Hacker Cinema
The Endless Summer
1966 · Film · documentary · 91 min
Directed by Bruce Brown
Documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown, himself a competition-level surfer, follows surfers Michael Hynson and Robert August on an around-the-world surfing adventure. With Brown's wry, sardonic narration and a twangy, guitar-driven instrumental soundtrack by The Sandals playing over the silent footage, Mike and Rob leave their California home to visit Hawaii, Australia, South Africa and other secluded surfing spots in a search for the surfer's holy grail that Brown dubs "The Perfect Wave.”
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6 comments on Hacker News
This is a topic near and dear to my heart!
Cottons is the break directly in front of Casa Pacifica. It's a long, easy peeling left-hander (meaning: looking at it from the beach, the wave curl moves from left to right as the wave breaks). I've surfed there several times. It's so amusing to imagine President Nixon pacing around in the house atop the cliff with a bunch of dirty hippies riding the waves below.
The history of surfing in this area is fascinating and drastically different from today. In 1960, when this story takes place, surfing was deeply counterculture. You could live in a beach shack in Southern California on bum's income — many people did. Although surfing originated in Hawaii, Southern California modernized it. "The Endless Summer" perfectly captures the flavor of this era of surfing and is well worth watching even for non-surfers.
Orange County birthed the modern surfboard, constructed with a stiff fiberglass and resin outer shell (the "glass") and foam interior (the "blank"). This construction technique was adapted from methods used by OC's aerospace defense contractors. It's perfect symmetry: the crew-cut engineers working on missiles and fighter jets, trading construction techniques with beatnik hippies trying to find a better waveriding vehicle. Nixon was hilariously in the geographic center of this intersection.
In the decades since then, the sport of surfing has moved monotonically upmarket. Today, if you're surfing in the U.S.A, you're wealthy. A lot of white collar desk workers started surfing in 2020, easier to get in the water if you work an email job. It's similar to living in an old warehouse in Tribeca NYC -- in the good old days it was the cheapest lifestyle you could live; today you pay for the privilege.
Winter surfing taught me to tolerate the cold.
That movie endless summer has it backwards. Surfing almost everywhere is better in the winter. It's just that winter in Hawaii is pretty warm.
Where I live we surf in the great lakes in late winter, starting about now actually till end of April.
While you're in the water with a wetsuit, it's not too bad. Water can't get too far below 0ºC but the air temperatures are often way below freezing, and the windchill can be brutal, because lake surfing is dependent on wind.
Getting out of my 5mm wet-suit in a parking lot in February taught me what it really means to be cold.
Since then, conditions I would have thought of as cold are much more tolerable.
Now if I have to take out the trash in the winter and there's fresh clean snow on the ground, instead of wrestling with winter boots I just go barefoot.
The secret to not feeling cold is that when you're cold, just let yourself be cold through and through. Don't fight it.
There was a documentary on the City of God DVD that was better than the film (and I thought it was an amazing film).
A few from Netflix that I could find that I rated:
Endless Summer
Death in Gaza
The Filth and the Fury
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Baseball
March of the Penguins
The Art of the Steal
Born Into Brothels
The Aristocrats
God Grew Tired of Us
The Fog of War
The Lost Wave
The Last Waltz
Festival Express
I started last summer. Been about 15 times, 3 to 6 hours each time, also took a 5 day, 3hrs per day class. Still can't "surf".
By "surf" I mean I can't catch a wave in the sweet spot between too step and too shallow and ride away from be break. I can catch a wave and ride it straight in on the break/white water.
3 possibilities: (1) surfing is hard (2) the waves suck (3) I suck
I think it's a little of 1 and 2 (or I hope so). Watching surf videos they always show these perfect waves that crash on one side and the surfer can ride it for 10-30 seconds where as at the beach I'm usually at the waves don't make nice shapes.
On the other hand the instructor can still catch these bad waves in a way that is clearly above my skill level.
Long boards like 3 to 3.5 meters are the easiest to ride. If you watch "Endless Summer" (1966), probably the most famous surf movie, you'll see they are riding long boards. AFAICT long boards are kind of out of fashion. Most people seem to ride medium boards (2 meters). They are harder use (and what I happen to be using via my instructor).
If you can find a place with long shallow waves and a long board (like Waikiki) you can probably get started pretty quickly.
"Endless Summer" is a classic. It's up there with "A Sunday in Hell" (paris-roubaix cycling race) and "On Any Sunday" (motorcycling) for quality mid-century documentary sport films.
This is one thing I remember from the movie Endless Summer: the two surfers still wear a suit and tie to the airport.