These wooden boards weren’t something that the average beach bum could handle (sorry, Moondoggie). They were often 14 to 16 feet-long (4 to 5 meters), and could weigh 100 to 150 pounds (45 to 68 kilograms) when dry, and more when wet. The region began producing materials like fiberglass and polyurethane, and soon, “some surfers working in the defense industry got their hands on this stuff and started making surfboards out of it.”īefore the war, California surfboards were carved from wood according to Hawaiian traditions. “During World War II, California became one of the main centers of the defense industry,” says Westwick.
How did an ancient Hawaiian sport make its way to Hollywood, and then the world? According to Peter Westwick and Peter Neushul, authors of The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing, modern surfing culture has its roots in World War II. Since then, surfing has spread all over the world, to Morocco, Japan, Germany and Iceland. It spread to southern California in 1907, but didn’t become widely popular until the 1940s. It began hundreds of years ago in Polynesian islands, in Hawaii. For most Americans in the 1960s, surfing was the subject of a Beach Boys song, a setting for teenage romance in movies like Gidget and Beach Blanket Bingo, and a sport practiced by young, tanned, well-muscled youths with toothpaste white smiles, in California.īut surfing didn’t start with teenagers in California.
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