Praise the Lord, they finally got away from
lifeless heart attack victems, and took an
exit poll of the three popular spots at Ol'
'Nofre Third most popular, Four Doors,
second runner-up, Bldg. #4, most popular,
The Point and all it's characters. That seems
a fair assessment. Plans are finalized for
the always boring Club Luau. Slim Irwin
is in command, Sal Geez, and the entire family
and friends as back up. SOSC BOD shall give
another demonstration of the $42,000.00
defibulators making sure they'll be working
the 4th of July Holiday. That's all the Club
needs is another DOA at San Clemente
General. *CLEAR*
Written by Larry Coronary.
BRUCE SAVAGE SAND ASSOCIATES
9 Comments:
Hi all! Does anyome survive those killer heart attacks?
Yes Art, but they usually choke on their swollen tongue, ther's nothing you can do to prevemt that.
Original surfer girl finds a resurgence
BY HUGO MARTIN
LOS ANGELES TIMES
The 18-year-old surfer girl with the sun-bleached hair is breathing heavily and turning bright red as she approaches her idol, a diminutive grandmother who is signing books after a lecture on surfing history at the University of San Diego.
Tears well up in the girl's eyes when she comes face to face with Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the plucky surfing icon known to the world as "Gidget."
"You are my hero," the girl stammers.
Zuckerman has been bouncing around the U.S. lately, making public appearances at surfing museum openings, surfing contests and beach festivals. But this is the first time she can recall anyone getting emotional at meeting her.
Minutes earlier, Zuckerman was bubbling with enthusiasm before an audience of 50 or so, including rosy-cheeked college kids and gray-haired surfers in Hawaiian shirts.
She pranced among the blown-up photos that chronicled her life. There she is with Sandra Dee. That's her on a surfboard in Malibu. Here she is with her father reading the "Gidget" book.
But when the sobbing surfer girl calls her a hero, Zuckerman is dumbfounded.
Gidget a hero? To the outside world, she was that sassy teenager whose fun-loving exploits in Malibu 50 years ago were the basis of the "Gidget" books, movies and TV shows. To the surfing world, she was the novice wave rider who exposed surfing's subculture to America's mainstream. And to a handful of purists, she was the reason California's best surfing spots have been overrun by pushy kooks and annoying wannabes.
What's all this hero talk?
Little surfer, little one
It's the summer of 1956, and a spunky 15-year-old tomboy from Los Angeles wanders along the beach in Malibu when she comes upon a group of sun-baked men in cutoff jeans, hanging around a rickety shack made out of palm fronds and driftwood.
She asks if she can borrow one of the balsa-wood surfboards that lean against the shack. She never surfed before but is eager to try. The men consider this short-haired pixie and agree to loan her a board in exchange for her lunch, two peanut butter-and-radish sandwiches.
Later, when she returns from the surf, one of the surfers calls her "Gidget," a fusion of "girl" and "midget."
The girl is accepted into the gang of surfers with names like Moondoggie, Bubblehead and Beetle. She was the Gidget.
At home, she spills her excitement onto the pages of her diary:
June 24th, 1956.
Dear Diary: I didn't do too much but go to the beach. I didn't think I'd have fun but I met Matt (Kivlin) and he took me out on his surfboard. He let me catch the waves by myself and once I fell off and the board went flying in the air. I didn't get hurt at all. ... I hope Matt will take me surfing again.
She excitedly tells her father about her vagabond surfing friends. How they live for nothing -- not nice cars or stylish clothes -- but to surf.
The girl's father is a Hollywood scriptwriter who decides to write about this odd surfing subculture. In six weeks, he produces his first book, a fictional tale called "Gidget." It becomes a phenomenon in 1957, outselling Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." Two years later, Hollywood releases the "Gidget" movie, starring Sandra Dee, followed by two sequels and a 1965-66 TV series starring Sally Field.
Suddenly, everybody wants a part of the fun-filled beach life depicted in the "Gidget" movies, the subsequent "Beach Blanket" spinoffs and the sentimental Beach Boys tunes.
Back at Malibu, hordes of surfers pack themselves shoulder-to-shoulder on the breaking wave, evidence that Gidgetmania has changed surfing forever. Moondoggie and the rest of the gang are uprooted when lifeguards demolish the palm-frond shack. Even Gidget is turned off to surfing when she returns from college to find Malibu overrun with newcomers.
"There were too many boards," she says, remembering the scene. "Too many surfers."
Back to the beach
It's an overcast weekday when Zuckerman, now 65, returns to the scene of the crime, Surfrider Beach in Malibu. The waves are flat and only one surfer remains, a teenage girl who lugs an oversized surfboard out of the water.
The girl trudges past Zuckerman, barely glancing at the 5-foot-1 surfing icon sitting in the sand in a pink hat and matching blouse.
