
· The Soviet Union detonates the biggest explosion in history over Novaya Zemlya
·
1962
- Cuban missile crisis
- Three thousand troops quell riots, allowing James Meredith to enter the University of Mississippi as the first black student under guard by Federal marshals
- Marilyn Monroe died
- The First Wal-Mart discount store is opened by by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas.
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| Crowds watch as huge waves turn Redondo Beach, California, into a surfers' paradise in 1962. (AP Photo) |
1963
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| Birmingham Protests, 1963 |
- · March on Washington: Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the "I have a dream" speech before a crowd of 200,000 during the civil rights march on Washington, DC.
- · President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Tex
- · A peaceful settlement to the land dispute between Mexico and the United States is enacted with the signing of the Chamizal Treaty, establishing the boundary in the El Paso Juarez Valley
- · California surfers took to skateboards as a way to stay fit out of season, and by 1963, the fad had spread across the country
- · The Great Train Robbery takes place in Buckinghamshire, England. Greatest train robbery of all time with 5 million in cash and jewels taken In 15 minutes
- · Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova - Russian Cosmonaut first woman in space.
Hermosa Beach, 1963
Henry Ford, 22nd Street, Hermosa Beach, 1963
1964
- The 1964 'imaginary' Gulf of Tonkin incident allowed President Johnson to expand the Vietnam War through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution without a Congressional Declaration of War.
- · Rights Act restores tribal law to reservations (July 2) outlawing both segregation and major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, was passed.
- · The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or the USS Maddox Incident, are the names given to two separate confrontations, one actual and one now realized as non-existent, involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin
- · British Invasion: January 13, 1964 - Beatlemania hits the shores of the United States with the release of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," which becomes the Liverpool group's first North American hit
- · Riots occurred in the Panama Canal Zone, The Panama Canal incident occurs when Panamanian mobs engage United States troops, leading to the death of twenty-one Panama citizens and four U.S. troops
- · China detonates its first atomic bomb.
- · Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa
- · Three civil rights workers—Schwerner, Goodman, and Cheney—murdered in Mississippi (June).
- · Three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, are murdered by local segregationist law enforcement officials near Philadelphia, Mississippi. While searching for the boys which were found in a nearby earthen dam, the bodies of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, were also found who had been done in by the Ku Klux Klan.
- · Alaska's "Good Friday" Earthquake is the most powerful earthquake in American history at a magnitude of 9.2. It kills 125 people and inflicts massive damage to Anchorage, Alaska.
- U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), 66, announces her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination and the first woman to run for President of the United States.
- United States Surgeon General Luther Leonidas Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health (the first such statement from the U.S. government)
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| 1964, Mike Hynson, Hermosa. The brash and stylish San Diego surfer went on to costar in the 1966 documentary, The Endless Summer. –Photograph by © LeRoy Grannis. All rights reserved. via |
65
In March, 1965, King led marchers across the Edmund Pettus bridge into Selma, Ala., for a 50-mile march to the State Capitol in Montgomery. Thousands of civil rights marchers participated, demanding voter rights. (AP photo)
Watts Riots
- · State troopers attack peaceful demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as they try to cross bridge in Selma, Ala.
- · In six days of rioting in Watts, a black section of Los Angeles, 35 people are killed and 883 injured and property destruction in excess of $200 million
- · Vietnam War: Johnson escalated United States military involvement in the war
- · Medicaid and Medicare were established
- · Malcolm X, an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist, was assassinated in Harlem, New York
- · U.S. Marines invade Dominican Republic, stay until October 1966
- · Cigarette Ads banned on British TV
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| 1965, Hermosa Beach, CA, Donald Takayama & Bettina Brenna. –Photograph by ©LeRoy Grannis. All rights reserved. |
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| 1965, Johnny Fain, Miki Dora, Malibu, CA. The infamous Dora “tap.” Dora’s most famous prank was releasing a jar of live moths during a surf movie premiere. –Photograph by © LeRoy Grannis. All rights reserved. via |
66
- · Miranda v. Arizona: Landmark Supreme Court decision further defines due process clause of Fourteenth Amendment and establishes Miranda rights (June 13).
- · The Department of Transportation was created.
- · NBC, CBS and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) introduce full color lineups to their prime-time schedules.
- · Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to go to war.[1]
- · November 8, 1966 - The first black United States Senator in eighty-five years, Edward Brooke, is elected to Congress. Brooke was the Republican candidate from Massachusetts and former Attorney General of that state.
- · In 1966, James S. Coleman, commissioned by the government, published Equality of Educational Opportunity, a landmark study that led the way to forced integration and busing in the 1970s.
- · The Palomares Incident. While fueling over Spain, a B-52 collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker dropping four 1.5 megaton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares. One in the sea was recovered and three disintegrated and dispersed plutonium around Palomaies. 2000 tons of radio active earth were scraped up and sent to America.
