Books for the Surfer in Your Life

Name: Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach
Brand: Marc Wanamaker
SKU: 9781467160735
Price: 17.49 USD
Availability: InStock

Surfing is more than a board and a wave, it’s the shape of the beach and the culture of the unique places where big waves swell. These books chronicle the history of iconic surfing locales in stories and rare photos, tracing the trajectory of the sport from its earliest days to the present. From surfing’s origins in Hawai’i, to tales of hanging ten in Santa Cruz, Newport Beach, Corpus Christi, or Smryna Beach Florida, the stories of how these surfing meccas grew make a delightful gift for boarders.

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Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Rincon Point

$23.99 $16.79 Save 30%

Surfing in Huntington Beach

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Surfing in Hawai'i

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Surfing in Santa Cruz

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Surfing in San Diego

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Oregon Surfing:

$24.99

Ocean Beach

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Surfing Corpus Christi and Port Aransas

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Oregon Surfing

$24.99

Surfing in South Carolina

$24.99

Surfing in New Smyrna Beach

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach

9781467160735

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Since pioneer filmmakers arrived on its shoreline in the early 20th century, the Santa Monica beach has been a popular location for the making of movies and television productions. Its enchanting beauty led studio moguls, producers, and celebrities to build beach houses there, creating what became known as "Hollywood's Playground." The sand and shore of the Santa Monica beach became a favored site for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, and Cary Grant. It was on this beach that the Academy Awards were conceived, the movie The Wizard of Oz sprang forth, and a young Pres. John F. Kennedy stunned beachgoers with a surprise ocean swim without the protection of Secret Service agents. In 1962, the beach became the center of the universe as the site of President Kennedy's "Western White House," where the visitors included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, and--famously--"anyone who was anyone."

Rincon Point

9781467108706

$23.99 $16.79 Save 30%

Rincon Point is renowned as the Queen of the Coast, one of the premier surfing spots in the world, but that is only a fragment of its rich history. Before the arrival of Europeans, it was a Chumash village called Shuku. In the 19th century, it was part of Rancho El Rincon, whose owners included a rich but illiterate Californio rancher, an English physician who made house calls by bicycle, and a Chilean pharmacist who dispensed drugs out of an old ship's cabin. It was the site of a scandalous love-triangle murder in the 1870s, a rickety highway on stilts in the 1910s, and a raunchy honky-tonk in the 1920s. Banditos, nudists, movie stars, long-boarders--they have all shaped Rincon Point, a place immortalized by novelists, poets, painters, photographers, and the Beach Boys.

Surfing in Huntington Beach

9781467102773

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Officially known as Surf City USA®, Huntington Beach is a surf town like no other. Ever since Hawaiian transplant George Freeth "walked on water" beside the famous Huntington Beach Pier in 1914, the city has had a storied relationship with surf culture that endures to this day. Combining a rough-and-tumble working-class spirit leftover from the city's epic oil boom with its role as a popular beach resort destination, Huntington Beach has produced some of surfing's most memorable personalities and moments. From legendary surfing heroes to long-standing competitions and titans of industry, these vintage photographs trace the evolution of this once small seaside settlement into a West Coast surf mecca, where surfing truly is a way of life.

Surfing in Hawai'i

9780738574882

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

When the early European explorers traversed the globe, their journals held numerous accounts of Hawaiians enjoying surfing. Since Europeans of that era were not accustomed to swimming in their own cold waters, it must have seemed like a dream to watch naked native Hawaiians riding the waves of a turbulent sea. Nowhere in the ancient world was surfing as ingrained into the culture as on the islands of Hawai'i. He'e nalu (wave sliding) was the national sport and enjoyed by all. When a swell was up, whole villages were deserted as everyone fled to the beach to test their surfing skills. Legends of famous surf riders were retold in mele (song/chant), and fortunes could be decided on the outcome of a surfing contest. From these shores, modern surfing was born, along with the iconic romantic images of bronzed surfers, grass shacks, and hula.

Surfing in Santa Cruz

9780738570761

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Santa Cruz is located on the northern tip of Monterey Bay on California's central coast. Surfing was first introduced to the U.S. mainland in Santa Cruz by three visiting Hawaiian princes in the late 1880s. Since those early days, the Santa Cruz surfing culture has blossomed into a thriving lifestyle. Many of the world's most highly regarded surfers hail from Santa Cruz. In fact, Santa Cruz, or "Surf City" as its known, has become a popular destination for surfing aficionados of all ages. Surfing in Santa Cruz is a concise historical overview of the diverse and colorful surfing culture inhabiting the area.