Zuckerman points to a small cove near the pier. This is where Gidget learned to surf. A few other girls surfed Malibu back in 1956, but not many. Gidget, still tan and energetic, occasionally surfs, but only when the water is warm and the waves are gentle.
She points to a sand heap near a white brick wall. That is where Zuckerman hung out with surfers like Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy, Bill Jensen, Mike Doyle and half a dozen other surfers at the palm-frond shack.
And that is where Tubesteak dubbed her Gidget.
"She started that whole thing," says Tracy. "Back then, surfing was a West Coast thing but Gidget was nationwide. You can walk into any bar in Peoria, Ill., and mention that name, 'Gidget,' and they've heard of it."
So when places like Surf- rider Beach, San Onofre and County Line became overrun by throngs of surf crashers, some surfers blamed Gidget.
Fred Reiss, a 51-year-old surfer from Santa Cruz, wrote a novel in 1995 about a surfer who returns to Malibu 30 years later to kill everyone involved in the "Gidget" movie for ruining his surf spot.
The book, "Gidget Must Die," was a cheap shot, but Reiss says the story was rooted in the real-life resentment many surfers felt toward Gidget.
"I worked at a Santa Cruz surf shop for seven years, and I met most of the legends, as well as tons of guys from the '60s period, and nearly all of them said, 'Gidget ruined surfing,'" he says.
But Gidget has legions of fans who insist she has been unfairly blamed for a surfing craze that was ready to explode anyway because of advances in surfboard technology and a counterculture movement that reshaped the country in the late 1960s and early '70s.
Dick Metz, a lifelong surfer and founder of the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente, Calif., says those who blame Gidget don't know their surfing history.
At the time of the "Gidget" movies, he says, the popular balsa-wood longboards were being replaced by shorter, lighter polyurethane foam boards. The new, easily maneuverable boards, he says, were a big reason surfing caught fire in the 1960s.
"The change of materials was going to change the sport," he says. "I don't care if there was a book or a movie."
As for Zuckerman, she shrugs off criticism. After all, how could she foresee the popularity of the "Gidget" books, the movies and, ultimately, the surfing lifestyle, she asks. She was just a kid trying to fit in somewhere and she found that place among the surfers.
"I was as innocent as the day was long," she says.
When she left for college in 1958, Zuckerman left surfing behind. She married a Yiddish scholar, moved to Pacific Palisades, raised two kids and worked as a teacher and later a part-time restaurant hostess. When reporters called to ask if she was the original Gidget, she would answer, "Yeah, so what? Why does anyone care?"
But now the surfing world does care.
Riding the wave
In the last few years, Zuckerman has been the honored guest at pro surfing competitions, surfing museum openings and surfing festivals.
In 1999, the bible of surfing, Surfer Magazine, named Zuckerman the seventh most influential surfer of the century.
Gidget's resurgence has come during a nostalgic phase in the surfing world. In the last decade, veteran surfers have opened surfing museums, filmed surfing documentaries and published commemorative surfing magazines.
Whatever the reason for the look back in surfing's rear-view mirror, Gidget has gained respect as a pioneer who helped break surfing's gender barrier.
Debbie Beacham, the 1982 women's surfing champion, taught herself to surf on a used surfboard she bought at a garage sale after watching Sally Field in the "Gidget" TV series.
"It seemed so mysterious and different, and nobody did it where I was from," Beacham says.
"There's a lot of good that came from Gidget," says surfing hall of famer Jericho Poppler Bartlow, who co-founded the Women's International Surfing Association.
A-non-mouse wrote,
"There's a lot of good that came from Gidget," says surfing hall of famer Jericho Poppler Bartlow, who co-founded the Women's International Surfing Association."
That is the biggest pile of manure that I ever heard. The only good thing to come from women's surfing was "Blue Crush", and only then if you like flat chested anorexics.
Before leashes and wetsuits surfing was the "Sport of Kings". Now it is the sport of runts, dweebs, nerds and yups.
Would someone please stop this train? I WANT TO GET OFF!!!!
Those days are long gone, and were gone long before you were born.
Surfing stopped being the sport of Kings when Cook came to Hawaii.
In California, it was the sport of losers, most of whom were out of work delinquents dodging the draft.
. . . except our beloved Gig.
YES THE DEFIBRULATORS ARE
UP AND RUNNING.
BUT THERE FOR O`FISH`L USE
ONLY. THAT MEANS ONLY CURRENT B.O.D
STAFF.
SO MUCH FOR YOUR $20.00
OH YEA IT`S 4TH OF JEWLIE & STILL
NO NEWS LETTER. NEXT YEAR SAVE YOUR
MONEY OR GIVE TO DENNIS EARL
IF YOUR NOT DEAD!!!
Mr.Lawn, you are too funny. When did you become such good friends with Dennis Earl?
ok jed will give the money
to you.
will call it the j.m.f
jed morose fund
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