- President Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended. He adds 8,000 more U.S. soldiers in February to total 190,000 and another 60, 000 by April to make the total U.S. troops in Vietnam total 250,000. B-52's begin drops on Hanoi and Haiphong
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Civil rights activist James Meredith is shotdown while in a civil rights march across Mississippi. A few weeks later Martin Luther King is struck by a rock thrown from an angry white mob in a civil rights march in
67
- · Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, outlining the procedures for filling vacancies in the presidency and vice presidency (Feb. 10).
- · Super Bowl I: In the first Super Bowl, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35–10.
- · July 1967 - Black riots plague U.S. cities. In Newark, New Jersey, twenty-six are killed, fifteen hundred injured and one thousand arrested from July 12 to 17. One week later, July 23 to 30, forty are killed, two thousand injured, and five thousand left homeless after rioting in Detroit, known as the 12th Street Riots, decimate a black ghetto. The riots are eventually stopped by over 12,500 Federal troopers and National Guardsmen.
- · The Supreme Court hears Loving vs Virginia and unanimously ends laws against interracial marriages.
- · China takes only 2 years to go from Atomic to Hydrogen.
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| 1967, Malibu. When Grannis returned with a friend to Malibu shortly after World War II, they found a crowd of twelve people surfing. “That’s it,” he said. “This place is ruined.” –Photograph by ©LeRoy Grannis. All rights reserved. via |
68
- · Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. (April 4).
· 
- · Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles, Calif. (June 5–6).
- On June 5, 1968 Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his victory speech winning the California Primary. Sirhan Sirhan, an angry Palestinian with a grudge against the Kennedy's support of Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 was arrested at the scene. He was sentenced to life in prison where he still resides
- · Chicago riots: Police clashed with anti-war protesters in Chicago.
- · The first teacher allowed to teach pregnant (and showing) in Clear Creek School District.
- · End 1968 - "Draftees" accounted for 38% of all American troops in Vietnam. Over 12% of the draftees were college graduates
- · In the closing days of 1968 mankind took a break from the turmoil of the year and focused on the future as they first saw pictures of an Earth rise over the Moon. Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell and Major William Anders took Apollo 8 into orbit around the moon began a new age in space. A redemption of the Apollo 204 accident the year before when we lost astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee in a training fire.
- On January 30, 1968 North Vietnam began what came to be called the Tet Offensive. Communist forces simultaneously attacked hundreds of cities including Saigon. It lasted for about six months and other than hard fighting in Hue and Khe Sanh, it was a military failure for the North but caused more political problems back in America concerning what our military was telling us.
- · The Tet Offensive also caused LBJ to halt to all bombing of North Vietnam in lieu of upcoming peace talks in Paris.
- The My Lai Massacre occurred in March 1968 but it was not until a year later that the media and America found about it. Lt William Calley ordered his men to line up 450 unarmed old men, women and children and shoot them all, which they did. After Calley was indicted he went on a successful speaking tour of American Legion posts. He was later found guilty of mass murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. He spent 3 days in jail before President Richard Nixon, under heavy pressure from conservatives, commuted his sentence to 3 years of house arrest. After his time was up he magically found funding to open a chain of jewelry stores in Atlanta, Georgia.
- · The United States spy ship USS Pueblo and its 83 man crew was seized by North Korea in Sea of Japan. Though indeed spying, the ship was in international waters. The crew was held for most of year before being released in 1969.
43 years after the infamous
Scopes Trial in 1925, the Supreme Court in an Arkansas case banning teaching evolution in public schools, decided the ban was unconstitutional
NOVEMBER 1968 VOL.9 NO.5
69
- · Richard Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th president (Jan. 20).
- · Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, Jr., become the first men to land on the Moon (July 20).
"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"
- · Stonewall riots: Riots took place in New York City which would mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the United States. In a political move to clean up New York City, Mayor John Lindsay had the Police raid the Stonewall Gay Bar in Greenwich Village. The fight lasted 3 days with thousands of gay men beaten by police
- · Woodstock Festival: A music and culture festival took place in White Lake, New York.
- · The United States bombed North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia and Laos.
- · Sesame Street premiered on National Educational Television.
- · November 20, 1969 - Alcatraz Island, the former prison in San Francisco Bay, is occupied by fourteen American Indians in a long standoff over the issues of Indian causes.
- · November 21, 1969 - The Internet, called Arpanet during its initial development, is invented by the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the U.S. Department of Defense. The first operational packet switching network in the world was deployed connecting the IMP at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, it included the entire four node system, with the UCSB and the University of Utah.
- · Canada expresses its progressive roots by banning tobacco advertising on radio and TV, and legalizes both contraception and abortion
On December 15th Representative Alexander Pirnie from New York draws number 257 in the first U.S. government military draft lottery since WW II. The number corresponds to the 257th day of the year, young men born on Sept 14th packed their bags
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| 1969, LeRoy Grannis surfing Hermosa Beach with his Calypso amphibious camera, invented by another aquatic legend– Jacques Cousteau. Photo by John Grannis. –Photograph © LeRoy Grannis. All rights reserved. |
Kent Layton, Hermosa Beach, 1969
After all is said and done, I've finally made up my mind. Bill and Ted were right “The best place to be, is here. And the best time to be, is now.”