Surfing in San Diego

9780738547565

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

San Diego County has nearly 75 miles of picturesque coastline on the mighty Pacific Ocean, and for decades, San Diego has boasted of producing some of the world's finest surfers. But here surfing is more
than a sport--it is a Southern California lifestyle--and as such has heavily influenced the beach towns throughout the county. Much research points to surfing having come to Southern California in 1907,
and it may have taken hold in San Diego as early as 1910. Join with us in this wonderful pictorial journey through San Diego's little-known surfing past.

Oregon Surfing:

9781467131018

$24.99

Surfing came to the central Oregon coast in the early 1960s. Mostly young boys from Newport and the Agate Beach area took to the waves, without wetsuits or leashes, and taught themselves how to surf in the forbidding cold waters. Eventually forming the Agate Beach Surf Club, they discovered other surfing communities along the Oregon coast. With no modern-day technology to help them, they traveled the rugged Oregon coast in search of good and accessible surf spots. Fifty years later, the surfing culture has grown and evolved, including both genders, kite, wind, stand-up-paddle, and big wave surfing. What hasn't changed is the unique and challenging environment of the Oregon coast. Geography, the weather, and the cold water still remain the biggest challenges. In the face of all this, the surfing community grows and continues to prosper.

Ocean Beach

9781467128025

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Water defines Ocean Beach by its unique location where the Pacific Ocean meets the mouth of the San Diego River, alongside Mission Bay, formerly known as False Bay, which connected to tidal marsh areas. The beach town's natural attractions and new prospects brought early settlers to Ocean Beach when it was established in 1887 by William "Billy" Carlson and Frank Huggins. Ocean Beach's landmass history is shaped and reshaped by major storms, wave and tidal surges, and droughts, which in turn transform the community's natural habitat, culture, and development. For example, the Ocean Beach Woman's Club's (OBWC) Flatiron Building, constructed on the shoreline, was destroyed by several storms from 1939 through 1941 and later removed, and the area where it once stood was turned into a park. The OBWC later moved its permanent headquarters away from the beach. The history and fabric of this unique ocean community is made up of an assortment of characters and spirited generations of individuals who have left their loving marks through their homes, gardens, businesses, stories, achievements, and community activities.

Surfing Corpus Christi and Port Aransas

9780738584560

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

Surf culture in the Texas Coastal Bend began in the early 1960s when a few young men set up surfboard rental stands on the beach. By 1970, thousands of people had caught the surfing bug. In the decades that followed, dozens of surf shops and surfboard makers established themselves in Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, and nearby communities. Coastal Bend surfers won national championships for their wave-riding prowess, beating out counterparts from the East Coast, California, and Hawaii. By the 21st century, Coastal Bend wave riders had become a force to be reckoned with, playing strong roles in local political movements that influenced public policy.

Oregon Surfing

9781467115322

$24.99

Surfing culture began in Portland, Seaside, Cannon Beach, and Pacific City in the early 1960s. Influenced by surf music and a few California surfers, a handful of skin divers and adolescent boys yearned to engage in the sport. In the beginning, surfing was illegal along the beachfronts of Seaside and Cannon Beach. Answering the siren call, locals took to the beaches, while others from around Oregon, Washington, and California found their way to isolated spots along the Northern Oregon coast. The early surfers were not intimidated by their lack of knowledge, poor equipment, or the unpredictable waves. Instead, surfing caught on in the cold waters of Oregon. Experience the early days of Oregon surfing through the pioneer surfers' stories and vintage photographs.

Surfing in South Carolina

9781467115131

$24.99

For centuries, the ocean waters of the Atlantic have impacted the daily lives of those on the South Carolina coast. Beginning in the 1960s, those waves caught the imagination of young beachgoers who studied magazines and Super 8 films and refined their moves on rent-a-floats until the first surfboards became available in the area. The buildup to the Vietnam War brought GIs and their families from the West Coast and Hawaii to South Carolina, and their surfboards came along with them. Unbeknownst to each other, local surfers concentrated in the beach and military base areas of Beaufort/Hilton Head, Charleston, and Pawley's Island/Grand Strand began to conquer nearby surf breaks. When contests finally brought these groups together, a statewide sport was born.

Surfing in New Smyrna Beach

9780738566979

$24.99 $17.49 Save 30%

New Smyrna Beach is a lovely slip of island off Central Florida's east coast, an inlet below the bustle of Daytona and worlds away. Legend tells us Ponce de Leon landed here before sailing to St. Augustine to found North America's oldest city. Bordered on the west by the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon, the south by Cape Canaveral, the north by the notorious inlet of Crane's The Open Boat, and the east by the Atlantic, New Smyrna is paradise found. The town has fostered more world-class surfers than any other on earth. Here surfing is not a sport, hobby, or pastime. Surfing is a way of life with its own rules, language, culture, and customs. Open these pages to meet the pioneers and the professionals, the grommets, and maybe a kook or two.